articles/Paper/innovafineart-page3
by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2008
Armed with this dose of history we made monochrome prints onto FibaPrint Warm Tone using the Epson Advanced Black and White driver on the 'warm' setting. We repeated the trials discussed in Paul Gallagher's column in this issue and made the same measurement set. Using a media setting of Premium Semigloss Photo Paper, the 'light' tone setting and a resolution of 2880dpi on an Epson 3800, we obtained a tonal range close to that achieved by our very accurate full-colour profile - that is the result was different to that found with the Premium Lustre media as discussed in the Gallagher section. The tone colour itself was very close to that of Kodak Ektalure, although the base tone of FibaPrint Warm Tone is very much brighter. At 2.13, the Dmax was massively higher than Ektalure and higher than the 2.1 and 2.06 we obtained from real prints made onto Agfa Record Rapid.
One interesting thing we noted when looking through the archive silver materials was the level of OBA used in some of them. The passage of time has robbed us of some of the notes and data. However, one papSilver hailde and WT Glosser peaked at 104.5% reflectance at 430nm, as high as many inkjet materials. Ilford Multigrade IV did not breach the 100% barrier but was certainly quite peaky at the 440nm part of the spectrum. Other fibre base silver materials were equally active in the UV booth. On that score at least FibaPrint Warm Tone wins hands down, there is absolutely no trace of OBAs.
FibaPrint White Gloss, White Semi Matte and Ultra Smooth Gloss
We put all these papers to test using the tuned profile made originally for the Ultra Smooth Gloss. This is not a tactic we would normally employ but initial trials had suggested that the very high accuracy obtained on the Ultra Smooth would be replicated on the other materials. The data obtained were all quite exceptional and are tabulated (opposite) for completeness - it seems that one profile might do for all.
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