Paul Lester Photo

Click for something much bigger!

Let’s start this thing right. This is NOT a professional paper review. As a matter of fact, this is so unprofessional that one might say, and could be quite accurate, that the guy who is doing this review was pretty clueless during the process and didn’t know WTF he was doing most of the time! That said, take this for what is worth.

On Sunday when I returned from Charlotte, I had a box of Red River paper waiting for me; however, I didn’t touch it until last night. I wanted to make sure that I was rested and had time to play with it. After innumerable false starts, trips to web pages to find out this and that about printing, such as: Now how did I get to the Advanced Black & White printing via Lightroom or Photoshop???

Printing, my friends, is an art. There have been many a book written about printing and I have read exactly zero of them! I’m just trying to warn you. Don’t say that I didn’t tell you. I do miss the simplicity of my HP printer that didn’t have color profiles, etc. It was simple an produced glorious black and white prints with only 4 inks.

OK. After much fumbling about, I was able to produce about 5 prints on 5 different pieces of paper. I’ve included 3 of them here:

• Aurora Natural
• Aurora White
• Ultrapro Gloss 2.0

Heretofore, I’ve only used Epson’s Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster. I’ve been quite pleased with it, but it is a bit expensive. You save quite a bit of money by using the Red River equivalent, Ultrapro Satin 2.0. At the 8.5 x 11, 50 sheet pack, they cost almost the same. You save only about $5.00, but that is as close as they ever get. I buy 13 x 19 paper. 50 sheets of Ultrapro costs $52.95, the same in Epson, from B&H costs $87.94!

Whiter, brighter
I’ve read stuff about papers with optical brighteners, etc. And, just like anything else, there are many factions. Some won’t use paper with brighteners, some will, etc. If you click on the image at the top, I’ve left it fairly large. The first two images from the left are the Aurora Natural and Aurora White. Looking at them in person, it is quite obvious which one has the brighter whites, the Aurora White. However, the Aurora Natural has those nice, creamy white tones that I remember from using cotton rag paper. This would be a fantastic paper, I think for portraits, or perhaps still life shots. Heck, I even like it for landscapes. With the snow in the photo, you can really tell the difference. The blacks are not as deep as this is a matte paper.

I like deep blacks, but not fingerprints!
To the far right is the Ultrapro Gloss 2.0. I really like glossy papers, but usually use luster papers because of fingerprints. They just show up too readily on glossy prints. I love the bright whites and deep blacks of glossy papers. They make photos have a nice punch to them. I prefer many of my photos to be of medium contrast and this type of paper is perfect for it.

I tried, also, the aforementioned Ultrapro Satin and it is very similar to the Epson luster type paper except, to me, it has just a little finer texture on the surface.

I gave the River Linen a try and really like the feel and texture of the paper; however, I used only one of the sheets because I feel that this paper needs a special subject but I’m not sure what that is.

Overall, it was a fun experiment and I have plenty of paper remaining to print. I might even print a couple of color prints to compare. Though this year’s haul of color photos is somewhat lacking so far. I’ve been concentrating on B&W, which is where my heart is right now.

One big thing that I did learn: thou shalt not change black ink types midstream. It takes a long time for the printer to switch from matte black to photo black inks. Stick with the program. Make a test of matte papers, then make a test of regular papers. Don’t switch back and forth. It’s expensive! They have done a great job at minimizing ink loss in the Epson 3800, but there is still some as it clears those hoses of the ‘other’ ink!

So, I’ll probably buy some of the Aurora Natural, the Ultrapro Satin 2.0, and perhaps a bit of the Linen. I’ve liked them all, but I’m not going to have 18 different papers sitting around. That just leads to confusion and I don’t need any more confusion in my life!