Photo Paper News

Kodak Alaris recently announced the winners of the annual KODAK Gallery Elite Award, which honors photographers who are members of Professional Photographers of America (PPA) that have used KODAK PROFESSIONAL Photographic Paper to perfect their art. This is the the 29th anniversary of the award, a culmination of annual state and district awards held throughout the US in conjunction with the PPA print competitions. Kodak Alaris will showcase the four winning images in its booth (#726) at Imaging USA (I-USA)—the annual PPA conference and trade show, Feb. 1-3, 2015.

Moab’s Juniper Baryta Rag 305 is a double-weight, 100% cotton inkjet paper with a “true baryta base,” which refers build-wise to the inclusion of barium sulfate in the mix but aesthetics-wise to having the look and feel of traditional silver-based darkroom printing papers. While that descriptive reference might be more poetic than experiential for many folks these days, it is a good thing. Its weight, richness and tonal depth separate it from many RC-type inkjet papers, plus it has one more laudable characteristic: lack of OBAs (optical brightening agents), those brighteners used in many papers that help give them a stark, cold white base coat.

Our show report this year is an amalgam of product news and trend spotting, which pretty much reflects what photokina has stood for in our minds. The sense of a United Nations of photography still prevails at this increasingly European-directed show, but the image and its uses is still the universal tie that binds.

In our recent photokina reports (January, 2011, issue) we covered products and trends at the show. Here’s a brief follow-up on some film and paper processing items and information on friends old and new, present and gone.

In our photokina reports we mentioned Kodak’s new film, of course, and Harman’s Direct Positive paper, and...

As would be anticipated in this ever more dominant digital world, there were very few new offerings from silver-based film and paper firms, and even less for the conventional darkroom. Here are the few items I did locate:

Fuji has the new Fujicolor Crystal Archive Preferred color reversal RA-4 process paper that's said to offer vivid color reproduction, brilliant...

There are a couple of new printers aimed at the event photographer market, and there are plenty of media options as well for snapshot to fine art printers. And, the photo book industry is taking off—there were more book printing options available than ever before, both for the portrait/wedding photographer with companies like Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, and Lucidiom all having offerings in both...