13 September 2011

Ilford Multigrade Art 300

Since my beginings in the darkroom i’ve never been truly happy with alot of photographic paper on offer, it always seamed far too thin lacking in any texture or feeling and was genreally quite poor quality rag. So the day I found out Ilford where brining out a true 300gsm multigrade paper I ordered a sample soon as possible.

One thing that concened me on first sight of the paper was a thought that a possible lack of sharpness could occur due to the texture surface. So I hunted through a few negatives to find a couple of shots with very fine details and did a couple of test prints which you can see scans of below.

After a few hours of work with the paper I was very impressed with the results, great sharpness and no loss of detail, good tonal range with really deep blacks and a great colour. It handles archival washing well and responds great to Selenium toning, when dry it has a textured matte like surface with a slight eggshell sheen.

This is definitely my paper of choice from now on and would fully recomend even though it has a bit of a hefty price tag its well worth the investment.

Buy it here