The Paper Shuffle - Part Three - The Smooth German Connection

 

Hahnemühle are historic papermakers from Dassel in Lower Saxony. With a lot of small creeks ( " bachs " ) running through the place and forests nearby, it has proved to be a good location to make woodpulp and paper - they've apparently been doing it since 1584.

Currently there is a wide selection of papers that have been turned to the inkjet printing application from the company. Camera Electronic have had them for years and supplied some very special surfaces in large flat sheets. As well, there are rolls avaiable for the larger inkjet printers.

The Hahnemühle sample books have always been amazing things - exotic surfaces and extremely well-printed images that make you jealous. As well, they produuce a number of sampler packs to let people assess the things for themselves...but therein lies a problem. What are you supposed to be looking for and how will you know it when you see it?

Add to this the artistic question of what image suits which paper and you have a pretty wide field of speculation. I'll admit to buying a pack of Hahnemühle paper a few years ago based upon the name of it and a mistaken assessment of my own printing skills...and disappointing myself. But the story did have a happy ending - I eventually found which of my images would suit the surface and got the last 5 sheets of the packet to print perfectly.

Well, here's the smooth surfaces under the examining lens. Remember that these are all matt and will need the matt ink option - plus they will not quite get to the black of a gloss surface. But they are stylish and marvellously sturdy - a print on the 308 surface has a really impressive feel.

See the lay of the Rice Paper?

The 220gsm and less emphasised texture of this Photo Rag Book & Album means that you will be able to pack more pictures into the album and any text printeed with the image will be easy to read.

Bamboo. It is not necessarily a surface dedicated to Asian images...but the classic look of misty mountains and clouds would be well-suited to this broken surface. The disruption of it would probably suit rural images with natural shapes better than urban ones with man-made straight lines.

Ah, here we go for that technical image. The Photo Rag Ultra Smooth is 305 gsm but does not raise as many irregularities on the surface and would not disrupt fine detail.

The classic Hahnemühle fine art paper, Photo Rag 308 is often seen with the big roll printers. It supports some of the best landscape art in this state as well as commercial portraiture. See how it breaks the light just that little bit more than the Ultra Smooth?

Disregard what your screen or my camera shot might say - this is a noticeably whiter paper than the 308, as wll as picking up a little more weight; 310gsm.

I cannot say what this Daguerre Canvas looks like with an image because I have been told that my printer will not print canvas. I've been told a lot of things in the past few years but gone right ahead and done them anyway. I'll tel you what happens on a future post...

And that is the idea of these sample packs.They're A4 with two sheets of each surface in the parcel at a bargain price. You could do far worse than just getting a pack, going over your pictures for suitable art, and putting them through your printer. Hahnemühle have the profiles on-line, and they will be necessary, but that is easily done.

The Canon Lab - A You Tube Entertainment - Part One

I recently asked for some information from a number of different sources - amongst them were manufacturer's representatives, wholesale representatives, and industry leaders. In most cases I was treated very well, and have been given promises of insights into what is here in our shop and what might be coming.

Oh, no industry secrets - nothing like that. I would not recognise them if I saw them and really would not know what to do with them. I asked for current details and that is what I am getting - and I am loving what I see.

In the case of Canon Australia I have been directed to some of their productions on YouTube - in particular a series of short videos under the overall title of " The Lab ". I've watched four so far and have really found them interesting...and in one case got hopping mad.

Let's start you out by dialing up youtube.com and asking for The Lab: Blank under the Canon Australia banner.

They set out the premise that 6 photographers will use Canon equipment in a bare infinity scoop studio setting with fixed lighting but be given no subject, model, props, or help. No selfies allowed. They just have to construct visual bricks without straw and they have to gather their own clay...and we all know who used that as a business model...

Well, they study the place and then start to photograph their wristwatches, shadows, clothing, etc in an effort to find something of interest. One dude shucks himself down to his underwear and throws the rest of his clothes in the air while shooting it.  The crew doing the video and the Canon executive who was authorising the thing may have had a nervous moment there, but in the end they all got some sort of results - proving that you don't need lots of props to make a picture.

And haven't we all done something similar when it has been either 45º outside or we have finally realised that we have no friends...and are forced to make art out of the contents of the kitchen drawers. I cannot remember anyone I know becoming a superstar icon mentor ambassador on the results, but there is always the thought that if Irving Penn could sell platinum prints of cigarette butts, we should be able to get something for JPEGs of juicers...

Okay.

The next one I watched involved 6 photographers being told that they were going to be briefed by a client about a picture they wanted and they were to provide it. The video is entitled The Lab: Imagination. The clients turned out to be small children. And the photographers were given no help in their interviews...they had to elicit the information they needed from the child's imagination.

They then went out for a week and tried to make scenes that matched what had been described...and when these were revealed to the kids they apparently thought that it had been very well done. Both clients and shooters seem to have been able to exercise enough imagination to succeed.

Okay - in my cynical experience, a client's ideas are wonderful in about the same proportion that a stick grenade is wonderful. It fizzes for about five seconds and then becomes a painful experience.

The photographers in the video presumably did not have the kids hanging over them in the studio for a week telling them what to do, nor did they bring in other advisers to stir the pot - the shooters could go out there and do the biz. They also did not have the kid's accountants hanging over the invoice and vetoing expensive things. And they did not have to make a profit.

Art was served, and the photographers did get to show that they could react well, communicate well, and eventually produce well, but there were a number of real-world factors in there that were thankfully glossed over.

Next post: Two clever Canon videos - one of them honest...

The Frame Up Job

At the risk of sounding like a Me-Too blogger, I wish to draw attention to a course being run by the Shoot Workshops next door. It is a workshop on Picture Framing and will be run by Aaron McPolin on Sunday, the 4th of September - not that far into the future.

The workshop costs $139, but this is the sort of thing that just does not come along every day. In fact, I would be prepared to say that in Perth this does not come along ANY day. It is the chance of a lifetime for some of us.

We all make files. We all make images. Some of us make pictures. Few of us make pictures that hang on walls. And damned few of us make pictures that deserve to hang on the walls.

Part of this is the files, part of it is the images. After that a great deal of it is the aesthetic that either supports or condemns the image. Here is where Aaron may be able to offer the insight to help us improve our pictures.

The blurb for the workshop speaks of colour theory, printing for longevity, placement, glazing, and matting. Also lighting, placement, exhibition design, and pricing. Even if you are not trying for " Family Of Man " and would settle for the relatives spread out over the lounge room wall in reasonable order, this workshop is going to help.

I freely admit to not being an artist, and have had this firmly attested to by Perth Artists on Facebook, but I think that this sort of thing will help me to improve my taste and present my work better. I have an ambition to be rejected by a better class of gallery than Facebook, and this may help.

Studio 281
281 Guildford Road, Maylands
Sunday, 4th of September
10AM - 4PM

Contact Shannon at Shoot Photography Workshops to make a booking:

T. 08 9228 8232
E. shannon@shootworkshops.com.au
W. www.shootworkshops.com.au

A Year Later - The Cold Wash Up For The New Lens - And It's A Hot One

About a year ago I posted a column about the Fujifilm 27mm EX 2.8 mm lens I had just bought. I speculated that it would be a useful addition to the menagerie of glass I keep. I didn't know the half of it.

For the last 40 years we've been accustomed to thinking of standard prime lenses as wide-aperture affairs. Ever since the 50's we have clapped lenses onto our cameras with maximum apertures of f:2...f:1.8...f:1.4...f:1.2... If not a national obsession exactly, it has been the expected norm for a lot of natural-light shooting. People make careers of portraiture at maximum aperture - particularly if their clients are older, richer, wrinklier, or have hairy ears. You can hide a multitude of sins in back of a shallow depth of field...

Yet...every camera maker worth their multicoating has always had a standard length lens that has a smaller aperture - frequently combining this with some other useful feature like compact size or collapsibility. It has also usually cost less than the low-light lens. And frequently had better peripheral resolution. The only disadvantage for most of the film era was the fact that it had less bragging power than the f:1.4 version...

But it could be superb. I took years of tourist shots and weddings with the 50mm f:2.8 collapsible Elmar on the M2 Leica - and a lot of working shooters did too. It was the photographic equivalent of a .303 SMLE...and quieter.

Well, the 27mm Fujinon lens is in the same class. Small - look at the profile picture of the lens:

Simple. Only one ring turns - the manual focus ring. Lightweight. Fast. Precise. And of a focal length that can be turned to most tasks in street, social, or studio photography on the appropriate Fujifilm X series camera.

I use mine to take studio portraits:

I also haunt Camera Electronic beer-and-new-camera nights to gather reportage pictures:

It records all the little details of modelling projects:

And cars at shows:

It goes on holiday to the art galleries:

And sometimes it has adventures that it doesn't even tell me about:

I shall leave speculation on the last picture to the viewers - I know I am puzzled - but I would point out the interesting detail in the next-to-last one...the gentleman capturing the picture of the lady is using a mobile phone while a perfectly good Canon DSLR is hanging from his left shoulder.

Sigh...