"How much longer can photographic film hold on?"

[Drew Wiley]

Yes, Thank you, Sandy ... but what I had in mind is if anyone had put together a
personal research-grade machine, something suitable for small-batch multi-thin-coat work for example, certainly a step up from Jim's basic slot coater. I never built mine due to space constraints (would need another dedicated clean room). I've got way too many irons in the fire now.

[sanking]

Drew,

Did you ever look at the size and weight of Jim's coating machine? Hard to see how you go up another size, say 2X or 3X, as it weighs several hundred pounds as it is. My memory is that his machine allowed up to about 40" X 50" in coating size . Hard to imagine how you would go large than that without dedicating a factory size building to the endeavor.

However, the point is that Tod Gangler's coating method, and the methods I use in coating for carbon (which involve either threaded rod coating, or the use smooth rods and magnetic sign material), are as efficient as Jim Browning's machine, even at 40"X50" in size, unless your intention is mass production. And one could do this just as easily for color as for monochrome.

Sandy

Yes, Thank you, Sandy ... but what I had in mind is if anyone had put together a
personal research-grade machine, something suitable for small-batch multi-thin-coat work for example, certainly a step up from Jim's basic slot coater. I never built mine due to space constraints (would need another dedicated clean room). I've got way too many irons in the fire now.

[Drew Wiley]

Cibachome??? I can do that in my sleep. Everything is relative. Sometimes one still
stumbles onto old Kodak sales brochures stating how easy Dye Transfer printing is
for the home hobbyist (well it was, at least compared to Carbro); then Ciba came
along as a high-quality challenge to that, and was also marketed according to its
ease. Now everyone just wants to push some buttons and have it happen. But when
someone says something CAN'T be done, I also take it as something like a dueling
challenge. I was told repeatedly by certain very experience dye transfer printers that there are steps to the process which simply cannot be replicated due to the
withdrawl of essential products from the market, but then some of us have discovered alternate ways of doing these things that are even better than the conventional methods in days of yore. Finding the time to do them is another subject. And speaking of gelatin, there's a wealth of information in the medical field
that the photo field has hardly tapped into (doesn't mean all potentially alternative
chemistry and so forth is either safe or practical to work with, but does mean that
pathways to whole new kinds of emulsions are potentially out there). But for the
moment, I've got to get back to the dkrm to do things with ordinary C-prints that
people say can't be done.

[rdenney]

Cibachome??? I can do that in my sleep. Everything is relative. Sometimes one still
stumbles onto old Kodak sales brochures stating how easy Dye Transfer printing is
for the home hobbyist (well it was, at least compared to Carbro); then Ciba came
along as a high-quality challenge to that, and was also marketed according to its
ease.

Cibachrome itself is easy--as easy as a C-print. The difficulty in using Cibachrome, though, it's in processing the sheet. It's in the contrast masking, which Drew knows as well as anyone. If no contrast masking is needed for an image, then the Ciba itself wasn't that hard.

Back in my college days, me and another guy ran a little rogue processing "company" in our spare time. We served a few rodeo photographers (this was Texas, after all) who needed to be able to show proofs the week following the rodeo. We'd do all the work on a Sunday night, from C-41 of 120 film to contact C-prints. I also made very fancy Cibachrome report covers for some of the researcher types at that university, and that often required me to process my own E-6 (E-4 at the time). All that gave me some good production-level experience with color.

Then I tried to take it to the next level and do fine prints with Ciba, and ran headlong into the requirements for contrast management using masks. I never got very good at that! And then the real world struck and I lost access to that darkroom. I did black and white in my own darkrooms after that and was content to let pro labs do color.

I found that I really enjoy the field work. The technical details of darkroom work were always a drudgery for me, and with color especially because it required so much precision. I would never consider coating my own materials.

But eventually I may be forced to buy some medium-format digital back and start stitching, if that's the best technology can do for us.

Rick "who has considered a scanning back, too, but they are still too pricy and limited" Denney

[paulr]

Paul, are you suggesting that there should be a Society for Creative Anachronism for photographers?

Oh, right, Large Format Photography Forum...

Good point. We'll know we're all the way there when people start point and clap and call us Photography Re-enactors.

Part of it is the "I can do that too!" fun part of a hobby. Since some of our members build their own cameras, why not also have some fun making your own film?

Sure, I'm just wondering if we're seeing a new trend that goes beyond that.

[Andre Noble]

I see all of us serious film users in the next 18 to 24 months doing some serious stockpiling of sheet film as the end of color sheet film is closing in on us way faster than most on this forum want to admit.

[Steve Smith]

I can't speak for engineers, but the word 'impossible' is catnip to scientists .

I'm an engineer. If someome says that something is impossible or can't be done in a particular way, that makes me want to do it.


Steve.

[dwross]

I'm an engineer. If someome says that something is impossible or can't be done in a particular way, that makes me want to do it.


Steve.

I always keep my eyes open for your posts about camera building. Really excellent. But, I particularly enjoy and learn from your posts about screen printing technology and materials and how they might cross over to silver gelatin photographic emulsions.

[Drew Wiley]

Sandy - my 8x10 colorhead weighs nearly a hundred lbs and is connected to a block and tackle pulley system for period maintenance. My vacuum easel weighs a couple
hundred pounds. My negative carrier stage weighs a couple hundred pounds and is built
hopefully bombproof for a fairly heavy earthquake (a distinct possibility around here).
Making a coating machine that weighs a ton or two is no big deal. I'd want a self-heated surface polished to within a few thousandths, leveled with equal accuracy, and with a permanent teflon coating. No problem at all technically. It can be easily done with the right budget. But I'll never get around to it. I've got a backlog of printing
and mounting that will tie me up until I'm too arthritic to even club a DLSR nerd off the trail with my Ries tripod. But it's still fun to at least vicariously invent these things, just
to keep a bit of spark alive in what's left of my sluggish brain cells.

[Drew Wiley]

Andre - I've already got a freezer. Stockpiling favorite films and papers is nothing new.
They come and go. The problem right now is exactly which to store away; there are so
many to choose from, and if you overdo it, they'll spoil with age before use, especially if a better film comes around! Look at all the new choices just in Kodak color neg sheet film. Doesn't seem like an extinction event is imminent! I''ve heard this kind of talk again and again over the years. Change happens. It always has. But I don't see any common-sense reason to sell off any of my sheet film holders. They'll probably be
useful to somone long after I'm under the dirt, and probably long after most of the
current generation of digital cameras is in the landfill too.