Ilfochrome discontinued, what do I do now?

[Wade Guisbert]

OK, everything I read tells me that Velvia and Ilfochrome is the pinnacle for color landscapes.

I buy a Toyo 45AII, three lenses, and everything a landscape photographer needs such as backpacks, tripods, light meters, cokin filters, etc...

I build and equip a darkroom with two Omega 5XL with dichroic and condenser 4X5 heads, a Jobo CPP2 processor, and all the tanks to process 4X5 film, and 20X24 prints.

I build a cottage on an island on the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. I go out and shoot lots of photos. On both negative and slides. I print the negs, and am OK with it, but I keep on hearing about how wonderful Ilfochrome is!

It has taken me nearly 40 years to get to the point in my life to pretend I am the color slide Ansel Adams (the transparencies look so damn good on the light box).

I feel like a 30 year old virgin who went to college, medical school, completed the ophthamology residency, bought the gull wing Mercedes sports car, just to get the "A" chick from high school to marry me, then God announces that sex has been discontinued!

I am 58 years old. Don't tell me to pay somebody $135.00 digitize on some bullshit drum scanner so I can get a 1.75gig file size! Common sense tells you film to paper optically has to be the best way to prevent loss of detail. I love analog. I am a digiphobe!

So...........

What options do I have?

[srbphoto]

Craigslist

[mdm]

Broaden your horizons.

[Tom J McDonald]

Internegs

[Dave Langendonk]

What options do I have?

All is not lost! I get some pretty nice results printing optically from Portra 160 and Ektar to Kodak's Ultra Endura for landscapes. 120, 4x5 and 8x10. Negative film has improved quite a bit over the last few years.

[false_Aesthetic]

5d M2

[jeroldharter]

Man, not much love here!

I feel for you. I would try sending the same transparency to someone for a high end digital print, someone else for a high end optical print, and then see what you like.

I was in the opposite situation as you. I was in medical school and had no darkroom so I shot Velvia. Then when I eventually built a darkroom I printed Ilfochrome/Cibachrome prints until I got bored with it and switched over to B&W which was my goal all along.

[Roger Cole]

I now have "learn to make internegs" on the bucket list.

But other than that, shift to shooting Ektar and printing on RA4 paper. Ektar is a pretty great film in its own right. I was really impressed with the couple of rolls of 120 I recently got back. Usually I want more realistic looking saturation so Potra is my preference but when you want jazzed up Velvia-like color, Ektar comes close.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Ilfochrome discontinued, what do I do now?

Dye Tranfer:
http://www.dyetransfer.org/
http://www.alaintruong.com/tag/dye-transfer%20print

http://www.dyetransfer.de/index.html

[Drew Wiley]

All these printing techniques are involved and require a fair amount of experience to
perfect. Unfortunately, the necessary supplies are constantly changing, so periodic
twists and turns in the road are inevitable. Dye transfer materials were officially discontined a number of years ago and it's a very complicated and expensive path anyway to someone just starting out, but worth investigating if you like a challenge. You could buy up some of the last run of Cibachrome and freeze it. The unopened chemicals store well. But there won't be a second chance. The most viable option is to start shooting and printing the newest color neg films - but even these are at risk for discontinuance if Kodak goes belly up, and are also necessary for making internegs from chromes, if you are ambitious enough to try that. But you can always purchase and freeze film. It stays good maybe a decade. The nice thing is that color paper from Fuji will probably be around awhile. You can do your learning on the relatively inexpensive RC paper like Crystal Archive, then graduate to the polyester-based Fujiflex, which resembles Cibachrome. There are also handmade processes like four-color carbon, but these require extensive practice. Sandy King, who is a member of
this forum, host a website dedicated to carbon printing. And Jim Browning has a site
for dye transfer printing, already mentioned. There is no site specially dedicated to
advanced color neg printing with current materials, although a number of individuals have expressed interest. But you can always ask questions here.