What is your favorite Fine Art / Rag paper?

[shadowfox]

Digital B&W printers, school me on this.

I just picked up a Canon Pixma 9500 Mark II.
This is a pigment ink which is duller than dye on glossy paper which suits me *perfectly* (I hated glossy prints with a passion :) ).

With that context, what's your favorite paper type and brand?
Legion? Canson? Museo? Hahnemuhle? Moab? .... etc.

[Borghesia]

Hahnemuhle's William Turner paper, very nice structure solid thickness and it gives the ink its true character.

[gdmcclintock]

I like Museo Silver Rag (semi-gloss) and Max (matte) papers.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

On Epson printers, I have found that none of the non-Epson made matte or rag papers produced the image quality of the Epson papers. All I tried had weak blacks. Epson's Velvet Fine Art is the best, rich deep blacks, gorgeous for black and white with Epson's pigment ink printers.

I don't know about Canon, but you might try the Epson Velvet to see if it works well with Canon's pigment ink.

[bwcolor]

On 9500 (1st gen) Hahnemuhle's Photo Rag Pearl.

I believe that you can still order Hahnemuhle's trial assortment of papers.

[sepiareverb]

I use the Epson Hot Press with my 3880. Love that surface, and colors really pop.

[hlockwood]

From Hahn Photo Rag to Entrada FANat to, now, Canson Rag Photographique.

Harry

[shadowfox]

From Hahn Photo Rag to Entrada FANat to, now, Canson Rag Photographique.

Harry

I have used Canson watercolor paper for doing alt. printing and those are some high quality paper.
I am quite impressed with the content of Canson Infinity (their website for inkjet papers).

They also seem to sponsor photographer exhibitions.

[bwcolor]

Regarding colors popping. Try shooting with Velvia 50 and printing on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta.

[Roscoe]

Another vote for the Epson Hot Press and Museo Silver Rag.

[kitok]

My new favorite paper is the Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag. This 100% cotton paper has great weight and texture in addition it contains no optical bighteners. The paper has a slightly warm tone and a semi-gloss finish which truly shines with monochrome printing . Try the 10 pack trial size to see if you like it.

[janosh]

I like Museo II (mat) and Ilford Gold Fiber Gloss (semi-gloss, fiber texture). I've recently discovered "Office Depot Professional Photo Paper Mat" ...ultra cheap, very fine if what you want is maximum zip...seems identical to Moab Kayenta. I wouldn't deliver it to a client because Office Depot is more honest than most so doesn't claim "archival."

A reasonably well operated Epson will blow away any Canon in terms of black etc, and it will use a much wider range of paper. For B&W Epson's ABW driver (standard with mid/larger printers) is amazing.

[dof]

Having worked with several papers, I've found that I really like Epson's Hot Press Natural. It comes as a bit of a surprise as I never cared for matte papers throughout 20 odd years of wet printing.

[shadowfox]

Yesterday I hit the jackpot, so to speak.
I saw a weird short ad on Craigslist saying that a guy has a bunch of inkjet papers for sale and he listed a couple of brand names.

Sounds legit to me, so I contacted him, agreed on a price and we met later. Little that I expected that I'd be going home with this:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7037/6917635869_423f4362a6_z.jpg
That's over 300 sheets of large format inkjet with names like Hahnemuhle Lumijet, Harman, Ilford Gallerie, Epson and HP.

But wait, out of his trunk he also produced this: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7199/6917635901_ce648e0543_z.jpg

I blinked, picked up my jaw, pull out my wallet and handed him four twenty dollar bills (more than what we agreed before), told him many thanks, and we chat a bit about printing (he's also a victim of Epson printer's not so clever design of irreplaceable heads).

So I spent some time last night printing one of my pictures on a 310 gsm 8x10 Museum Parchment while learning Canon's way to front-feed heavy papers.

It's sublime.

[sepiareverb]

It's sublime.

And none of it is fogged??

[shadowfox]

And none of it is fogged??

Some of them a bit curled but nothing serious.

Inkjet paper can fog?
Maybe that's why the print came out with a very subtle tonality :D