Last year, Ilford Photo (Harman Technologies, the management group that bought the Ilford B&W product lines) announced two traditional silver-based enlarging papers (RC and fiber-base) that are optimized for printing digital files, and designed for exposure in tri-color laser systems like the Lambda printers. These papers, obviously, are aimed at the large printing shops that cater to the digital market (or both digital and traditional), as the Lambda machines cost about a half a $mil.

Yesterday, Bob Carnie, a member here and one of the owner/operators of Elevator, a digital and traditional printing lab in Toronto, dropped by my place on his way to the Silver Conference in the L.A. area. He brought with him a sampling of prints that he'll exhibit at the Silver Conference. These included a number of traditional enlargements from film, mostly on fiber-based Ilford Warm Tone paper, and a dozen or so prints on the new Ilford B&W fiber paper for digital exposure.

The prints on the new Ilford digital paper were very impressive - as good as those on regular Ilford paper. And, because it's real silver paper processed in the usual archival manner, these prints would likely satisfy any gallery or museum requirements for conventional fiber-base prints.

Naturally, the size/resolution of the digital file (either direct digital capture or film scan) affects the image quality and optimal print size, but (IMHO) the Ilford prints are lovely.

The Ilford data sheet for the fiber-base paper can be found at: http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/...0142744587.pdf