I am very happy to say that after absorbing all the ins and outs of your experiences with different printers, after reading articles and tests by Michael and others throughout the Internet, after thinking and deliberating, today I ordered a brand new (of course) 24” HP Z3200. YEH!
It will be delivered next Wednesday, day after tomorrow. Tuesday will be a very long, dull day… This hardware supplier however, does not sell paper, is there someone who can advise me WHAT paper to start with, and WHERE to order it in Holland / Europe? For B&W I would like to come as close as possible to the baryta prints I used to print in my darkroom on Ilford; for color I can only say that I like the not-so-glossy, but also not-too-matte surface of some prints I have seen, without asking what paper it was. It must be satin something. Jim Cole wrote me about Brilliance Chromata White canvas, brand Breathing Color. I like to try it, but is it available around me? I will call HP to find out how they sell their papers.
I would like to thank you all very much for sharing your ideas with me and, as I’ve said before, I might come again to you with a lot of questions being a novice in this realm of fine art printing.
I am open for any suggestions on paper, How To Start With Your New Printer, and other advise.
Thanks again,
Bas.

Hi Bas,

Congrats! and many pleasant square meters of printing :-)

Papers: this is my personal and (maybe not so) humble opinion: I tried 3 of the inkjet baryta papers that are easy to lay hands on here in the NL (Ilford, Harman and Hahnemuhle). None of these three comes close to the real deal of airdried fiber (agfa, ilford, forte). Surfaces of the Hanhnemuhle and Ilford have a coarse structure and the Harman is more like a glazed surface. The harman is also very suspectable to damage of the surface. Also from tonal response the papers don't stand out to the more standard run of the mill papers. Don't get me wrong: these are nice papers in their own right for those who like it. My take on it was that it didn't justify the extra costs. I'm currently happely printing away on Ilford Smooth Pearl and awaiting the delivery of Innova's Fibuprint bright white matt.

My personal take on this subject is: Inkjet is not silverhalide printing, it's a different technologie, attempts to let inkjet output look similar to silver prints is as unlogical as to try to let a silver print to look like a cyano-blue print.

www.kamera-express.nl
www.foto-konijnenburg.nl
www.arca-nl.nl
www.inktjetwinkel.nl (Shop in A'dam, affiliated to Scolor)
www.inktwereld.nl aka www.inkttoppers.nl

Cheers,

Huib

Bas,

HP papers are a good start. The coating is generally optimized for the Vivera inkset and that reduces the number of variables when you're learning how to print.

My favorites are:
- HP Hahnemuhle Smooth Fine Art (excellent matte)
- HP Professional Satin (excellent satin)
- HP Premium Instant-Dry Satin (nice finish with GE, modestly priced although not for gallery work)
- HP Professional High-Gloss Contract Proofing Paper (great colors, inexpensive, thin - I use it for posters)
- HP Matte Litho-Realistic (a nice, heavy weight matte with good color)

I'm also looking forward to trying the new HP Baryte Satin Art Paper when its available.

There are, of course, a lot of non-HP papers which work well with the Z.

Huib, I was sureI had answerd your kind words, but it seems that it didn't came through.
I also missed the www.addresses, some wellknown (kamera express, konijnenberg), others new, did you re-edit your first post?

Anyway, thanks again, and I offered in my disappeared answer to send you some cuts of the roll of HP Baryte Satin Art paper I might receive day after tomorrow. Can you handle that in your Canon?

All the best,
Bas

Thank you Ron, I copied and printed on paper your choise / advise; do you order all of these by the roll or can I start with a pack of sheets? I might be happy with only two or three of your suggestions, like the 1st, 2nd and 4th but I like to try them all.

Bas

Bas,

I would look at the kind of material you find yourself working with the most. You don't want to find yourself with large stock of rolls that you won't be using.

Sure, I will try to get sheets, or proof packs, but I've got something to begin with now. Wish someone good send me some leftovers. Do you know of shops send demo material, even printed, to get an idea of the paper surface, weight, feel, etc?

Bas

Bas,

The editing I did was adding the URL's of a few companies where you can mailorder paper, but please do check prices and shipping costs as they vary per shop. I did find that www.inktwereld.nl had the best price for the innova papers.

I see no reason why I would not be able to feed HP paper through my Canon :-) but you don't need me to send some paper, although the offer it's appreciated.

www.inkjetwinkel. nl with an outlet in the city center of A'dam has some samplers on offer (Harman, Hahnemuhle) maybe worthwhile to pay them a visit.

Cheers,

Huib

Thanks again Huib, I'll go!

Bas,

My tactic was to order sample prints from HP on several of the papers to see if I liked the paper or not. I ordered rolls but that was because I'd seen samples from HP or prints others had done on the paper and knew I'd be happy. My only speculative rolls have been the litho-realistic and high-gloss contract proofing papers and they've performed per recommendations.

Getting sheets is a good idea but make sure you order a size that the printer calibration can be run on.

For B&W I prefer HP ID Satin, outstanding results. Also LOVE HP Litho matte.

Thank you gents (I presume), I‘ll try to order some packs of sheets and make my choice after profiling / test printing / examining the results.
BTW you all look confident with the brand papers. No third party enthusiasm? Quality? Price? Availability?

Bas

Bas,

I am about 3 weeks behind you on ordering. I am spending a bit of time setting up a business as well as my side work in pictures. I like the HP vast array of paper offerings. There are probably 40 different choices of professional paper and HP delivers quickly here in the USA.

Paper choice is really a matter of personal taste; everyone looks at it a bit differently. For my Z3100 I like HP professional satin for its very nice surface and deep D-max; it yields a great 'straight' print without adding to or detracting from the image. But for more interpretive work I love Hahnemüle's papers. Photo rag satin is a unique paper that really works well on the Z3100; subtle variations in surface sheen especially in the 3/4 tones & shadows, wonderful hand feel, and a very nice fine art texture. Photo rag pearl has a somewhat glossier surface with a deeper D-max, and uses no OBA's; color photos look great on it. Finally Crane silver rag gives incredibly deep blacks and lovely tonality for warm-toned black & white images.
Some folks rave about Harman FB AL; it does give very deep blacks, but I find the base color a little cold, and its super glossy surface doesn't quite work with my photos.
I presume the Z3200 will be very similar, with better reds.

As others have indicated, it's worth getting a sample pack for a first look at a paper. But I find I really need to run through about 20 sheets of 13x19" paper to really get a sense of what it can do; the first two sheets to calibrate and profile the paper on the Z, then the rest to see how different images 'work' with the paper. This is obviously a bit costly and time consuming, so when I find a paper that really sings I stick with it unless something really tempting comes along.

What else can I do then fully agree?!

The reason for my interest in how you Geoff, and all the others out there came to their choices, is that it helps me to eliminate many of the hundreds of papers available and concentrate on the ones all or many of you found interesting enough to get enthusiastic about. Maybe I will miss one or two, but I'm not even started so, I'll get my pick. Again, I'm thankful for all the information and without this forum, which I follow a year now, I might have not even tried to do my own fine art printing.

Bas

I like the HP ID Satin for B&W because the prints are indistinguishable from prints made on my old school darkroom prints on Ilford MG IV. And it is very simple to dial in a little warmth and you have a print that looks like Ilford MG Warmtone, and these 2 Ilford papers were came to be my standards over the last 18 years. It's also a very affordable paper. I haven't played with many other papers because frankly, HP Satin achieved the look of my darkroom prints (actually surpassed them) and the z3100 was the first printer I have ever used or seen that could match the look of prints I achieved in the darkroom.

I have used some third party matte papers from Innova and Hahnemule, but both I and my customers overwhelmingly prefer the HP Litho matte paper.

I do occasionally print on a "watercolor" Innova paper (can't remember the exact name right now) and HP matte for simple projects. Also have made art repro prints on HP Art Canvas and I and my clientele found the HP product to be preferable than 3rd party canvas samples I tried from Breathing Color.

This was one of my first question: give me back my Ilford baryta papers, thank you Roscolo (Ross?)! I spend only 10 years in the darkroom but after quitting the plastic shit, of which Agfa had the best, I ended with the same Ilford papers. I expect that even the "color" of selenium toning is easy to dial in right?

The odd thing is that HP, being the only manufacturer of the three with a build-in spectro, has more clients for whom the HP papers are enough, and thus with less need for profiling (HP includes the canned profiles at the website) then the others.

Bas

T H E
M O N S T E R
A R R I V E D,

it is not a box, it's an institute.

Yes, the packaging of these kind of printers is everything but a shrink wrap now you know were you money partially went to the guy from DHL that delivered my printer was a bit confused: he asked twice if I really had ordered such a big pallet, "something like that I never drop of at private adresses." he said, he was clearly puzzled.

I hope you didn't develop, as i did, a severe headache of reading all documentation in fear of missing someting that could ruin the printer while unpacking, installing and turning the power on......

Huib
www.huibsmeets.com

Bas,

Don't forget to share photos!

The spectro is the difference between "sorta kinda close" and "spot on." And the spectro gives you the ability to recreate profiles to adjust to subtle changes to the printheads, inks, media, etc. over time if those things occur.