Harman Technologies ltd was formed in 2005 by 6 former managers of ILFORD Imaging UK Limited.  The company trades as ILFORD PHOTO for the range of monochrome film, paper, and photo chemistry products and in 2007 announced a range of fine art professional inject papers. 

February 2007 saw the launch of Harman MATT FB Mp, with the warm tone version arriving a month later in March.  These papers have true-photo Baryta base with a silica coating for improved archival permanence. The baryta layer gives the prints greater detail and definition, an extended tonal range and the look and feel of real photographic paper. The specially developed anti-curl system ensures the prints remain flat after printing. 

These papers enjoyed an enthusiastic reaction and wet the appitiete for the future Launch of the Harman FB Gloss AL paper in the July of 2007.  The Harman FB Gloss AL paper has an alumina coating which ensures a high gloss finsh while the nanoporus ink layer makes the print exceptionally sharp.  In Febuary this year Harman lanched the warm tone gloss AL paper to wrap up the current catalogue of papers*

Rhyl Beach - Adox CHS 25 shot with a bronica ETRS + 75mm lens

The big push that Harman (and other makers) of Fibre (Fiber if you’re a yank) based papers is the comparison to silver gelatin prints of old with great DMAX, high archival permanence and wide tonal range.  TBH I have no idea what they were like so can’t compare my prints to them I did however choose to print both digital and film B&W pictures. 

For film I used a bronica ETRS with kodak plus-x 125 and adox CHS 25 film.  All photographs printed on an Epson R2400 with OEM ink.Both the matt and the gloss papers cost the same A4 15 sheets £13, A3 15 sheets £31, A3+ 15 sheets £34 from speedgraphic. 

I’m not going to compare them to other papers since it’s a personal and finacial choice what paper you buy the one thing I will say is that I’ve never had a head strike with the harman FB gloss/matt paper or Innova art fibaprint paper but have with all the other makes

Lynne at Ayr beach kodak plus-x 125

HARMAN FB MATT

Since the matt papers where released first I’ll start with them.  I’ve never really been a fan of gloss paper for my B&W prints and a lot of matt papers don’t really cut the mustard with colour so when Harman released their matt FB papers I could not wait to get printing. 

The paper is very smooth and for the normal matt is very white while the warm tone is off white but not overly yellow.  The surface of the paper is prone to scuffs and once printed on can scratch easily so its best to be careful.  On the Harman matt FB, the prints are wonderfully neutral and bright with the warm tone FB paper giving a slight but not intrusive warmth. 

I find that while the highlights to mid tones are pleseant the very dark blacks are not resolved very well with the tonal range for deep blacks being a bit muggy.  If you wanted to print a photograph in which had a lot of shadow detail I’d not use the Harman matt FB paper but thats the only downside. 

Printing photographs which less shadow detail produces wonderful prints in B&W so its just a case of choosing the right paper for the job.

 Sarah by torchlight

The Harman matt FB is capable of producing wonderful skin tones both in both warm and faithful tones with colour saturation that punches way above other matt papers I’ve used.  The colours blends into one and other very smoothly and the prints are very sharp for a matt print. 

The colour prints have the same  deep black resolution grade (not unsurprising) but its really only noticable up close and to the untrained eye e.g the general public would not notice it.  I never printed colour images on the warm tone matt as I have found in the past there are not to my taste. 

Like most if not all matt paper prints the images don’t jump out at you like gloss does but put behind glass the matt prints show their worth and I have no hesitation in using this paper for my own wall

HARMAN GLOSS FB AL

You may ask yourself why spend the extra money on the Harman gloss over bog standard photo gloss, when the asnwer is pretty simple - Prints on the Harman gloss FB AL look much better.  The Harman gloss FB AL  has a much nicer surface which gloss, semigloss or luster can’t produce and the Haramn  gloss FB AL has better archival permanence.

Prints made on the harman gloss FB do not shout shiny, like standard gloss paper, which I prefer as you get a nice sheen to the print but you are not over powered by the glossyness.  The lack of this is big gloss effect is most noticable in viewing pritners under unfavorable light conditions as the refection is greatly reduced although not totally lacking.

Civic VTi shot for F&M 2007

The Harman gloss FB is not held back in the deep black department clealy resolving a larger dmax in the darks compared to the matt FB paper.  The standard Haramn gloss produces nice neutral prints of B&W while retaining good colour rendition for colour.  B&W prints are a joy to view on this paper and colour prints just scream out “look at me”. 

The warm tone gloss FB is not a paper I would use for portraits, the warmth I found is sigificantly higher than that of the matt FB version and is too warm for my tastes however printing out some of my landscapes I was drawn to the warm tone prints over the standard gloss. 

 The prints had a certain creamyness that was hard to take your eyes off, the prints just seemed to work so much better on the warm tone gloss than they did on the neutral Harman FB gloss.

CONCLUSIONS

The harman papers have very little to fault with both the Gloss and the Matt papers able to offer me somthing for the type of photography I do.   I would more than likely use the matt papers not the gloss f I was putting behind glass in the home, for a naked print I would use the gloss paper. 

If I am showing someone my automotive portfolio, the colour and look of the harman gloss has everything you could want in that situation.  Its difficult to advise what paper to use since its all down to personal taste but for mine and my clients photographs they will be printed using the Harman photo range of fibre based papers since IMHO nothing comes close to the look I see. 

Printing onthe warm tone gloss with the ICC profile over the Epson EBW yeilds a lighter warmer toned print which is more pleasing to the eye IMO.

*ps a little birdy tells me that harman are working on a luster type version too which I expect we will see in standard and warm tone types.  I’ve only seen one other fibre based luster paper and thats from fotospeed but thats an unglazed paper which is unlike the surface you see with Harman (fotospeed EG PLATINUM Gloss V FB AI Gloss)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Paper review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.