Ilfochrome discontinued, what do I do now?

[Drew Wiley]

Jay - the mechanics of either C-printing or Ciba can be taught in a matter of hours.
Fine tuning the process can take a lifetime, but that's true of black and white too.
A simple drum processor will do either. At this point in time I have a reasonably nice
darkroom. But I started out with less than a thousand dollars investment and a spare
bathroom, but still output one-man color shows that were complemented by some of
the most famous photographers alive at the time. In some ways, C-printing is even
easier than black and white if you have a basic colorhead. And there's no shortage on
the horizon for the paper and chem. Your software will obsolete first.

[Robbie Shymanski]

Track down a copy of "Photographing in Color" by Paul Outerbridge. Step by step on the Carbro process. If you have the patience to register... amazing. One day I will have the time to do such work.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

a Lab like Dyetransfer.de or was your post a suggestion.

This was just a .. (ahem, a bit provocative ) suggestion.

Just to remind us that making colour images from large format negs actually started in the XIX-st century with tricolor processes by Ducos du Hauron. I have no idea about when colour images were actually printed on paper. Autochromes started in 1902 but were probably not printed on paper before WW-I, probably just viewed as projected slides.
Tri-colour one-shot cameras existed before WW-II and many colour portraits of Hollywood stars appeared in the press at the time.
In photography, each new colour technology commercially kills the previous ones.
Kodachrome killed tri-colour cameras.
Probably dye transfer could not resist competiton against Cibachrome...
Tri-colour separation of colour slides and analogue colour photogravure was mainstream for books and magazines two decades ago. All this industry switched to digital technologies many years before photographers could even dream of a direct digital image capture of the same quality as a 4x5" slide.

At a first glance, all XX-st century colour printing processes are today made obsolete by all kinds of digital image capture techniques and digital image processing.
RA-4 colour prints being an exception, but in harsh competition with inkjets prints.

So, I was really surprised to discover that Dye Transfer techniques are still offered by specialized, off-mainstream labs. Including European labs. And we do not have anything to expect from Kodak, once the master of Dye Transfer.

But if here we do not pay attention to off-mainstream colour printing techniques in quality photography, nor support them, nobody will

Not kidding, colour printing processed of the last century might not be easy to resurrect.
Even if all patents are in the public domain and if all secret know-how is published.
Simply because colour processes developped at an industrial level might not be easy to duplicate by an amateur in an hobbyist's lab.

Even autochrome plates, a colour technology 110 years old, is exceedingly difficult to duplicate at the hobbyist's level, whereas any serious amateur can now make his own monochrome plates using XIX-st century processes ... "in his kitchen"

I hope that Dye Transfer,although expensive and cumbersome, could be accessible to the hobbyist .. this is far from granted, unfortunately.

[federico9001]

dear digiphobes,

about "loss of detail", take a look here:

It's a Massimo Vitali's dyptich scanned and restored by me and printed at Grieger Lab, Dusseldorf, from 11x14" color negatives:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/castors...n/photostream/

[Roger Cole]

Don't know about anyone else, but I'm far from a "digiphobe." But computers, specifically computer networking, are my job and career. I'll be damned if I'll let them invade my art as well! It's just not the same as getting in the dark and getting my hands wet.

[swilf]

about "loss of detail", take a look here:

The crops are 1024 pixels wide and look like 1" wide on full image (it's 11x14, am I right?). This roughly corresponds to 1000 dpi scan. Not an awful lot of detail, really.

I do not try to undermine the potent hybrid technology here, it's just your example that does not demonstrate its potency.

[federico9001]

I could scan a 35mm Velvia taken with a Apo Summicron asph. 90mm M on a tripod, of course.....

My goal was to show the possibility to completely restore a damaged negative, the smoothness of colors achievable through an excellent drum scan, the impressive final result from the trio ULF negative - drum scan - LightJet print.

I didn't want to show the resolution (detail) of my scanner by itself.

[swilf]

My goal was to show the possibility to completely restore a damaged negative

Oh, I replied on the false premise that your goal was to show that digital way does not lead to "loss of detail". And to demonstrate how good the scanner is.