Best Practices, Making Silver Prints from Digital Files

[Frank Petronio]

Perhaps some of you xpurts could explain some of the options and price levels for getting decent film negatives and darkroom prints out of our digital files?

I'm mainly concerned with home darkroom options rather than sending out, like what is affordable and reasonably possible for a black and white worker?

Are those old Polaroid film recorders usable? Is there something good that isn't desk size and impossible to fix/replace?

I haven't done this since the old LVT days in the mid-1990s when ignorant ad clients would pay $$$ to have my digital files output so they could be rescanned by the printer, lol, those were the stupid days....

Does any lab even have a working LVT anymore?

[Oren Grad]

Does any lab even have a working LVT anymore?

http://www.albumenworks.com/digital_services/archival.html

[Peter De Smidt]

Many of the Epson pigment printers can be used to good effect.

You can use Epson's ink and something like Mark Nelson's system. See: http://www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com/

Alternatively, you can use Quad-toned rip. See: http://www.ronreeder.com/ If you're using the OEM inks, the first options gives slightly smoother results. If you're willing to make an inkset just for this, then Jone Cone has an inkset available, or you could use multiple dilutions of a very smooth printing ink, such as Epson's, HP's, or Canon's green pigment ink. If you do the latter, something like Epson's 1400 might be ideal, as it has a very small droplet size.

Sandy King has done a lot of work in this area, although mainly for carbon transfer printing. I'm sure he'll have some good suggestions.

[Bill Burk]

Would your needs be met by inkjet to a translucent/transparent media for contact printing?

[davehyams]

What sort of equipment do you have?? There are a bunch of different ways to tackle the digital negative thing, and there are pros and cons with most of the "systems." QTR will only work on select epson printers, so if you are canon or HP you won't have that as an option. PDN works quite well, as does the new HP profiles, but if its only a few prints you may want to look into these guys

http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com

I have seen their prints and they are awesome, I feel it would be hard to match their quality on a home ink jet printer.

If you do want to do the whole digi neg thing, it has been discussed in great depth over on dpug.com, lots of knowledge over there and many people applying it to silver prints.

d

[sanking]

If you want the best possible digital negatives for printing on silver papers I would suggest albumen works, or Bob Carnie at Digital Elevator. Both are outputting to continuos tone film.

If you want to make the negatives yourself I believe you will get the best results by adapting one of the epson printers to all gray shades and then create a profile to drive the ink set. Depending on the density range you need it may be necessary to adjust the ink set by diluting one or more of the shades to give greater or less transmission density for your process.

Most people who have seen my large carbon prints made from digital negatives (QTR and Epson 3800 with the K3 ink set installed have found them very smooth and sharp. But I am not one to be easily satisfied with print quality so over the past several months I have been working to create a profile with the Epson 7600 and the Cone K7 Piezgraphy selenium set. This has given me results about the same as I get with the 3800 and the K3 set, in large measure because the Cone set can effectively only use three of the seven inks in the set for the UV density range I need for my process. This has led me to create an alternative set with the Cone inks, in which I have diluted the strong inks with weaker inks and the weaker inks with strong inks. The problem with the Cone K7 set for printing with alternative processes that require a very high density range negatives, is that the UV densities of seven (or eight) inks vary tremendously. This seems to work fine for printing on paper, but for the smoothest possible print tones, I expect it is necessary to have the inks fill in the holes around each other's dots as much as possible. This means that all of the inks should be fairly close in blocking UV power. So far, and I have no completed the work, I have managed to get much greater smoothness by adjusting the strength of the inks so that now all seven are being used in the profile, in contrast to the limit of three inks when using the original inks.

My impression is that picoliter size is important, but not nearly so important as having the inks mix in such a way that their UV densities differences are minimal.

Sandy

[Oren Grad]

But does anyone have an answer to Frank's question about whether it's practical to set up an LVT recorder at home?

[bob carnie]

Here is a solarization wet contact print made from a digital negative off our Epson7800
printer.

Film neg, scan, pictorio negative, contact exposure, solarization chemicals.
Russell Monk Photographer

[sanking]

Here is a solarization wet contact print made from a digital negative off our Epson7800
printer.

Film neg, scan, pictorio negative, contact exposure, solarization chemicals.
Russell Monk Photographer

Bob,

Interesting image for sure. But do you really consider this print an example of best practice in making silver prints from digital files?

Sandy King

[bob carnie]

Hi Sandy

I was going to add that I would only use this technique for solorizations or lith prints,where the mandate is not a perfect print but rather more of and abstract and not fine silver as I can print directly on silver using the lambda for that purpose.
I may try the same test with the silver film coming off my lambda and see if I can match direct prints.

I see this as a fun way to make images, as some of the digi negs I have made are from digital capture and the ability to make lith or solarized prints is appealing to some of our young artists who have never shot film and probably never will.
I am doing a workshop this fall on this very concept .

Hope your trip out west was great,

Bob

Bob,

Interesting image for sure. But do you really consider this print an example of best practice in making silver prints from digital files?

Sandy King

[Frank Petronio]

I was coming at this from the idea of having digitally output 4x5 film negatives for enlarger printing, I'm not looking for contact printing or alt processes...

But I am not tuned into what people have been doing with large contact prints from large inkjet-printed negatives. Is it possible to do a smooth, rich image that is comparable to a well-exposed and printed "straight out of the camera" film negative?

I don't want to "show" that these are digitally manipulated, I would rather people see them as good quality traditional silver prints from conventionally shot 4x5 film negatives. I know that's a lie, but one I want to perpetrate ;-)

[Michael Rosenberg]

Sandy,

I get the impression from your post that you have not seen a good silver gelatin print made from a desktop negative? Other than the one done by Ron Reeder on Lodima Fine Art paper a couple of years ago??

Mike

[sanking]

Hope your trip out west was great,

Bob

Hi Bob,

Trip out west to Gabriola Island and Vancouver was great. Did some work on the beaches of Gabriola. What diversity you get on western beaches, a much richer tapestry than we typically see on the beaches in the eastern/southern US.

Weather out there was to die for, highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s.

And best of all, all plane rides without the terror of my recent return to the US from Toronto!!

Sandy

[sanking]

Sandy,

I get the impression from your post that you have not seen a good silver gelatin print made from a desktop negative? Other than the one done by Ron Reeder on Lodima Fine Art paper a couple of years ago??

Mike

Mike,

I had pretty much forgotten about the test Ron and I made on silver (BTW, it was VC, not Lodima). In fact, I have have seen some excellent prints on silver from digital negatives, and made a few myself on AZO with a profile I created. But they had the look of 16X20 prints enlarged from 4X5 Tri-X negatives, not contact prints. In short, the smoothness on AZO was not comparable to what I would expect from a contact print made with a fine grain continuous tone film on silver paper.

On the other hand, I am able to get that type of quality, or very close to it, with my carbon printing with digital negatives.

Sandy

[D. Bryant]

I was coming at this from the idea of having digitally output 4x5 film negatives for enlarger printing, I'm not looking for contact printing or alt processes...

But I am not tuned into what people have been doing with large contact prints from large inkjet-printed negatives. Is it possible to do a smooth, rich image that is comparable to a well-exposed and printed "straight out of the camera" film negative?

I don't want to "show" that these are digitally manipulated, I would rather people see them as good quality traditional silver prints from conventionally shot 4x5 film negatives. I know that's a lie, but one I want to perpetrate ;-)
Well Frank,

I would strongly recommend Digital Silver Imaging for having B&W prints made from digital files. I previewed some of the samples at the SPE Spring National Convention last March.

It changed my attitude about making silver gelatin prints from digital files. The offer RC or fiber based paper made by Ilford and file uploads are done with ROES which supports MACS & PCs. Their service is not inexpensive but when you calculate what you will spend making ink jet negatives for silver gelatin and the comparative quality differences the service is worth the money for portfolio prints and client work.

http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com

You can request toning in selenium but personally I would probably tone prints myself.

Good luck,

Don Bryant

[PViapiano]

Ron Reeder used to have a QTR profile for printing on Ilford paper up on his website. It was excellent for getting in the ballpark and for tweaking to get even better results. I made several contact prints from OHP to fiber paper that were outstanding, depending on the subject matter.

Linda Butler has used LVT negs for much of her fantastic work, ie, her Italy and China books. The negs were then used in an enlarger and printed traditionally.

[bob carnie]

Frank - send me a file on my ftp, I am making enlarged negs this week, I will make you a 16x20 at the friends price *Zero* then you can see for yourself.

Like Digital Silver Negatives I can make prints on fibre from digital files, but as well am making silver negatives for contact printing.
I do not think an LVT negative put in an enlarger will give you the quality you are looking for, as the enlargement process would break apart, I am hopeful someone here could prove me wrong.
But I do think a contact print off one of my Lambda silver*not injet* negative will give you a wonderful full range print.
I am willing to try make it if you are game.
This week Frank, as I am only doing this type of work once and awhile.
I see this as making a monster enlarged interneg so don't worry about being called a liar, this process comes honestly from my photographic trial and error history.



I was coming at this from the idea of having digitally output 4x5 film negatives for enlarger printing, I'm not looking for contact printing or alt processes...

But I am not tuned into what people have been doing with large contact prints from large inkjet-printed negatives. Is it possible to do a smooth, rich image that is comparable to a well-exposed and printed "straight out of the camera" film negative?

I don't want to "show" that these are digitally manipulated, I would rather people see them as good quality traditional silver prints from conventionally shot 4x5 film negatives. I know that's a lie, but one I want to perpetrate ;-)

[bob carnie]

This is interesting.

What PPI does an LVT image at?

I forgot that most of the Large Commercial Labs went from enlarger printing to a Kodak LVT or similar device and made 8x10 negatives that were then put in the enlarger for bigger prints during the Late 80's - mid 90's and then onto Lambdas and Lightjet.
I never worked this way as during that period of time I was starting a small Silver lab doing process and contact - to small print... So I cannot give you a proper comparison as I never saw output this way.
Frank there are hundreds of possible large outfits in your area that would probably give them away, if the are already not in the trash, if you find a second one give me a call.

Bob


Ron Reeder used to have a QTR profile for printing on Ilford paper up on his website. It was excellent for getting in the ballpark and for tweaking to get even better results. I made several contact prints from OHP to fiber paper that were outstanding, depending on the subject matter.

Linda Butler has used LVT negs for much of her fantastic work, ie, her Italy and China books. The negs were then used in an enlarger and printed traditionally.

[Frank Petronio]

There used to be a good sized outfit here in Rochester that was an LVT service bureau, which was smart since Kodak made them up the road. They primarily did retouching and digital imaging work in competition with me - this was in the Silicon Graphics days - but occasionally I had to swallow my pride and have them make me a LVT chrome or negative output for a client that wasn't equipped to accept a digital file - most clients in the mid-1990s didn't know what to do with a 100-200 mb TIFF, there was no good way to proof it since their monitors weren't calibrated and the only way to make a Matchprint or contract proof was to spend more money outputting color separations - since every pre-press and print shop ran their own closed loop workflow, inserting some outsider's file was fraught with problems and they were often reluctant to work with me. So just giving them a tried-and-true color chrome that fit their existing workflow was often the most expedient thing to do.

And even though Chromogen hired my ex-employee and chased after my clients, and otherwise behaved like greedy m-fers, I couldn't fault the quality of the output... it seemed just like out-of-the-camera film to me. Of course it depends on the scan and quality of the file going into it.

Luckily their rigidity and the mass-acceptance of Photoshop by poorly-trained art directors killed them off, justice was served, but I don't know what happened to all those old LVT machines? Perhaps they are in downsized engineer's basements next to the beer cooler?

[bob carnie]

I think Larry G on this site owns a LVT recorder and maybe could describe the outputs capability's in an enlarger.

[PViapiano]

Linda Butler used 4x5 LVT negs and enlarged them on Forte PWT and Ilford WT. Some of the most beautiful prints you've ever seen...

I've never done it myself, but take a look at her Italy book, just amazing.

[sanking]

What PPI does an LVT image at?

Bob

"The Chicago Albumen Works offers institutions and photographers the ability to convert high resolution digital files to traditional, archivally processed, silver halide films, using LVT film recorders.

LVT film recorders, manufactured first by Kodak, and later by Durst/Dice, are the pinnacle of large format film recorder technology. CAW has three such film recorders. They can produce film outputs up to 8x10" at 3048 ppi and up to 16x20" at 1524 ppi. "

Definitely good enough to enlarge with.

Sandy

[bob carnie]

I think I have to agree that those negs could work well in an enlarger.

I know the contacts I make are pretty good but thinking of putting the lambda film in a enlarger just IMO would not cut it.

"The Chicago Albumen Works offers institutions and photographers the ability to convert high resolution digital files to traditional, archivally processed, silver halide films, using LVT film recorders.

LVT film recorders, manufactured first by Kodak, and later by Durst/Dice, are the pinnacle of large format film recorder technology. CAW has three such film recorders. They can produce film outputs up to 8x10" at 3048 ppi and up to 16x20" at 1524 ppi. "

Definitely good enough to enlarge with.

Sandy

[rdenney]

Just for context for those following this thread but who are unaware of LVT recorders...

These guys have a couple of Kodak LVT recorders in the sub-$10K range. One has the original micro-VAX for those interesting in maintaining their own computer museum, but the other one ($5700) has been modified to run on an XP PC.

http://www.footprintsequipment.com/Results.asp?Cat=182

Rick "curiosity satisfied" Denney

[Larry Gebhardt]

I think Larry G on this site owns a LVT recorder and maybe could describe the outputs capability's in an enlarger.

I own a Lightjet 2080. It will output on 5x7, 8x10 or 11x14 film at res 80 (80px/mm or 2032 ppi) in continuous tone. In a 16x20 print made from an output 4x5 negative I can't tell the difference from the original as far as detail goes, assuming you started with a well scanned 4x5 negative.

Lately the device has been clogging up a corner of my office because it started banding on color output in the blue channel. Then I moved it and haven't tried to fix the issue, which I am hoping is just dust. I'm not sure it's really practical to have it, since service and parts are way too expensive for me to justify.

[IanMazursky]

I also own one of the few running LVTs (a Rhino) left in the world. It’s a great machine, if not a little exasperating at times.
Thanks to the Durst v. Durst fight many years ago, there is only one tech left in the US.
Hes a great guy and close by. Kodak/Durst made an amazing machine. 20+ years later, they’re still going.

The install base is pretty small compared to its hay day as a press proofer. Yes that’s what it was designed for.
Before that, you had to either do an on press proof or run a matchprint. Both took a lot longer then a chrome from an LVT.
After a while, photographers, galleries and archivists caught on.

The original LVTs used a special matched set of lamps and a light valve. Later on they moved away from the lamps (which drove the techs nuts!) to LED lasers. According to my tech, he has only had to replace one in all these years!

They made the 1620 which can image 16x20 film, the Saturn 1012, the Rhino 8x10 which was a 1010 smooshed into a tabletop unit.
For one customer they even made a 30x40, but as i understand it they were scraped a few years ago. They were used to make movie backlit posters on E6 Kodak film. I want one so bad but what would i realistically do with it!

Anywhoo, the 1620 and 1010 Rhino can do up to RES 80. Although im going to try to push my Rhino to RES 120…well see how that goes.
The Saturn can do RES 120 natively but it’s almost as big as the 1620. Both 1620 and 1012 weight nearly 500lbs. The Rhino about 200lbs.

A few words of caution for anyone considering buying one. First off, don’t buy from Footprints. I have had nothing but problems with them.
Most of what one their site is outdated and things change from when you agree to buy it to when you get it.
Everyone i know who has dealt with them has had the same or worse problems. There is a bad story behind this if anyone wants to know.

LVTs do not travel well, especially the 1620, 1010 and 1012. The weight of the imaging head is supported by the lead screw.
During travel it will bend the lead screw or worse break it and that cant be fixed if the head falls off and gets damaged.
The last tech sells head removal instructions. Without removing the head you are guaranteed a dead LVT.

Don’t buy one with a micro vax, to much of a headache. Most will connect to a windows PC running win2k, xp but not 7 or vista.
Some of the old ones come with a BNC style network port. I think you can get a converter to Ethernet.

Calibration for LVTs is a long process that can take 7-15 iterations. Processing needs to be super consistent, hand processing is out of the question.
Jobo ATL or D&D is the best way to go. Im using a Jobo ATL 2300 to process E6, C41 and B&W LVTs.

Interestingly the cal process is based on density (RGB) only. The LVT software was never updated to include ICC.
There is an interesting story behind that also. You will need an Xrite 811 TR densitometer, that is the only one that will work for E6.
You will also need the cal instructions from the tech. 99% of LVTs on the market don’t have manuals, even if they do they’re not very useful.

Last important thing, all of the LVTs have old boards in them (most 20+ years). Some of the chips have batteries built in and have neared or past their life span.
I ran into that with mine, makes an expensive machine into a doorstop, it was an expensive fix. Only one guy in the world can fix it, luckily hes a friend.
Other boards used to be a stock item when DEC was alive, but compaq and later HP put a stop to that.
They’re mostly no longer available. Painful when one dies on you and you have to scrounge.


File setup for LVTs is specific, no ICC profile embedded. Sized to RES 80 (2032 ppi), RES 40 (1016 ppi)….at the imaging size of the LVT.
The imaging size is a bit smaller then the actual film size due to the film grip. More on the specifics if anyone wants.

If anyone has any questions about an LVT, please PM me. Happy to help.

[IanMazursky]

I own a Lightjet 2080. It will output on 5x7, 8x10 or 11x14 film at res 80 (80px/mm or 2032 ppi) in continuous tone. In a 16x20 print made from an output 4x5 negative I can't tell the difference from the original as far as detail goes, assuming you started with a well scanned 4x5 negative.

Lately the device has been clogging up a corner of my office because it started banding on color output in the blue channel. Then I moved it and haven't tried to fix the issue, which I am hoping is just dust. I'm not sure it's really practical to have it, since service and parts are way too expensive for me to justify.

Hi Larry,
You might want to check on the Blue laser. Those are the fastest to die in a lightjet.
If its going in and out, it might be dying. Also check the cooling unit to make sure its actually keeping the unit cool.
Also check to see if any of the cables or power supplies have come loose. That could cause the laser to go on and off rapidly.

Sort of had the same problem with my LVT once. But it wasn’t an LED laser, it was one of the cables sending data to the laser that was shorting in and out causing banding in the blue channel.
I had some really interesting looking chromes that didn’t please my client :(

I totally understand the service and parts problem. Before i bought my LVT i investigated a 2080.
With a lot of effort i was able to contact the last company servicing them.
I forget the guys name but when he finally called me back, he said that they can but don’t really want to service them.
The cost was outrageous and parts are so scarce. If the system that auto loads and ejects the film goes…ouch!
The lasers are considered consumables, same goes for the big lightjets. They have a finite life span, blue goes first, then green (i think) and finally red.
They can be 2-4k to replace them, sometimes more. All depends on your service contract if you have one.

Hope that helps.

[Richard M. Coda]

Frank, try ludo@reflectiveimagestudios.com

He did a couple of negs for me a year or so ago. I used to go to Albumen Works, and they are great, too.

I find their quality to be the best available. Chip Hooper was an early adopter of this technique, and I dare anyone here to tell me his prints are not beautiful.

[bob carnie]

Ian

You have just made my mind up not to purchase this unit... I owe you a beer.

What a wonderful device when working at top condition,

Ian is this unit like the Kodak Preimier?

[SamReeves]

I remember screwing around with film recorders 10 years ago. Not impressed with the resolution or quality, and I never touched a piece of "digital film" again. The real McCoy or nada.

[bob carnie]

Not sure how this post is relevant to Franks question, 10 years ago is a long time, things have changed a bit in that time.


I remember screwing around with film recorders 10 years ago. Not impressed with the resolution or quality, and I never touched a piece of "digital film" again. The real McCoy or nada.

[jp]

I used to work in a school lab around 1994-95 where we had a film recorder that did color imaging onto 35mm film. It did a fabulous job for 35mm film and they looked real good projected big; better than any other computer-connected color output medium available to us at the time. We usually burnt the images into polaroid 35mm film which we could process in 10-15 minutes in daylight in this cheesy handheld processing machine polaroid sold. Other times we'd burn fujichome or kodachrome if the professors weren't in a hurry. This was sort of the pinnacle of projection before powerpoint and digital projectors came into being. Remember syqest disks and bernoulli cartridges for digital file storage?

For LF use these days, I'd personally try digital negatives first (which I'd contact print) because it's something I have the equipment to do.

[IanMazursky]

Ian
You have just made my mind up not to purchase this unit... I owe you a beer.
What a wonderful device when working at top condition,
Ian is this unit like the Kodak Preimier?

Thanks, id love to come by and see your place next time im up north.
They are amazing machines, the quality is to die for. Ive seen some of my clients prints and they blew me away.
One is using 6x12 color negs i made to do 30x40” prints that are indistinguishable from the camera film. Another is making large B&Ws.
About 60% of my film output is for gallery 8x10 chromes and the rest is negatives.

Once you get them up and running which can take a few months, they’re extremely stable as long as your processing is top.
The LVT almost never drifts, it’s the processing that does. Because of that you have to run a 2.5x10” cal strip (cut an 8x10 into 3) often.
That adds up quickly but its worth it. Ill post some pics of the inside of my Rhino the next time i take her apart.
Its pretty cool! Speaking of cool, one thing i forgot to mention is the environment. That chip i mentioned that has the battery will blow if it gets to hot.
By blow i mean bubble up and die!! Stupidly they put said chip right next to a large heat sync for the processor. Design run amuck.
Actually its not Kodaks fault, they took a standard DEC Alpha AXP board and customized the programming.
Which is fine until you confine it into a small casing with little air flow. So that can turn into a disaster.
I have blown the chip 3 times since i got it, all on print runs of 10 8x10s or more.
I put a big 5” AC fan inside the casing which seems to have helped. In the meantime i also bought $$ a bunch of spare chips just in case.


I don’t remember the Kodak Premier, is that the service they offered for duping film?
I don’t think they have any LVTs up there but i could be wrong.
Most likely they have cine film recorders printing to 35mm or 70mm film.
Those are the only current film recorders that are sold new and supported.
The still film recording market died almost 15 years ago when digital projectors hit the market.

Interestingly the LVT wasn’t a casualty of that, it was the Durst v. Durst fight that killed it.
They were selling like hotcakes. They had a lot of them still on the production line but then everything was scrapped.
Very sad really, it could have gone on for a few more years. But the lawyers had the final say.
On the other hand, the company that was developing the software had stopped work on it a few years before.
That was a story all to itself. Lots of them surround the LVT:D

When Kodak finally sold the LVT business to Durst, they sent everything including all of the engineers and techs.
I didn’t think it was still legal to sell people :D but they did. Like i said, a whole bunch of stories.

[IanMazursky]

Not sure how this post is relevant to Franks question, 10 years ago is a long time, things have changed a bit in that time.
This is an interesting subject, the still film recording market hasn’t changed in 15 years but the CINE market has.
Nothing new or updated has come to the still market, the last device was the Polaroid 8k, MGIs and maybe a few others but they were a longtime ago.
The only real changes have been in the CINE market. They are large units (1000+lbs) that can image at 2k, 4k and maybe even 6k but at a high speed.
The 35mm still ones could go up to 8k and 16k (MGI), but they are slow!! We are talking about 3-10+ minutes per frame.
I also have a Polaroid ProPalette 8000 and a 7000. I use them for 35mm slides for projection only. Even though i have the 6x7 and 4x5 backs, the LVT blows it out of the water!
The print time for an 8x10 in the LVT is 30 minutes + processing time. The LVT is manual device, manual loading/unloading, calibration, no queue and no automation.

The LVT is a different beast, it was $35+k versus $5-10k for a 35mm still. It uses RGB LED lasers compared to a B&W CCD through dichroic filters (RGB).
The LVT has the most amazing dot pattern, even under 100x magnification, you cant see it.
It images through an aperture that looks like a <> diamond shape, they interlace with each other and are a true contone image.
The CCD recorders are not, depending on the type of image you can see the lines form a pattern.
Not a huge problem for projectors but a huge one for printing.

Like drum scanning, you have to get the hang of it to produce top quality prints. It took me a few months to figure out the quirks but once i got it, the prints are spectacular.
One really neat thing about the LVT, you can use pretty much any film that will fit on the drum. You just need to calibrate it by changing some filters and writing a new LUT.
That’s not to hard, ive done it a few times now. Im testing Litho camera film to make a contone image for the 1620 LVT im getting.
Id rather not damage a sheet of 16x20 FP4 on a tacky carbon transfer sheet. Litho film may be a great alternative.

[James Hilton]

We usually burnt the images into polaroid 35mm film which we could process in 10-15 minutes in daylight in this cheesy handheld processing machine polaroid sold.

Although off topic, I have to say in all these years, you are the first person I have heard of that actually used one of those small Polaroid processing machines and their film for it! I guess it means they really did exist in real life, and not just in photography books. :p

[Tyler Boley]

well, also off topic I guess.. it was used a lot, including commercially. I used it for two different annual report projects both of which were in the AR100 in their day. The B&W, Polapan, had a grain structure to die for, and a halated look almost like diffusion, but sharp. It was so delicate you could handle it once maybe twice, so getting in to prepress and scanned quickly was imperative. The color, while somewhat less interesting, also did have a unique look as well.
In the 80s, at a Friends Of Photography workshop, Tom Millea showed us some gorgeous Platinum/Palladium prints made from 35mm. He shot Polapan and enlarged it directly onto a B&W film for the contact neg, negating the need for an interpositive and therefore more generational loss, and had ~11x14 handcoated prints with a very unique feel incuding the grain and glow.
This stuff was not as obscure as it now may seem, many things weren't.
Tyler

[Larry Gebhardt]

Hi Larry,
You might want to check on the Blue laser. Those are the fastest to die in a lightjet.
If its going in and out, it might be dying. Also check the cooling unit to make sure its actually keeping the unit cool.
Also check to see if any of the cables or power supplies have come loose. That could cause the laser to go on and off rapidly.

Sort of had the same problem with my LVT once. But it wasn’t an LED laser, it was one of the cables sending data to the laser that was shorting in and out causing banding in the blue channel.
I had some really interesting looking chromes that didn’t please my client :(

I totally understand the service and parts problem. Before i bought my LVT i investigated a 2080.
With a lot of effort i was able to contact the last company servicing them.
I forget the guys name but when he finally called me back, he said that they can but don’t really want to service them.
The cost was outrageous and parts are so scarce. If the system that auto loads and ejects the film goes…ouch!
The lasers are considered consumables, same goes for the big lightjets. They have a finite life span, blue goes first, then green (i think) and finally red.
They can be 2-4k to replace them, sometimes more. All depends on your service contract if you have one.

Hope that helps.


Ian, I'm only seeing this message a bit late (3 years). Thanks for the tips. I was just recently able to get my LightJet functional again. The banding was actually due to the spinner mirrors desilvering. I found a replacement spinner, installed and focused the laser and got that fixed. In the process I found the rubber rollers on the output cassette and attenuator motors had melted. I recovered the rollers after cleaning up the melted rubber mess. I printed some negatives again last weekend and they worked well - no banding or other artifacts, just a slight bit of skew due to the feed mechanism needing adjustment.