articles/Paper/fotospeed-panorama-paper-page2

Paper Chase - Fotospeed Panorama Paper - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

by Mike McNamee Published 10/04/2015

Testing
When it came down to it we could not resist using the spare A4 sheet to make a profile, at least it provided a solid, consistent baseline for the testing. Our database of Fotospeed papers is a bit of a mix of printers and inks so it was good to collate everything in the same manner. We did look at two of the papers back in Issue 55 of Imagemaker (June 2011) - PF Lustre and Platinum Baryta (and yes, we did cross check the results!). PF Lustre has been updated since that time.

For the record we used the Epson 4900 printer with its HDR ink set, i1 Publish for profiling off a 400-patch target using Quality setting, USFAP for the art versions and PGPP 250 for the others. We printed the HiGAM audit target for analysis, along with a monochrome using the Epson ABW driver. To complete the series we printed a panorama containing very rich blues on each surface using the bespoke profiles.

Printing
The printing workflow depends greatly upon your printer. If this has a roll feed you can perhaps pretend that you are using that roll feed. In order to use the required 'Ultra Smooth Fine Art Paper' media setting, we were forced to use the manual front loader and this would probably also be the route of choice for an Epson 3800/3880. There is an argument to say that if you are printing, say, a limited edition of these pans then doubling up onto an A2 print would be clever, but this assumes something at least as big as the Epson 3880. The paper will fit all A4 printers.

You also need to set up a 'User Defined Paper Size'. This can be a bit daunting, but if you save a preset then you only have to do it the one time.

The Surfaces
The six media are a good mix to cover all tastes and applications. If it is a fine art limited edition then the choice is between Smooth Cotton and Platinum Baryta as both have the characteristics beloved by that sector. For texture, the Platinum Etching is the only choice, but not a bad one for all that; the surface is a light watercolour-like finish. The PF Gloss and Lustre provide bright and punchy prints from the OBA-bearing coatings, the Smooth Pearl more of the same but less pronounced. All three are perfectly adequate for competition and display purposes as it is highly unlikely that a pan will not be frames.



In terms of base tone, Smooth Cotton, Platinum Etching and Platinum Baryta are natural colour, extremely close to neutral indeed (which gives a slightly cream effect in most light). The other three are between 8 and 10 Lab points blue. The fluorescence effect shows up most in the UV booth, the PF pair of papers really jump out of the booth. For monochrome pans, the Platinum Baryta gives that authentic fibrebased air-dried look with good deep blacks. We table our findings and recommendations for ABW settings later. All these media delivered very good metamerism statistics for their class, the art papers being slightly higher (see table).



If reproduction precision is what you are after then the Platinum Baryta is the go-to paper; like all barytas it delivers very high accuracy, high Dmax and an excellent gamut volume. As with metamerism, all the surfaces delivered gamut volumes equal to their peers. The matt papers, Smooth Cotton and Platinum Etching have the typical art paper stats of lower Dmax, lower saturation in the HiGAM patch set and lower gamut volume. This, however, comes with the territory and despite this the pans look quite handsome. The lack of shadow depth shows most in the plots of the grey ramp with the shadows lifting towards the 15-16% mark while the gloss counterparts push all the way down to 3%.

• Paper Chase - Fotospeed Panorama Paper page 1
  
• Paper Chase - Fotospeed Panorama Paper page 2
  
• Paper Chase - Fotospeed Panorama Paper page 3
  
• Paper Chase - Fotospeed Panorama Paper page 4
  

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