There's another new candidate for those looking for the look of traditional silver air-dried, glossy, fibre prints. It's DaVinci Fibre Gloss from ChauDigital. They're the London pro print firm that printed for Bob Carlos Clarke before his recent sad death, and they were aiming for a K3 inkjet paper that was suitable for their famous B&W look, and if you've seen the work of Bob Carlos Clarke you'll know instantly what that is. You can get the paper from
www.paperandinks.com and there's an introductory profiling offer, I believe there's also a US distributor.
The special claim is triple coating (it certainly dries quickly) and a look targetted to resemble traditional darkroom papers in both texture and image quality. IMO they've got the texture absolutely right, with that sumptuous sheen and nuanced rippling that's the signature of air dried glossy paper. But the image quality is just something else. Dark, dark blacks with echoes of tonal transitions welling up from even the deepest shadows, and gossamer highlights that again hold the brightest, cleanest details I've ever seen.
I tested the paper with some B&W shots of a car headlight set against black body work. The results are mesmerising.
I've been transitioning from film to digital since the Nikon D1x, but now with a P25, an Epson R2400, and these latest papers, it really is time to move on exclusively to digital.