14 Comments
May 25, 2022Liked by RWB, Paper Arts Collective

Argh. One of my fav material for printing. But all good things come to an end.

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Would love to see some of your work on it. Then again I am easily amused by shiny objects.

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As in the darkroom, there is no one paper that fits all negatives not one inkjet paper that works with all images. This goes for textures too. The choices are amazing.

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The demise of Agfa papers, then recently Adox, the reborn Agfa, went out of business. That hurt. Zone 7 papers and equipment went bankrupt. That hurt. Fortunately, we have these great inkjet papers, particularly Baryta's, that has taken some of the pain out of things. I am still in the darkroom but getting rid of a lot of extra equipment.

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Curious...

Was this in response to the Nikon outsourcing to Tamron or in response to the OM camera picture?

I really felt the demise of Agfa (my primary graded papers at the time and as a LOVER of APX 100 in Rodinal for medium format. I didn't know Adox is gone I still have an unopened bottle of Adox Rodinal (or whatever they called it for a while) so I've not made a purchase of their products in a while.

Last but not least, which inkjet Baryta paper do you favor? Any thoughts on our first comparison to our "go-to"?

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I have had Nikon since 1965 and been a full time photographer all my life, 10 years Firestone, Stouffers and General Tire, then 34 years in my commercial studio. I used to test lenses before I bought them to make sure, I got a good one and yes, there were some bad ones. Thus, the interest in who is designing what for whom. I never used off brand lenses as in the film days when shooting for print required the same brands, so the contrast and color pallet were consistent, or close enough. I mostly use Canson paper printed on an Epson 5000 and its hard to tell the BW from the silver prints. I have used, Epson, Moab, Hannemuhle, Red River and others. There is always something new, but I stick with what I know. I do look forward to your tests and may try some of the papers. I liked the Olympus photo and the book project. This is a good site, and I am at mainzerphoto.com.

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I like all of the papers we tested so far (Moab = our go-to, Canson Prestige II, and Hahnemuhle) but if I HAD to choose based on everything we looked at it would be Canson for me and curiously Les would choose Moab. Probably based on what we each gravitate towards in terms of subject matter?

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Ps. thanks for your support and always feel free to suggest/ask etc. We find most people that love prints have a lot in common.

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May 25, 2022Liked by Paper Arts Collective

A good lesson to remind us on collecting the required materials that will be needed for a project before or while working on the project. Something that is not always possible, but when it is it’s great to do so. These days with supply chain disruptions it’s even more important to do so to make project deadlines.

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EXACTLY... we use Moab Juniper extensively and it was unobtainium for more than a year.

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You make a good point about planning ahead to keep proper stocks on hand.

But ... I cannot say they're exactly the same as Slickrock Silver, but both Hahnemuhle and Red River Paper carry metallic papers.

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Thanks for the info, I've not looked but maybe I'll buy a couple and ACTUALLY do one of those projects I had in mind... ah, too many projects -- too little time.

Ps. I actually planned on using that 503CW (purchased new way back) for one of those imagined projects. More on that later if anyone gives a hoot about that kind of thing... old cameras and such.

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May 25, 2022Liked by Paper Arts Collective

Absolutely give a hoot about old cameras. Everyone posts about the latest and greatest new cameras these days but going back to older cameras and film can be way more interesting than megapixels and autofocus systems.

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Then you'll at least be semi-amused that I have an entire 250 sheet box of Extalure. I tested it about 5 years ago but... it is SO SO FLAT, SO SLOW, and SO fogged that the only way I eventually produced something that wasn't gray muck was to develop the living crap out of it with lith developer... which really needs it's own project as Ektalure in lith is certainly not suitable for your generic subject matter.

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