Review: MOAB Entrada 300 (The Darling of Black and White Photography)

MOAB Entrada 300 makes black and white photos look great.

Printing is still a large part of running the Phoblographer, and MOAB Entrada 300 is a fascinating paper to us in many ways. Most matte papers we test have some sort of texture to them, but MOAB Entrada 300 is an oddity in this way as it is a smooth matte paper. The result is a loss of detail when compared to something like a luster or a glossy print. MOAB Entrada 300 instead has the look of something almost like Red River Palo Duro papers, which are designed to emulate the look of the darkroom. In this case, MOAB Entrada 300 is for a photographer who really liked black and white. More importantly, it’s for the person printing an image who doesn’t know where they want to place it. To that end, it’s excellent for displaying it anywhere in your home.

Tech Specs

Specs are taken from the Adorama listing

Ease of Use

Part of what makes MOAB Entrada 300 so different from every other paper on the market is that it’s made 100% cotton. That’s special as lots of other papers are from either trees or a composite of some sort. This also explains things like the loss of detail we saw. Indeed, one side is slightly coated, and you can both see and feel this. We printed it using Capture One and our trusty Canon Prograf-1000 printer. During the test, we printed images from the Nikon Z7 rendered in black and white and color. We were more smitten with black and white photos. We repeated the test with Canon 5D Mk IV raw files and felt the same way. The MOAB Entrada 300 ends up giving an intriguing painterly look that makes your image look and feel like a true piece of art. In fact, I’d argue it’s almost useless to cover it with glass when framed. Instead, I’d probably add a thin protective finish to it.

Notice how, when you shine a light on it, it gives a bit of a sheen. It’s very light, and the polish adds a little bit of pop. However, the surface and design of the paper mean you’re going to get detail loss. Still, though, that’s not that awful of a problem.

Image Quality

Here’s what we saw when we got really close to MOAB Entrada 300. There’s undoubtedly a detail loss. On our screen, there’s a ton of detail in this scene. But in print, we lost detail.

Here’s a crop of our main photo for this story. Again, we found the same thing to be true. But with black and white, we feel it’s a look that can be embraced.

Conclusions

Do we like MOAB Entrada 300? Yes. It’s an excellent paper for the photographer who needs something affordable and wants to print for a home, and is fantastic for black and white photos. Most folks know nothing about light and, therefore, don’t know how to hang their photos. MOAB Entrada 300 is an affordable alternative to canvas prints that require you to wrap the canvas around a frame. If you’re looking for the extra class provided with a nice wooden frame, then you should go for MOAB Entrada 300. But if you want the extra durability of canvas, well, nothing can beat it.