Have you done any tests with them? Ciba are very tough to beat for fading.
Do you have custom labs in your area that will produce custom C prints?
Have you done any tests with them? Ciba are very tough to beat for fading.
Do you have custom labs in your area that will produce custom C prints?
I have my own facility for printing up to 30X40 C-prints, but am trying to decide whether to add a 50" processor. I have been making high-end Cibas since the product first came out, so am extremely familiar with it. Dye transfer is intended more as a retirement hobby,
since it's so time intensive. There is one major local lab still doing custom C-prints the
traditional enlarger manner, but several others using the expensive digital printers. I prefer
the more seamless look of straight optical printing, but the advantage of the big digital
printers is that they can take files from color negs, transparencies, or direct digital capture. Crystal Archive is has much better light resistance than Ciba, or better display life, but will eventually discolor (tend to yellow), so is inferior in terms of dark storage life.
This is the issue. Yes it can be done, but it wont be done because of economics. The only way it could be revived is by $$ underwriting it and forgetting the profit motive. For instance, I have had many pairs of custom skis built. They are not economical to have built at all, but I don't care about the $$, so I do as I please. If i was just about the $$, I would never have them built.
That would be the only way dye transfer may be revived, but on a much larger scale than custom skis...forget about the $$ and just do it by someone that loves the process and has tons of $$.
BUT even if so, who would make the prints even if the materials were revived??
All the knowledge is going...going...gone soon. I was go great dye man myself. I could slap something together, but it was poor compared to the master printers. It will be 20 years soon since its demise and lots of talk about bringing it back...but nothing. I'm not holding my breath anyway. If we look at the trends, all wet film and print processes are headed downhill and eventually out. I may be wrong, but that is what I see as the trend.
Here's the best documented testing you're likely to find:
Sal, everyone appreciates Wilhelm's pioneering tests and his attempt to get things on an
objective playing field, but at the moment, the Aardenburg system addresses some of the
shortfalls in Wilhelm's methodology, particularly regarding the variability of inkjet ingredients.
Dye transfer has already been sucessfully revived, at least until the latest round of supplies dries up. But commercially it is indeed extinct - too expensive and laborious.
A few individuals will still make custom dye transfer prints. Three large batches of matrice
film have been run in Europe since Kodak dropped the process, and gallery prints are still
being made. I have a freezer full of sheets from one of those Euro runs. More film could easily be produced if the demand is sufficient. A bigger problem is the rapidly escalating cost of sheet film itself needed forcolor separations, masks, etc., although separations can also be made on image-setters, or matrice exposures can be made directly with blue laser devices. Go over to the Dye Transfer Forum to visit what is currently being done, along with a lot of contentious discussion about methodology; for DT is a process particularly amenable to hybrid technique.
I looked for the DT forum here, can't find it. Where is it?
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