I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with any of Hahnemuhle's paper when printing? Specifically, I'm looking for any comments on the Fine Art Pearl (285 gsm) and the Photo Rag Bright White (310 gsm) papers specific to black and white printing as well as more contrasting color printing (The Most Important Thing... for example).

At $2.25 a sheet I'd like to get it right the first time, so any help/comments would be greatly appreciated!

looks and feels great but when I tried to use the photo rag on an epson printer last year it proved problematic to say the least. printer struggled to feed the thick sheets through effectively and print quality was patchy unless you set the printer to maximum quality settings - this resulted in a heavy ink coating though that warped the paper slightly and you had to leave it to cure for quite a long time.

just out of curiosity what kind of Epson did you print on? Just wondering if my R800 can actually handle the Hahnemuhle papers. The salesman at The Camera Store said it would take the paper no problem, but I can't find icc profiles for my printer. :S

yes - i tried it both on an R800 and later on a 2400. i ended up using the epson profile for somerset velvet paper - that seamed to work best.

Did you find R800 icc profiles by chance?

So, I tried printing a black and white shot on the Fine Art Pearl using the icc profile for the R1800 (closest that I could find to my R800, uses same inks and has same droplet size). The print looks pretty good, but there's one thing about it. It isn't really truely B&W anymore, when printed on the fine art pearl it has slight sepia tones to it.

Is this due to the paper or perhaps the icc profile not being matched to my printer. When I printed it I set the media type to Premium Semi-Gloss Photo Paper (as directed my Hahnemuhle), then used the photorag icc profile.

Any thoughts?

Ahh, you know what it was? I didn't even realize it when I printed the first time. I used the Photo Rag icc profile not the FineArt Pearl. Oops!

Switched to the right profile and reprinted and it looks amazing! I really like the FineArt Pearl alot! Just for fun I printed a copy of the same B&W photo on some Epson Premium Luster, to compare. The Epson print has a bluer tone/feel to it. Whereas the FineArt Pearl has a more monochromatic "truer" B&W look.

As far as the feed, it fed through great on my R800, which has the traditional style feed (it doesn't have a straight through like the R1800). The FineArt Pearl is a 285 gsm weight and it handled it with no problems at all. I'll have to give the heavier weight (308 and 310 gsm) photo rags a try to see how they feed.

All in all the Hahnemuhle paper looks really good and the icc profiles for the Epson R1800 work well for the R800 (all ya gotta do is use the right one on the right paper! ;) ).

http://www.hahnemuehle.com/site/en/472/epson.html If you need here is the link to the icc profiles from Hahnemuhle for R series Epson printers. I have the R1800,awsome printer.

Thanks for the link, but they don't have R800 profiles there. However, I have found out, by experiment, that the R1800 profiles work for the R800.