Reviews |Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Review

Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Review

Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Review
Review

Fotospeed is known for its high-quality papers, and one of the latest additions to the range is Platinum Cotton 305.

Available in a selection of sizes including A4, A3, A3+, A2 and a selection of 15m rolls, it’s aimed at photographers looking for a premium matte finish paper for their prints.

Made from 100% cotton, the Platinum Cotton has a smooth white finish and the 305 highlights it’s 305 gsm weight. The paper is also acid and OBA-free.

 

Being acid and OBA-free makes it an ideal solution for anyone wanting to use the paper for archival prints. It’s also a good option if you’re going to be selling your photo’s and need quality print material that will last and won’t fade.

Being acid-free will hopefully ensure that the paper won’t yellow over the years.

OBA (Optical Brightening Agent) is often applied to photo papers as it brightens the white, this is great in the short term but does fade and yellow over time. It’s absence essentially means that what you see when you first print the picture is the same as it will look in many years to come.

Fotospeed has called on their years of experience to produce this high-quality paper which benefits from the latest coating technology to offer a print surface with a wide colour gamut and capable of rendering sharp detail.

Paper texture and quality

As ever the Fotospeed paper arrives in the typical cardboard box, which helps keep the paper in good condition and enables you to store your prints flat and dust free after you finish the pack.

Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Review

The paper comes sealed within, and once the packaging is stripped away it reveals a well-weighted paper, on the cusp of being a card but not quite!

That weight is of course due to the 305 gsm paper made from 100% cotton and that all helps to reinforce the quality feel before you print.

Although this is a white paper, there is a slight natural cotton warmth to the white, so it’s well worth ensuring that you calibrate your printer for the paper before you start.

As ever Fotospeed offers their free custom ICC profiling service, which takes a few days to complete due to the need to post them test prints, but that wait is well worth it.

Alternatively, you can use a home calibration setup such as the DataColor Spyder5Studio which features monitor and printer calibration.

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Once you’ve created the profile or been sent it, you can get on with the task of printing. Although this is quite a weighty paper, it fed through the Canon i9500 MKII without issue.

Verdict

Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Review

As the paper emerges from the printer, the first thing that you notice is that beautiful matte finish that can only be achieved from high-quality paper.

The overall matt and non-reflective surface promotes the images vibrancy and clarity showing the rich depth of colour and tone within the pictures.

I like a matt finish to paper anyway, as it’s free of reflections and generally reveals all the colour and details that I’d want anyone viewing my images to see.

Looking at the detail and you can see how the photo surface holds the ink well with clear edge definition and no softening, an issue that can often curse art papers.

The slight warm white has little effect on the calibrated image and colour is rich with beautiful tonal graduation throughout the print.

There’s no doubt that the Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 is a superior paper, and as you’d expect it demands a premium price of £31.99 for 25 sheets of A4.

It is then a paper to be used for best, and if you need an archival paper, then this 100% cotton offering is as good as they come and the perfect partner for your best prints.