Cheap Photo paper recommendations?

[tomos]

Can anyone recommend reasonably cheap but reasonable quality photo paper ?
Reasonable blacks, good colour balance, that sort of thing
The photos will remain in an album so light-fastness isnt a very important issue.
Was looking for something quick-drying, min. 240 gr weight, and A4 size. (Printer is a Canon)

I used to get my cheap paper from Conrad (German company) - @ circa 7euro for 25 x A4 pages (http://www1.conrad.de)  but it's gone to the dogs - they've made it adhesive on the back, problem being that the edges are all sticky, pages stick together, printer no like no more . .

BTW &
FWIW, for good quality paper I use
Ilford Pearl Paper (with a Canon printer as said above)

Ilford	pros
Smooth Pearl	Instant Dry
Classic Pearl	Very lightfast (but sensitive to moisture, including handling)

[CWuestefeld]

I don't have a specific suggestion for you, but an admonition.

I've found that it's impossible to say that a particular paper is good (or not) without qualification. That's because the performance is a combination of the paper and the ink. That is, a paper that performs well with one ink may perform poorly with a different ink.

So I recommend that you first buy the smallest package possible for testing purposes. Once you've verified that your paper/ink/printer all like each other, make sure you've got enough of all these things to keep you going. Otherwise you may wind up with extra ink you can't find paper for, or vice versa.

The color balance doesn't need to be a big concern, at least within reasonable values. You can use something like Profile Prism to generate a color profile for the printer/ink/paper that will adjust the curves to approximate a direct color match.

However, you still need to watch for bleeding and puddling on photopaper.

[cranioscopical]

you still need to watch for bleeding and puddling on photopaper.

-CWuestefeld (May 15, 2009, 01:39 PM)

I can attest to that.
My wife doesn't like it at all when an inky snap prompts me to start yelling "Oh no, not another bleeding puddle!"