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Robert Jaques
3-Jul-2004, 17:04
I am new to Large Format, shooting landscapes on 4x5 transparency film. I have been impressed with the quality from both inkjet and digital lab prints. Having not seen Cibachrome (ie Ilfordchrome now) prints from large format 4x5 I am interested in hearing opinions on how Ilfordchrome stands up against the new digital prints. I used to make Cibachromes from 35mm. The Archival qualitys aside how does Ilfordchrome compare in terms of resolution, apparent sharpness and colour reproduction to the newer digital prints such as lightjets and LEDs? The reason I am asking this is I am looking at purchasing a used 4x5 enlarger for B&W but may consider doing my own Ilfordchomes.

paul miller
4-Jul-2004, 08:16
I agree with Dan. I've had both done and the cibachrome has much better colors. Plus, in the "white" areas you don't get plain paper sticking through against glossy ink. However, I've also been impressed with the digital prints for their lower cost and very good quality. I don't think that digital prints will ever be quite like real color photographic prints because of the vastly different process involved. However, for many applications I prefer digital prints -- when I do a theatre shoot and need to get the prints done the next day, nothing but digital will work!

Don Miller
4-Jul-2004, 08:19
Hi Robert,

Last year I had the same question and was also considering learning to print Illfochrome. I traveled to see Christopher Burketts work (his book Intimation of Paradise is a good reproduction of his originals) and to Thomas Mangelsen's gallery (I dont believe Mr Mangelsen is the printmaker). I expected to have a difficult time choosing between digital output and Ilfochrome.

But after seeing dozens of Ilfordchrome prints, I knew immediately that Ilfordchrome was inferior for how I see my final color prints. I found unatural color shifts, a lack of good tonality, very blocked-up shadows, and a strong "pop" to the images that does not represent nature to me.

Also check with Ilford as I believe they have shortened the projected life expectancy of these prints.

Don

QT Luong
4-Jul-2004, 11:19
Take into consideration the fact that getting fine control with Ilfochrome printing is considerably more difficult than in the digital darkroom. You might have to be a master printer (like Burkett) to achieve results that compare to average digital prints. Ilfochrome and digital prints do have a different look. Depending on the image and the viewer, either one could be superior. Recently, the "hand-made" aspect of Ilfochrome seems to have added some marketability.

Neal Shields
4-Jul-2004, 14:53
I had a Lambda print made by a pro lab from a 2 1/4 x 4 1/2 transparancy. I was shocked at the lack of resolution. I might as well have done a crop from 35mm.

I sent the same transparancy to a lab in Austin Tx and had an Ilfochrome made. They are very different. To me the Ilfochrome wins hands down but I suspect many would like the digital better.

One reason I like large format is the ability to capture detail. The above print has the horizon in it, and I think that when you have a distant horizon in a photograph with detail on the horizon, people will look to see what they can see. I have also watched people "sniff" photographs at our local museum so I don't buy the arguement that you shouldn't get close enough to tell the difference.

One print our local museum displays ocasionally is an Ansel Adams picture of San Francisco from the hills. You can read the signs on the stores if your eyes are good enough and you get close enough.

You can't do that sort of thing with a 400 dpi Lambda.

tim atherton
4-Jul-2004, 15:40
Neal - you need a good digital printer just as you always needed a good Ciba printer (in all the years I had getting transparencies printed and all the labs I tried I only ever found two really good printers).

You should take a look at some of Chris Jordan's (very large) prints - I think you'd be blown away - not just by the colour, but by the detail.

Sounds like your scan wasn't very good to start off with - I saw some of Paul Grahams 6' wide or so prints from his new project (and book) American Nights - scanned from MF and digitally printed - quite stunning with excellent detail 0 400dpi from a hi-res scan is certianly enough to show the sort of detail you are talking about.

Robert - digital (lightjet or Ultrachrome etc) colour prints will have something of a different look from ilfochromes - the look is just different (but then the best printer I ever found for colour tranny stuff used the Fuji process - hand done, mom and pop shop in Montreal - a real artisan - the Fuji stuff also "looked different" from Ilfochromes). That aside - you can get very very good colour prints from those processes.

The big difference is in what a (good) scan from a transparency (or neg) allows you (or a good lab) to do in terms of colour adjustments, contrast, hue etc etc. Not only are these easy to do globally, but you can control them locally on the print in ways that a wet darkroom colour printer can't even dream of. It's this ability that someone like Chris Jordan uses to the full to produce stunning prints. His prints recently came within one point of winning the prestigious Photo Espana event. A friend and photographer who was also attending (and is a darned good colour and B&W worker himself) was completely blown away by the prints he saw there from Chris.

So in short - a) you really need to compare like with like (not bad digital work with good wet colour work or vice versa) and b) color digital printing will not only produce good prints, but it will give you a level of control and adjustment that is far greater than was ever available before. tim

Robert Jaques
5-Jul-2004, 02:48
Thank you all for taking the time to reply to my question.

I had a look at some of my old 35mm Cibachromes and I have to agree with Dan and Paul the colour really does pack some punch. I will try and find a good Lab that still does Ilfordchromes and have one of my 4x5s printed. I will also have the same chrome printed digitally and see which one I prefer. Going the digital printing path is very tempting. I am not into manipulation of the image. I like the print to look as close as possible to the slide on the lightbox. However I find tools in photoshop such as the clone stamp for removing dust specks or the crop tool and unsharp masking invaluable. There is not that much Large Format Colour Landscape photography here in New Zealand, sadly many enthusiastes are abandoning film in droves and buying 35mm digitals. Some day I hope to travel to the States and view the works of the photographers mentioned.

Kind Regards

Robert

Graeme Hird
7-Jul-2004, 00:27
Robert,

Some labs will print digitally onto Ilfochrome if required. Ken Duncan's lab will, and there are a few others which I can't think of right now.

I use Pixel Perfect in Sydney. They print onto Kodak Endura Metallic (among other paper types) which has that same glow as Ilfochrome. I love it and so do most of the people who wander through my gallery. Give them a try and compare it to your Cibachromes.

Cheers,

Julian_3496
7-Jul-2004, 11:27
I was with Chris at Photoespaña, and yeah, I was blown away. I saw a lot of prints and compared all kind of ctype, ciba, digi this, digi that. Chris's prints are out of this world. he gets a drum scan, from a tango. Not just anyold drum scan, but he's worked with a few guys and has one he trusts. he very often brackets and combines negs or trannies to get maximum tonal range. he uses a lot of layers. His sharpening technique can take hours for the machine to process. He then handcoats the print so its fully archival and he doesn't need glass. He uses epson semi matte on a 9600. I use Ilford smooth gloss on a 2200 and I'm getting tonality and gamut to die for. Totally stuffs ciba or analogue ctypes BUT you have to be in control of the whole chain. There's a new ilford paper out which is ultra glossy for that ciba look.

Shane Knight
8-Jul-2004, 00:57
Hello Robert,

I truely recommend Ilfochrome Classic Deluxe prints. I have done them both and after four years of high end digital output with Fuji Crystal Archive, I have gone back to the hand made Ilfochromes. I just switch to Ilfochrome at the beginning of the year and I have almost trippled my sales compared to last year (I actually did more shows last year.) People see the difference and feel very good about their purchase. In the first time and a long time...I feel like an artist again.

Not all images look good as Ilfochromes, it does take some time to learn the editing of images that are chosen for the Ilfochromes process. I do not recommend trying to print Ilfochromes on your own at first. I would choose a good lab that is known for their printing and techneques. It takes a very long time to learn the masking techneques which is required to print most Ilfochromes. Learn the limites of your prints and as you grow a relationship with your lab, let them know that you would like to print your own in the future and they should help you on your way.

The Ilfochrome process is not easy, convienent, and cheap, if it was....everybody would be doing it.

I hope you make the right choice...just remember, nothing beats a well printed hand made image....nothing.

Happy shooting!!!

Shane Knight

www.shaneknight.com

Julian_3496
8-Jul-2004, 07:20
One of the things coming out of this thread is that we all have different preferences, thank God! A couple of points from Shane's excellent post - finding a process that excites you is a wondeful thing!

The concept of darkroom prints being 'handmade ' is a bit of a misnomer IMO. In the darkroom we control a mechanical/chemical process by turning a light on and off and sticking filters in the path of the light. The skill comes in controlling the process. In the digi darkroom we use a computer to do the control, but the process has to be intelligently and expertly managed in exactly the same way as a darkroom. Just like a viewcamera gives you so much control it also gives you umpteen billion ways of messing up an image, the same holds true for the digi darkroom. Even if this wasn't the case, the only thing that should matter is the look of the final print. You need a process which gives your work the look you want.

Both Ilford and Wilhelm have altered the longevity claims of the cib process and they are both claiming about 15years for a ilfochr print behind glass. That would worry me.

Shane Knight
8-Jul-2004, 21:16
It is great that we have this great site to compare opinions. I kindly disagree with Julian's last post regarding the skill level of printing in the dark room vs. digital darkroom. We can both agree that you need to use the process that makes you happy and keep you shooting. Which ever process is chosen, it will have it's challenges. Some people think that making adjustments on the computer is the same process as adjustments in the darkroom, I think they are wrong. There is a lot of work and skill that goes into a file before digital output, and the adjustments can be saved once the final is ready. There is no skill after the final process....just hit print when you need a print. With darkroom, you have to use your skill everytime you put a piece of paper on the easil. Everyprint gets the hardwork and skill...and mainly the love to goes into a final piece of art.

As a fine art photographer....the whole process (from shooting to printing) is everything.

That is only my opinion and whatever process is used....just do your best and put all your love in to it. A good friend of mine told me once...the best camera ever made is the camera you shoot most with while smiling.

NOW....for the longivity of Ilfochromes.....sorry Julian...I disagree once more. I mean no disrespect.

Ilforchromes will fade at an unacceptable level in 15 years. That is WITHOUT glass or protection.

30 years with glass. I believe they will last longer but that is my opinion. Ilforchrome's fading element is not damaging light rays, the fading is caused by high humidity. With a sealed frame with conservation glass, Ilforchromes will last a long time.

From Ilford's site. http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/pdf/302e.pdf

Wilhelm use to say that Ilfochromes would last forever in the dark storage and 100 years displayed. What is the difference from now and then ...nothing. I believe Wilhelm is very PRO digital and set the Ilfochromes to fail on the new test. HOW....he pump huge amounts of humidity while testing. Knowing that humidity does not affect the longivity of Fuji Crystal Archive in the same way. FCA fading element is uv light. I have seen Fuji Crystal Archive prints fade. I have one, and my friend has one. That was enough for me.

All color photograhs will fade...let me repeat that....ALL COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS WILL FADE. 30 years or 60 years....they will fade. Please don't write back and tell me that laminating and sprays will make them last over 100. I and others in the laminating field think that the laminates wont last more than 15 - 20 years before they crack and peel.

Let me sum it up....I rather have a gracefully fading Ilfochrome on my wall than a perfect digital reproduction.

Happy shooting...and keep the bug alive.

Shane Knight

www.shaneknight.com

Donal Taylor
8-Jul-2004, 21:27
Hey Shane - do you have your life savings in shares in Velvia? - that stuff is rather hard on the eyes - that's pretty saturated.

Are the pritns as um... "bright"?

tim atherton
8-Jul-2004, 21:33
Shane - can you point me to the humidity issue in Willhelm's tests? I thought RIT had also reduced the longevity of Cibachrome significantly as well?

Shane Knight
9-Jul-2004, 01:48
Hello Tim,

Give me a little time and I will try to find some info regarding the humidity issue with Wilhelm testing.

http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/pdf/302e.pdf

On the top of page 3 of 3, you will find the light stability graphs and data for unprotected and protected Ilforchromes tested by Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

If you have more current info regarding permanence, please let me know, I do like to keep up with the current info... Thanks

Julian_3496
9-Jul-2004, 04:40
Thanks for the post Shane. What makes art great is how many ways people find to express themselves. I'm not a crystal archiva fan either, I dislike the lack of DmAx, but Ultrachromes on Ilford paper...!

Julian

Paul_thomann@acm.org
11-Sep-2007, 04:17
What blows me away is to make Ciba transparencies. To get controls shoot a grey card, take readings from the original trans with a Macbeth then adjust the exposure and color (but not the processing times) for the Ciba trans. Last of all test it with a step chart (at the same setting as the grey card) to find out how many stops you can reproduce. Then make sure you only use transparencies that meet that criterion.
Blow it up to 16x20 or 20x25 use a good lightbox (less than 1/2 stop difference over the whole surface) and you have a thing of beauty.

Bill_1856
11-Sep-2007, 07:05
The answer is, in fact, that some images will look better with inkjet and some better with Ilfochrome.
To make great Ilfocromes, you will often need to make contrast and higlight masks, just like we used to do for Dye Transfer. Printing inkjets is, relatively speaking, a piece of cake (once you spend the hundreds(?) of hours required to become proficient with the process).
Whatever advantages the Ilfochrome has at present over inkjets will soon (within 3-5 years) completely disappear, unless Ilford gets off their arsses and upgrades the llfochrome process, but that's pretty unlikely considering that they didn't even bother with B&W materials.
I'd recommend that you spend your time, money, and energy learning digital and Photoshop.

naturephoto1
11-Sep-2007, 07:34
Bill,

Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) is no longer owned by Ilford or Harman. It was sold to Oji Paper Company of Japan in July 2005.

Rich

paulr
11-Sep-2007, 07:49
There is no skill after the final process....just hit print when you need a print. With darkroom, you have to use your skill everytime you put a piece of paper on the easil. Everyprint gets the hardwork and skill...and mainly the love to goes into a final piece of art

It seems to me that making subsequent prints requires repetition of mechanical motions, but not much skill. It takes a skill to control the process and realize the vision of the first print. After that, you could very easily teach an attentive assistant how to do the exposure, burning and dodging, agitation, timing, etc.--in all but the most extreme cases (local intensisfication or reduction, etc.). In color it's usually even easier--the exposed paper goes right into a processor and comes out done.

There's only context in which it makes sense to say the wet darkroom requires more skill. In color work especially, the process affords much less control, so it can take extraordinary skills to get a print out of certain negatives that would only require routine skills from a digital printmaker.

DOYLE THOMAS
11-Sep-2007, 08:34
I made my first Ciba print in 1976 and had the privlige of attending Chris Burkett's masking workshop. In terms of sharpness there is no doubt that Ilfocrome will make a sharper print. In terms of actuance however (imho) digital printing takes the cake. I print to an Epson 7800/mat ink. That is the one thing I don't like about Ilfo is the glossy finish creating glare. I have tried many products in an attempt to reduce glare, none sucessful.

Doyle

paulr
11-Sep-2007, 08:57
In terms of sharpness there is no doubt that Ilfocrome will make a sharper print. In terms of actuance however (imho) digital printing takes the cake.

I'm curious to hear your definition of these terms.

Personally, I've never been able to make a darkroom print that's as sharp as a digital print (from the same negative). Going through the process demonstrates how much sharpness is lost to the enlarger optics. My comparisons are based on 4x5 negs scanned with a consumer grade scanner (wet mounted) vs. a high end enlarger setup (aligned, glass carrier, apo lens). I have a nearly complete body of work printed both ways for anyone to compare with their own eyes.

David Luttmann
11-Sep-2007, 09:56
I'm curious to hear your definition of these terms.

Personally, I've never been able to make a darkroom print that's as sharp as a digital print (from the same negative). Going through the process demonstrates how much sharpness is lost to the enlarger optics. My comparisons are based on 4x5 negs scanned with a consumer grade scanner (wet mounted) vs. a high end enlarger setup (aligned, glass carrier, apo lens). I have a nearly complete body of work printed both ways for anyone to compare with their own eyes.

That is true. Optical laws won’t allow it. I have yet to see ANY optical print at 16x20 or larger that can maintain more detail and/or acutance than a scanned version printed to Light Jet or Inkjet at the same sizes.

paulr
11-Sep-2007, 09:59
I have yet to see ANY optical print at 16x20 or larger that can maintain more detail and/or acutance than a scanned version printed to Light Jet or Inkjet at the same sizes.

and mine are all smaller than that. my 4x5 digital prints are sharper than contact prints from the same neg. they look more like contact prints than the contact prints, if that makes any sense.

QT Luong
11-Sep-2007, 10:35
Your 4x5 digital prints may look sharper because of higher accutance obtained through sharpening, but the contact prints contain much more detail. If you put a 6x lupe to both, you will see pixels in the digital prints, whereas the contacts will still show continuous detail that was invisible to the naked eye. I've done that myself on Ilfochrome.

However it's true that because of limitation of optical processes, above a certain enlargement size, the digital prints will be sharper.

Greg Miller
11-Sep-2007, 10:40
Some people think that making adjustments on the computer is the same process as adjustments in the darkroom, I think they are wrong. There is a lot of work and skill that goes into a file before digital output, and the adjustments can be saved once the final is ready. There is no skill after the final process....just hit print when you need a print. With darkroom, you have to use your skill everytime you put a piece of paper on the easil. Everyprint gets the hardwork and skill...and mainly the love to goes into a final piece of art.


There is skill required in both technologies for making the final print look like the artist wants it. With digital the skill is in the expsoure of the image (film or digital), developing (if film) or RAW processing, pre-print Photoshop work, plus the skill in understanding how the printer/ink/paper combination will actually affect what the final print looks like. With the darkroom you have the exposure, developing, and darkroom skills.

The fact that the actual print requires more effort in the printing stage seems irrelevant to me. And any variation in the print due to the human element can be perceived as error just as much as being perceived as a desirable touch of the artist.

tim atherton
11-Sep-2007, 10:50
The fact that the actual print requires more effort in the printing stage seems irrelevant to me. And any variation in the print due to the human element can be perceived as error just as much as being perceived as a desirable touch of the artist.


Exactly, I always thought the aim of any high end custom hand printing lab/atelier working for the best photographers out there (either in-house or outsourced) was absolute repeatablility - something they prided themselves on in printing for the greats.

In addition, once the requirements were worked out and mapped, it was usually the job of skilled assistant to produce those prints in a most "mechanical" fashion.

Variations from print to print are a mistake to be avoided.

Bruce Watson
11-Sep-2007, 10:56
... but the contact prints contain much more detail.

I find that argument a bit specious. What's important here is how the prints look to the unaided eye at a reasonable viewing distance. If your unaided eye/brain visual system can't resolve the detail, it really doesn't matter whether it's there or not.

I'll agree that digital prints look sharper then their darkroom counter parts. For me I think this is much more due to the scanning process: I drum scan my 5x4 film which holds the negatives in the exact plane of focus, edge to edge and corner to corner. This is far better alignment than I could ever get in any of the darkrooms I had access to no matter how much time and effort I put into enlarger alignment. The optics are better too since they are optimized for a single pixel at a time (regardless of film format) and not for projection of a large format negative over a large sheet of paper. Sharpening algorithms are a tertiary effect.

But the appearance of sharpness is but one aspect of a print. For many people I suspect that apparent sharpness isn't going to be a deal breaker, one way or the other; both methods allow for excellent sharpness after all. It's going to come down to aesthetics, plain and simple. And each photographer is going to have to apply his/her own best judgment and make her/his own choice.

jetcode
11-Sep-2007, 11:20
Take into consideration the fact that getting fine control with Ilfochrome printing is considerably more difficult than in the digital darkroom. You might have to be a master printer (like Burkett) to achieve results that compare to average digital prints. Ilfochrome and digital prints do have a different look.

I can attest to that, Bay Photo in Santa Cruz used to have an Ilfochrome machine for public rental use and I did my best to achieve quality results but they were still short of high quality; operator experience noted.

QT Luong
11-Sep-2007, 12:22
I find that argument a bit specious. What's important here is how the prints look to the unaided eye at a reasonable viewing distance. If your unaided eye/brain visual system can't resolve the detail, it really doesn't matter whether it's there or not.

The contacts do have a special quality to me in careful, but normal viewing. I think it is the combination of detail and no artificially boosted accutance. But it's a kind of moot point in practice, since I much prefer to print big anyways.

roteague
11-Sep-2007, 12:30
Bob Carnie prints Ilfochrome on a Lamba - you get the best of both worlds. Big sharp prints, on Ilfochrome.

paulr
11-Sep-2007, 12:34
Your 4x5 digital prints may look sharper because of higher accutance obtained through sharpening, but the contact prints contain much more detail. If you put a 6x lupe to both, you will see pixels in the digital prints, whereas the contacts will still show continuous detail that was invisible to the naked eye. I've done that myself on Ilfochrome.

The contact prints do reveal more detail with a loupe. But not the way that I actually look at them. At any viewing distance with the naked eye, the ink version looks sharper and at the same time less harsh.

For what it's worth, with the quadtone printing method I use there are no visible pixels or printer dots, even with a loupe. The dots are too small to be resolved by the paper surface. You just see smooth tone.

Greg Miller
11-Sep-2007, 12:47
There is skill required in both technologies for making the final print look like the artist wants it. With digital the skill is in the expsoure of the image (film or digital), developing (if film) or RAW processing, pre-print Photoshop work, plus the skill in understanding how the printer/ink/paper combination will actually affect what the final print looks like. With the darkroom you have the exposure, developing, and darkroom skills.

The fact that the actual print requires more effort in the printing stage seems irrelevant to me. And any variation in the print due to the human element can be perceived as error just as much as being perceived as a desirable touch of the artist.

After mulling this over for a while, I think what really matters is "does the print look the way the artists wants it to?" 100 years from now, when no-one knows what an inkjet printer is or what Ciba/Ilfochrome is, no-one will care whether it took too 10 minutes to make the print or 2 hours. What they will care about is what does the image say? And that is best said by a print that looks the way the artist intended it to look.

Neal Shields
11-Sep-2007, 13:29
I took a panorama with an antique Panon which produces a 2 1/4 x 4 1/4 negative. I had it professionally scanned and printed at 300 dpi. I was really disapointed.

I had a Cibachrome made by Holland in Austin and the difference was night and day.

This was only to about a 5x blow up.

All of this and recent threads gets down to the math. About the best most modern digital printing methods can do is 300 to 400 dpi.

If you can't get detail in the range of 50 lp/mm to a negative you should sell your large format equipment and buy the latest digital SLR.

The FBI studied this for over a year and found 200 asa 35mm film captures about 16 meg.

No mater how you do the math, if you print large format digitally you are throwing the vast majority of the detail you captured in the trash.

tim atherton
11-Sep-2007, 13:39
No mater how you do the math, if you print large format digitally you are throwing the vast majority of the detail you captured in the trash.


maybe, but I think not. But then why print on something like Ilfochrome that's relatively fugitive and has poor longevity as well as giving you so little control over the image?

paulr
11-Sep-2007, 13:41
IAll of this and recent threads gets down to the math. About the best most modern digital printing methods can do is 300 to 400 dpi.

You are probably referring to pixels per inch, not dots per inch, since Epson desktop printers print over 1200 dots per inch. But even so, the desktop models print at 720ppi native resolution.

At any rate, no one can see print detail with the naked eye that's finer than 11 lp/mm, which requires under 600ppi to capture. In practice few people can tell the difference between this and the same image at 400ppi. And our perception of clarity and sharpness is overwhelmingly formed by the degree of contrast in the 1 lp/mm to 5 lp/mm range ... which is where digital methods are able to trump traditional ones, if the scanning and printing are expertly done.



No mater how you do the math, if you print large format digitally you are throwing the vast majority of the detail you captured in the trash.

Your math (and understanding of the factors influencing image clarity) are incorrect. But more importantly, I can tell that you're comparing high quality traditional prints to poor quality digital ones. If you get a chance to see the highest quality digital prints you'll immediately see what I'm talking about.

David Luttmann
11-Sep-2007, 15:12
That's correct Paul. On a 30" print for example, even doing a 3200dpi scan....which pulls more detail than the film really holds, you end up with approx 16000 pixels of information. These pixels however are not as clean as the digital equivalent, and as such a clean digital capture could get away with far less…..in fact, about 50% less. But assuming they are as clean as a digital file, you end up with a file that holds about 670ppi of information….well below the inkjets threshold of 720dpi.

That said, even at 30”, the level of detail recorded by the inkjet will surpass that of what the eye can see…..unless of course you view your prints through a loupe. At 30” though, because of the nature of optics, the scan and print from the inkjet will maintain acutance and resolution better than that of a cibachrome print.

There is no contest….on large color prints, Cibachrome lost out for control and resolution many years ago.

bob carnie
12-Sep-2007, 06:42
There is no contest... on large color prints, Cibachrome lost out for control and resolution many years ago.

Not so
Maybe printing on an enlarger without good masking techniques you may be right regarding image control.
I was frustrated with this process years ago but not today.

I am printing large cibachromes and inkjet digitally and the control is the same but the final output is vastly different and I feel the resolution is better in Ciba.
Printing to 30x40 from a 6x7 scanned positive and then taking a loupe to a Lambda cibachrome, you see film grain not pixels or dot pattern.

Unless one has actually seen dead nut comparisons of the same file on the two different medias, one may be misimformed or unaware of the real differences.Currently to my knowlege there are very few operations in NA that are doing digital cibachrome as well as inkjet. I think Hance Partners and Lamont Imaging are two labs that do as well as my lab.

As well on the longevity issue , I only have the last 15years to go by as I still have prints from the day I bought my machine, they are in good shape, I purchased my first inkjet machine about 5 years ago and need 10 years to be able to say the same thing about those first prints on inkjet.
I am not sure which process will have better longevity in display, since I do both I will continue with both methods of output for clients that prefer one output over the other. I love both methods of printing, wet chemicals and ink spray and choose one over the other depending on the final look I want. I am not concerned about which output is better as they both have their place.
One of the main reasons we print on archival fibre paper digitally and traditional enlarger here, is the problem with colour fading that prevelent with any commercial process used. I am interested in the tri colour carbon process from separated film off my lambda, but am still a few solid years away from achieving that dream. By then I may dump ink and ciba and move soley to carbon for any colour work I do.





That's correct Paul. On a 30" print for example, even doing a 3200dpi scan....which pulls more detail than the film really holds, you end up with approx 16000 pixels of information. These pixels however are not as clean as the digital equivalent, and as such a clean digital capture could get away with far less…..in fact, about 50% less. But assuming they are as clean as a digital file, you end up with a file that holds about 670ppi of information….well below the inkjets threshold of 720dpi.

That said, even at 30”, the level of detail recorded by the inkjet will surpass that of what the eye can see…..unless of course you view your prints through a loupe. At 30” though, because of the nature of optics, the scan and print from the inkjet will maintain acutance and resolution better than that of a cibachrome print.

There is no contest….on large color prints, Cibachrome lost out for control and resolution many years ago.

paulr
12-Sep-2007, 07:52
T I am printing large cibachromes and inkjet digitally and the control is the same but the final output is vastly different and I feel the resolution is better in Ciba.

Bob, i think the original question was phrased in a confusing way. I took it to be a comparison of Ciba printed conventionally with an enlarger vs. various digital printing methods.

My own comparisons were based on traditional enlargements (silver, not ciba) vs. digital ink prints of the same image.

If you're talking about Ciba printed with a lightjet-type machine, then I have no reason to doubt that it would have all the advantages of other digital processes, and possibly some other advantages from the ultra smooth surface of the paper.

bob carnie
12-Sep-2007, 08:33
Paul
I am talking about printing with a Lambda at 400pp onto ciba vs inkjet.
You basically have to pull my teeth to try a enlarger print from slide/trans to ciba these days, and I fully agree that comparing trans/ enlarger to file/lambda there is a huge benifit to the latter. Maybe I was mistaken on the post.
I will say this though, If in a perfect world, clean,deeply saturated 4x5 quality transparancy , in a glass carrier with apo 150 lens, on a accurate aligned enlarger, onto CPS Ciba, with the intent to make a non altered print or better said just let the transparancey do all the work, it would be impossible to get a better rendition scanning and going to a Lambda/Lightjet in my opinion.
My experience tells me the print would be very sharp with great tonalitys, keeping all the hard work the photographer put into the image.
But we don't always work in this perfect world and the advantages of contrast, saturation control, colour enhancement with the Lambda/Lightjet is too appealing to not consider.
In fact this is why we ultimately went the long , learning curve, expensive road that is the reality of having one of these units in a small shop.
The first couple of years were very difficult , but now the change is a blessing to myself and my crew. What we have planned around the next corner in my humble opinion will keep me going for the rest of my photographic career and without this fancy machine I do not think my plans would be possible.
Five years ago I was content to keep my assortment of enlargers and happily fade into the farm and print fibre for the rest of my life, now I want more.


Bob, i think the original question was phrased in a confusing way. I took it to be a comparison of Ciba printed conventionally with an enlarger vs. various digital printing methods.

My own comparisons were based on traditional enlargements (silver, not ciba) vs. digital ink prints of the same image.

If you're talking about Ciba printed with a lightjet-type machine, then I have no reason to doubt that it would have all the advantages of other digital processes, and possibly some other advantages from the ultra smooth surface of the paper.

tim atherton
12-Sep-2007, 08:49
As well on the longevity issue , I only have the last 15years to go by as I still have prints from the day I bought my machine, they are in good shape, I purchased my first inkjet machine about 5 years ago and need 10 years to be able to say the same thing about those first prints on inkjet.
.

On all these things it's a hit and miss affair. Ciba/Ilford (?) adjusted their longevity ratings for display and normal storage down to something like 14/21 (maybe 28? I don't have the docs here) years I think. Dark storage in archival conditions was still very long (although I think the last recommendations I saw were for sub-zero dark storage).

But you can never tell. Last year I had to deal with a selection of Ciba/Ilfochrome print in an Archive. All were probably made over a 5-10 year period. They were about 20 to 25 years old and while some had been displayed for a period (1-2 years) most had just been stored in a filing cabinet before being acquired. A number were in poor shape with fading and colour shifts (which I had to scan and try and fix...) most were in pretty good shape.

But then you get that with b&w silver gelatin (and other traditional processes) etc.

I've had to go through a new acquisition more than once with photographs going back over say a 70 year period. Some of the very old ones look great, some have deteriorated beyond recovery. Same goes for photographs made in the 50's and the 70's.

Oft times the materials were poor (that goes for the 70's/80's as well as materials from the 1930's, along with the problems of optical brighteners in modern FB papers), frequently the processing was poor, sometimes the storage as good, sometimes it was bad. Mix up a combination of all those and you just can't tell how stuff will fare.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at a box full of old family photographs. There were some from Russia in the 1890's - looking very much like they were taken in the same year or two by the same studio. Some were beyond recovery, some looked really good (though if you put them side by side with originals the day they were made, you would no doubt see significant changes). There were some from St. Petersburg in 1917 that looked like they were taken yesterday and some from Paris in the 30's that looked - well, like they were taken in Paris in the 30's. Usable, but with a definite patina and feeling of "old photographs)...

bob carnie
12-Sep-2007, 10:08
Tim
I think all processes will last longer if very good care is taken at all stages, I now only print cibas is short bursts 3-6 times a year because trying to keep a chemical line over a long period in balance is impossible, When I set up the chems are fresh,and immediately after the jobs are done the processor is cleaned for the next time.
When I print fibres I only use fresh chems, try to be analy consistant with double fix, wash ,hypoclear and wash with after toners to cling to the silver.
I have seen many competitors not following strict methods and eventually fail.

But I do not have a crystal ball on the longevity issue and do rely on the manufacturers claims on such things. It is really a major issue to me and I am always aware of what I and my crew are doing daily. For film we use one shot, specifically as I do not trust replenished lines.

Sometimes I wish I just chiseled out of granite as my form of expression, at least I would be content that what I produce will still be around in a couple of hundred years.
I think this is the major archilles heel of what we on this site and photographers in general have to face with our work.

paulr
12-Sep-2007, 10:19
Sometimes I wish I just chiseled out of granite as my form of expression, at least I would be content that what I produce will still be around in a couple of hundred years.

or else you could switch to the culinary arts, where no one expects your work to last past dinner time.

Kirk Gittings
12-Sep-2007, 10:20
I believe Wilhelm is very PRO digital and set the Ilfochromes to fail on the new test.

Nonsense. Do you know how much credibility it cost Wilhelm to reverse himself on the Ilfochrome tests? It has tainted every test he has done since.

He displayed a great deal of humility and courage in the publishing of that retest, and according to people that I know who know him, as a result, he has been much more thorough ever since.

I for one have never taken him as gospel ever since. His tests are at best a frame of reference (a very useful frame of reference), because accelerated aging tests have never been as accurate as the real thing.

tim atherton
12-Sep-2007, 11:17
jeesh - I hadn't seen this was a thread from 2004 that had been re-animated adn that I'd already posted in...:confused:

rwh
19-Aug-2009, 15:17
I am new to Large Format, shooting landscapes on 4x5 transparency film. I have been impressed with the quality from both inkjet and digital lab prints. Having not seen Cibachrome (ie Ilfordchrome now) prints from large format 4x5 I am interested in hearing opinions on how Ilfordchrome stands up against the new digital prints. I used to make Cibachromes from 35mm. The Archival qualitys aside how does Ilfordchrome compare in terms of resolution, apparent sharpness and colour reproduction to the newer digital prints such as lightjets and LEDs? The reason I am asking this is I am looking at purchasing a used 4x5 enlarger for B&W but may consider doing my own Ilfordchomes.

I have printed cibachrome since 1978 and am always amazed. I have not found the digital equivalent to my discerning eye. Let me explain how I see it, so to speak.

One of the reasons transparencies are so brilliant (apart from the dye chemistry) is the fact that you see them with direct or transmitted light (all print are viewed with reflected light and the quality is quite different). Cibachrome/Iflord has invented a way to increase the reflected light (off the paper) high enough to come closer to that of direct light. If you inspect the emulsion of the paper (white area) under magnification you will see what looks like little white/silver crystals crushed which would explain the more mirror intensity of the light coming off the paper. I have never seem this in digital prints since they are basically ink/pigments laid on to a matrix that will absorb the particles and hold them on a smooth surface.

My experience with digital print is really different from anything in the dark room aside from the CC/RGB terms. I think ciba renders the best color reproduction I've ever seen -- albeit there is still the outstanding discussion of, what is best color reproduction? I've also gotten good (but not as good) color reproduction out of digital printers. It is a matter of practice (and patience), I think.

I have seem very large ciba prints from very large negatives and they are like nothing else. The closest is Dura-Tran prints but those are transmitted-light prints.

For what it's worth

Ralph

PenGun
19-Aug-2009, 17:17
Cibachromes from negatives ... far out man. ;)

Drew Wiley
19-Aug-2009, 18:20
This is an old thread indeed, but the question is still valid. I have a great deal of
experience both printing and displaying Ciba prints, but will have to address this in
two posts. I'll start with the permanence issue. Chromoltyic print technology actually
goes back to the 1930's, and the Ciba commercial process is almost forty years old
now, so is well understood. On the other hand, there is comparatively very little track record with currently offered digital print media. The kinds of quotes you hear
like "five hundred year permanence" are nothing but sheer marketing bull and are
fundamentally either ignorantly or unethically passed along. It is probable at this
point of technology that certain injet systems do have superior display permanence
to Ciba, but this has to be qualified with a lot of unknowns. Ciba is composed of three basic dyes which fade at nearly the identical rate, so color shifts are not evident until the print "crashes" near the end of its display life. Inkjet prints, on the
other hand, are composed of very complex mixtures of colorants. These are selected primarily so that they can pass through the very fine jet array, then for
gamut, and last for permanence. If you study some of the patents for the inks, even
individual inks are sometimes blends which contain dyes which are not exactly first
rate for permanence. In other words, many inkjet prints are going to have significant and somewhat unpredictable color shifts as they age. The type of tests
which Wilhelm conducts are useful but fundamentally naive, since many dyes and
pigments react differently to long-term gradual aging versus high-intensity accelerated aging. From my own experience, his predictions about Ciba are flawed
in the practical sense too. I can definitively state that Cibas don't like UV, either
direct sunlight or halogens. A lot of galleries tend to cook the artwork, and they like
UV lighting because it makes the optical brighteners in B&W prints fluoresce. For
color prints, ordinary tungsten lighting or indirect sunlight is much better. I have had
Ciba prints on constant display in indirect mountain sunlight for over thirty years with no apparent fading. In dark storage they're extremely stable, as is the polyester base. With inkjet you just don't have any comparable track record, but you
do have an enormous financial incentive to steadily improve them in this respect,
so they are indeed the "future" of most color printmaking.

Drew Wiley
19-Aug-2009, 18:56
Cibas get their unique look both from the characteristic of the polyester base and from the intensity of the azo dyes. The only thing that comes close to this is Fuji
Supergloss, which unfortunately is no longer balanced for optical printing, so cannot
equate to the extreme detail potential of Ciba any more. But Ciba has a lot of serious gamut issues, as well as a habit of highlight crossover with aging. That's why good Ciba printers are also highly skilled at color-correction masking. Digital
printing - both inkjet and onto RA4 papers like Crystal Archive is already superior
in terms of gamut. I'm even at the point in making Crystal Archive prints from neg
film like Portra 160VC that is better in terms of overall gamut. But still, when you
put the prints side by side, the Cibas win hands-down for sheer impact. The high
gloss base presents some serious mounting and lighting issues, especially with large
prints, but nothing compares to a Cibas if you are dealing with scenes containing
specular reflections, metallic surfaces, etc. The prints come to life. And the detail
is incomparable. I certainly hope this process stays alive, and would really like to
print some this Fall, but alas, I must practice on my Dye Transfer technique instead!

Renato Tonelli
20-Aug-2009, 11:29
Talk about resurrection of old threads!
I have printed Cibas and Ilfochromes off and on: it's definitely a love-hate relationship. I love the way the prints look, I am not so happy about the corrosive chemistry, it's relatively short shelf life and it is now not as relatively available. Contrasty slides are near impossible to print without masking but - when you get a print just right, it really sings!



I started printing Cibas as soon as the process was made available in the 1970's; In June I printed from a Kodachrome that I first printed in the seventies. It is a candid portrait and the subject's family requested an additional print. I brought print over and saw the first print I had made, hanging on the wall - it did not fade, the colors were as vibrant as the new print.

I hope the process survives simply because it's different.

Paul_thomann@acm.org
23-Aug-2009, 18:43
The Art Institute of Chicago just opened a new wing that has a gallery in it just for contemporary photography. All of the color work was Cibachrome and beautiful, as one would expect in a museum. So for either the photo curators or the artists themselves the answer is still Cibachrome.

Kirk Gittings
23-Aug-2009, 20:23
The Art Institute of Chicago just opened a new wing that has a gallery in it just for contemporary photography. All of the color work was Cibachrome and beautiful, as one would expect in a museum. So for either the photo curators or the artists themselves the answer is still Cibachrome.

Nonsense. I was just there photographing the modern wing and a number of the works in the current photography exhibit were Chromogenic Prints or what is known as C prints popularly. The Alec Soth and Epstein prints come to mind, but there may have been more. Also, I have a number of friends who have sold inkjet prints to the AIC. Their collection is based on the work of what they consider important artists and is not based on the media that they use.

Brian Ellis
23-Aug-2009, 21:52
It is great that we have this great site to compare opinions. I kindly disagree with Julian's last post regarding the skill level of printing in the dark room vs. digital darkroom. We can both agree that you need to use the process that makes you happy and keep you shooting. Which ever process is chosen, it will have it's challenges. Some people think that making adjustments on the computer is the same process as adjustments in the darkroom, I think they are wrong. There is a lot of work and skill that goes into a file before digital output, and the adjustments can be saved once the final is ready. There is no skill after the final process....just hit print when you need a print. With darkroom, you have to use your skill everytime you put a piece of paper on the easil. Everyprint gets the hardwork and skill...and mainly the love to goes into a final piece of art. . . . www.shaneknight.com

If you stop to think about what you actually do in a darkroom I think you'd see that most of the time is spent doing drudge work - setting up, mixing chemicals, maintaining temperatures, jiggling trays, moving prints from one tray to another, putting prints in the washer, taking them out of the washer, rinsing them, putting them in the toner, taking them out of the toner, setting them out to dry, etc. etc. Maybe you enjoy the drudge work and if so that's fine but that doesn't make it "creative" or mean that it requires any particular skill. There's a reason why many photographers who did their own darkroom work hired assistants if they could afford it. The assistants did the drudge work, freeing the photographer up to do the creative work. Unfortunately most darkroom printers don't have the luxury of assistants so they have to do all the drudge work themselves.

Once a print is finalized in the darkroom - exposure, contrast, dodging, burning, color balance for color prints, etc. - making further identical prints of the same negative is just more drudgery if you've kept decent notes. There's nothing that requires any creativity or skill to make a bunch of duplicate prints from the same negative once the first one has been made. I agree that there's no skill in reprinting digital prints either. Hit the "print" button and you're done. Which is the beauty of it. Something that used to be a lot of work with no reward is now done easier (and better) on the computer, freeing me up to do the things that actually do interest me and that do involve some creativity and imagination, i.e. making new prints.

Silver and color prints made in a darkroom aren't "hand made" in any usual sense of the phase. You're using machines - enlargers, timers, processors, washers, etc. - and chemicals to produce a print. All you use your hands for in actually creating a print is the very minimal amount of time spent dodging, burning, flashing, etc. And I see no difference from a "hand made" standpoint between waving a piece of paper under an enlarger light to dodge a print and using my hands to manipulate the dodge tool in Photoshop (just as an example). There is a difference of course but not from a "hand made" standpoint. The difference is that I can use the dodge tool in Photoshop with much greater flexibility and precision and to much better effect than I ever could use any of those hundreds of little pieces of cardboard cut in different shapes that I used to keep in my darkroom.

If you or anyone else enjoys doing darkroom work that's fine. It doesn't have to be justified by saying anything more than "I enjoy it" and digital printing doesn't have to be disparaged in order to justify darkroom work either. I used to enjoy it too until I saw what I could do digitally, which left me dissatisfied with the limitations of making silver or traditional color prints in a darkroom. But I don't think it can be justified on the ground that darkroom prints are any more "hand made" than prints made digitally or that there's a lot of artistic or creative time spent in a darkroom or that there's a lot of skill required to make multiple duplicate prints from the same negative in a darkroom.

paulr
23-Aug-2009, 23:38
Nonsense. I was just there photographing the modern wing and a number of the works in the current photography exhibit were Chromogenic Prints or what is known as C prints popularly. The Alec Soth and Epstein prints come to mind, but there may have been more. Also, I have a number of friends who have sold inkjet prints to the AIC. Their collection is based on the work of what they consider important artists and is not based on the media that they use.

I was just there last week. Kirk's right ... if anything I saw more type-c prints than cibachromes. And there were plenty of inkjets and lambda-type prints. They collect and show whatever kind of print the artist chose to make.

FWIW, I was more impressed by the architecture of the new wing than by most of the photographs.

tgtaylor
24-Aug-2009, 00:46
The assistants did the drudge work, freeing the photographer up to do the creative work. Unfortunately most darkroom printers don't have the luxury of assistants so they have to do all the drudge work themselves.

Once a print is finalized in the darkroom - exposure, contrast, dodging, burning, color balance for color prints, etc. - making further identical prints of the same negative is just more drudgery if you've kept decent notes. There's nothing that requires any creativity or skill to make a bunch of duplicate prints from the same negative once the first one has been made. I agree that there's no skill in reprinting digital prints either. Hit the "print" button and you're done. Which is the beauty of it. Something that used to be a lot of work with no reward is now done easier (and better) on the computer, freeing me up to do the things that actually do interest me and that do involve some creativity and imagination, i.e. making new prints.

Silver and color prints made in a darkroom aren't "hand made" in any usual sense of the phase. You're using machines - enlargers, timers, processors, washers, etc. - and chemicals to produce a print. All you use your hands for in actually creating a print is the very minimal amount of time spent dodging, burning, flashing, etc. And I see no difference from a "hand made" standpoint between waving a piece of paper under an enlarger light to dodge a print and using my hands to manipulate the dodge tool in Photoshop (just as an example). There is a difference of course but not from a "hand made" standpoint. The difference is that I can use the dodge tool in Photoshop with much greater flexibility and precision and to much better effect than I ever could use any of those hundreds of little pieces of cardboard cut in different shapes that I used to keep in my darkroom.

If you or anyone else enjoys doing darkroom work that's fine. It doesn't have to be justified by saying anything more than "I enjoy it" and digital printing doesn't have to be disparaged in order to justify darkroom work either. I used to enjoy it too until I saw what I could do digitally, which left me dissatisfied with the limitations of making silver or traditional color prints in a darkroom. But I don't think it can be justified on the ground that darkroom prints are any more "hand made" than prints made digitally or that there's a lot of artistic or creative time spent in a darkroom or that there's a lot of skill required to make multiple duplicate prints from the same negative in a darkroom.

As true as that may be, it doesn't apply to Lith Prints. Due to the process no two prints are exactly identical and the printer must make the decision based upon his or her own artistic taste of when to pull the print from the developer. In other words, the end result must be "previsualized."

poco
24-Aug-2009, 04:23
Silver and color prints made in a darkroom aren't "hand made" in any usual sense of the phase. You're using machines - enlargers, timers, processors, washers, etc. - and chemicals to produce a print. All you use your hands for in actually creating a print is the very minimal amount of time spent dodging, burning, flashing, etc. And I see no difference from a "hand made" standpoint between waving a piece of paper under an enlarger light to dodge a print and using my hands to manipulate the dodge tool in Photoshop (just as an example). There is a difference of course but not from a "hand made" standpoint. The difference is that I can use the dodge tool in Photoshop with much greater flexibility and precision and to much better effect than I ever could use any of those hundreds of little pieces of cardboard cut in different shapes that I used to keep in my darkroom.



Hell, I print digitally (at least color) and still recognize the absurdity of your argument. "Not handmade in any usual sense of the word?" If silver prints aren't handmade, then neither are the works of a potter creating a set of pots on a pottery wheel. From the pug machine and wheel all the way to the kiln, he's working with a bunch of machines and only using his hands at one step to "minimally" shape the outcome -- not unlike manually dodging and burning. By your definition of handmade, very little would make the cut anymore.

Greg Miller
24-Aug-2009, 05:54
Hell, I print digitally (at least color) and still recognize the absurdity of your argument. "Not handmade in any usual sense of the word?" If silver prints aren't handmade, then neither are the works of a potter creating a set of pots on a pottery wheel. From the pug machine and wheel all the way to the kiln, he's working with a bunch of machines and only using his hands at one step to "minimally" shape the outcome -- not unlike manually dodging and burning. By your definition of handmade, very little would make the cut anymore.

I have always felt that the arguments about the superiority of "hand made" prints to be specious. I realize this ultimately comes down to personal l preference, but there are 2 reasons that I have settled on.

1) Some people claim dark room prints are "hand made" because each print in a series will be slightly different than others, whereas digital prints will all look alike. I find the digital print to be superior in this regard because I would prefer to see a print that mimics the artist's vision most closely over a print that is unique because of the artist's inability to control the process.

2) The idea that a digital printer simply presses a button and a print spits out suggests that anyone (regardless of skill) can make a good digital print. The truth is that many photographers spend countless hours optimizing their image in Photoshop. Generally many more hours than what would be spent on any one wet dark room print. So while that does yield the ability to perform the last step of the process very efficiently, the total hours spend BY HAND optimizing the image in Photoshop may very well in fact be more total hours than the hours spent processing in the wet dark room, especially when considering a small print edition. Is fact that the artist's touch in Photoshop is done on a computer render it less valuable than the very similar artist's touch performed in a wet dark room? I suggest that the answer is no - in both cases the act of dodging, burning, optimizing contrast,... contribute much of what becomes a work of art; and the tools are just a matter of preference and both require much skill, training, and practice to execute well.


I suggest that both processes involve significant amounts of "hand made" effort of the artist, and both require ample amounts of skill and artistry of the artist.

Marko
24-Aug-2009, 06:13
Hell, I print digitally (at least color) and still recognize the absurdity of your argument. "Not handmade in any usual sense of the word?" If silver prints aren't handmade, then neither are the works of a potter creating a set of pots on a pottery wheel. From the pug machine and wheel all the way to the kiln, he's working with a bunch of machines and only using his hands at one step to "minimally" shape the outcome -- not unlike manually dodging and burning. By your definition of handmade, very little would make the cut anymore.

Only some of the alternative printers who mix their own emulsions and coat their own papers could match your definition of handmade and even they are turning to digital negatives and eliminating the "handmade" part of the process being discussed here.

bob carnie
24-Aug-2009, 07:10
All I can add is that when I make prints in the wet darkroom I am absolutely sure they are hand made, as I do wear hand condoms to protect my dainty fingers.
I also know after a long day on the keyboard I do wash my hands.

Don Hutton
24-Aug-2009, 07:23
Only some of the alternative printers who mix their own emulsions and coat their own papers could match your definition of handmade and even they are turning to digital negatives and eliminating the "handmade" part of the process being discussed here.

Marko

I'd disagree strongly that the use of a digital negative in creating an alternative process print elmininates the "handmade" part of the process. In general, it can simplify the matching of the negative to the emulsion being used with much more accuracy and efficiency (for example, for in camera negatives, there is often quite a bit of trial and error to match the correct "mixture" of restrainer and Pd to obtain a matching contrast and correct exposure for the negative when making a palladium print; whereas with a digital negative, the calibration of the negative to a specific mixture of restrainer and Pd as well as exposure, can simply remove some of the trial and error involved in making numerous time consuming tests). In no way would it impact the hand process of coating (or manufacturing emulsion like carbon tissue) the substrate, exposing it and developing it. It still is a "handmade" print (for whatever that is worth - and IMO, that's significant) despite the fact that the original image may not have been made on the same negative from which it was contact printed. A poor printer will only be able to make prints which are just as poor from original negatives as from digital negatives. The printmaker's craft, does not suddenly just "count for nothing" when a digital negative is being used. It has exactly the same importance in the production of the final print.

Kirk Gittings
24-Aug-2009, 08:07
I was just there last week. Kirk's right ... if anything I saw more type-c prints than cibachromes. And there were plenty of inkjets and lambda-type prints. They collect and show whatever kind of print the artist chose to make.

FWIW, I was more impressed by the architecture of the new wing than by most of the photographs.

Paul, Me too. The architecture is stunning. I thought the selection of photographs was rather random and from my point of view did not represent the best of their modern collection. It was an odd show for the grand opening of the museum? Many people I know there are disappointed also by the space allocation to photography. The belief is that the curator was nearing retirement and not up to the political fight for more space.

Brian Ellis
24-Aug-2009, 08:39
Hell, I print digitally (at least color) and still recognize the absurdity of your argument. "Not handmade in any usual sense of the word?" If silver prints aren't handmade, then neither are the works of a potter creating a set of pots on a pottery wheel. From the pug machine and wheel all the way to the kiln, he's working with a bunch of machines and only using his hands at one step to "minimally" shape the outcome -- not unlike manually dodging and burning. By your definition of handmade, very little would make the cut anymore.

If you'll explain to me what makes a silver print "hand made" and why it's any more "hand made" than a digital print I'll be glad to reconsider. But just informing me that my statements are "absurd" isn't going to do the job.

Marko
24-Aug-2009, 08:43
Marko

I'd disagree strongly that the use of a digital negative in creating an alternative process print elmininates the "handmade" part of the process. In general, it can simplify the matching of the negative to the emulsion being used with much more accuracy and efficiency (for example, for in camera negatives, there is often quite a bit of trial and error to match the correct "mixture" of restrainer and Pd to obtain a matching contrast and correct exposure for the negative when making a palladium print; whereas with a digital negative, the calibration of the negative to a specific mixture of restrainer and Pd as well as exposure, can simply remove some of the trial and error involved in making numerous time consuming tests). In no way would it impact the hand process of coating (or manufacturing emulsion like carbon tissue) the substrate, exposing it and developing it. It still is a "handmade" print (for whatever that is worth - and IMO, that's significant) despite the fact that the original image may not have been made on the same negative from which it was contact printed. A poor printer will only be able to make prints which are just as poor from original negatives as from digital negatives. The printmaker's craft, does not suddenly just "count for nothing" when a digital negative is being used. It has exactly the same importance in the production of the final print.

Don,

Clumsy wording on my part. By "eliminating the handmade part" I was NOT referring to the coating and mixing chemicals, quite to the contrary, I called it the only really handmade part. It is the rest of the process, the part that is common to all - the repeating and repeatable part as Brian described it, that gets eliminated through digital processing.

Buying manufactured papers, waving a piece of cardboard over them while exposing them to light and then developing them in manufactured chemicals does not make the print handmade, it only makes it traditional.

This part of the process can be done much more precisely and efficiently through the use of the computer, by waving a mouse instead of the cardboard. And then waving it only once instead for every print. That's what the computers are made for, to automate the repeatable. The creative part remains very much creative, it's just that it gets freed from the manual drudgery, at least the repetitive part of it.

Brian Ellis
24-Aug-2009, 08:55
Only some of the alternative printers who mix their own emulsions and coat their own papers could match your definition of handmade and even they are turning to digital negatives and eliminating the "handmade" part of the process being discussed here.

I deliberately referred only to "silver prints" and "color prints" so as to leave alt processes out of it. I've done quite a bit of gum printing and to me that particular alt process is in some ways more analogous to painting than it is to making a standard silver or color print in a darkroom. But there are so many different kinds of alt processes and so many different ways of making them that it's difficult to generalize (and kind of pointless because the people who usually glorify darkroom printing as some sort of higher artistic calling because the prints are "hand made" aren't for the most part alt process printers anyhow).

Brian Ellis
24-Aug-2009, 09:01
jeesh - I hadn't seen this was a thread from 2004 that had been re-animated adn that I'd already posted in...:confused:

Happens all the time. We have no statute of limitations apparently. But the important thing isn't that you responded before, the important thing is that the responses be consistent. What's really embarassing is to take two diametrically opposite positions in the same thread. :)

Incidentally, it's nice to see you back. I used to enjoy your posts and your blog and have missed both.

SamReeves
24-Aug-2009, 09:21
There's no question cibas are vibrant and are still the cream of the crop. Question is what do you do with the spent toxic chemistry, and the cost of doing it is prohibitive. Digital wins out at the moment IMO.

rdenney
24-Aug-2009, 09:30
2) The idea that a digital printer simply presses a button and a print spits out suggests that anyone (regardless of skill) can make a good digital print. The truth is that many photographers spend countless hours optimizing their image in Photoshop. Generally many more hours than what would be spent on any one wet dark room print.

This is absolutely true. Part of the reason is that with a Cibachrome print, we can adjust the filter pack in the enlarger and the exposure, either for part or all the image and for different parts of the exposure. As much complexity as that allows, it's nothing compared to being able to manipulate tone curves separately for each component color. I've spent hours trying many different alternative approaches, lacking the experience as yet to know which will do what I want most effectively and easily. I've only been doing the digital printing thing for 7 or 8 years, so I'm still a beginner.

Yes, this is an old thread, but since it was started, Tom Till has announced that he will no longer be making Ilfochrome prints, and the stated reason is that the materials are not what they used to be. I'm sure that's been discussed here before (I confess I didn't search)--I don't check Till's website but once in a great while. (He's also sold his large-format stuff and is now doing digital--thr HORRORS!) Is he just slowing down? Does he have enough great images to keep his gallery open in Moab for the foreseeable future and now he does photography just for fun? More to the point of this thread: Has Ilfochrome declined?

Rick "whose digital prints look better than his old Ciba prints, mostly because of execution--experience comes slowly and expensively making Ciba prints" Denney

Kirk Gittings
24-Aug-2009, 09:41
Happens all the time. We have no statute of limitations apparently. But the important thing isn't that you responded before, the important thing is that the responses be consistent. What's really embarassing is to take two diametrically opposite positions in the same thread. :)

Incidentally, it's nice to see you back. I used to enjoy your posts and your blog and have missed both.

Brian, he's not back. His post was from September 2007.

Nathan Potter
24-Aug-2009, 10:32
Yes Brian you're confusing the hell out of me. I've picked up on this thread because I still print using Ilfochrome - I love the medium. But I've also started to print digitally from 35mm to 4X5 chromes.

The whole thread is replete with silly arguments, but as always the points of view are interesting.

Fact is that IMHO a high degree of technical craftsmanship is required in any and all photographic processes in order to achieve the highest quality images. This is generally what we all strive for. However it is about half of the task at hand - the other half being the uniqueness of vision and the capturing of it on film. I am finding that some images are still nicely suited to Ilfochrome renditions while others can fit my vision in Inkjet.

Per Rick Denny above - I think I'm recently having a bit more trouble with doing Ilfochromes than several years ago. I can't put my finger on it yet but can't seem to get the original snap - perhaps it is a muddiness in the print that bothers me. Maybe it is a trend of me choosing lower contrast chromes as originals to avoid the Tmax masking complexities.

BTW per other discussion here on longevity. My oldest Ilfochrome was made in 1974 and displayed in room light for the interim 35 years half in MA and half in TX. It's mounted under sodalime window glass and cropped by the overmat (museum board) around the edge. Removed a year ago the image under the mat shows no visual fading compared to the bulk of the print. Of course this says nothing about what past and current material may be like nor anything about processing variations or display condition variables.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 10:45
Sam - toxic disposal of small volume Ciba chemistry is extraordinarily simple. The bleach
is mainly sulfuric acid, and, if you are using the chemistry one-shot, you simply drain the bleach into a plastic bucket containing a little baking soda, and it's instantly neutralized. The problem comes at a commercial level when significant quantities of the
bleach are stored in replenishment systems, which generally end up requiring some very
fancy plumbing and hazardous permits, plus risk your lungs. What I have is a 30x40
processor on a cart which actually goes outdoors. The exposed print is loaded in the
light-tight drum in the darkroom, while the chemical mixing and processing are done
outdoors on the patio. A lot less irritaing than RA4 chemistry, but still relatively expensive. The supply of Ciba materials is spotty - you need to order well in advance
and freeze the paper itself. The P3 chemistry is fairly stable until it's mixed. I mix only
enough at a time for one print, so it's always fresh and predictable. But I haven't
encountered anything yet regarding a quality issue, so am pretty skeptical about those
kinds of rumors. The point is, this process offers a look which is very,very "photographic". No one is going to mistake it for an inkjet!

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 11:32
Let me follow up with another comment regarding Ciba gamut. It's interesting how
digital technology borrows terminology from the older graphic processes, like "unsharp
masking". But there is a reason for it. When Ciba was in its heyday, folks would mix
low-contrast developers or "pull" process their E6 for lower contrast transparencies
(most current films don't pull well). But these shortcuts rarely produced good Ciba prints because the added step(s) of making masks served not only to reduce image
contrast but to correct the color-reproduction errors inherent to Ciba. Today most of
you do that sort of thing in Photoshop; but with Ciba it can be beautifully done with
silver mask registration. Quite easy once you've learned the basic tricks, and probably
no more time involved than what it spent at the computer correcting images. But you
do need good punch-and-register masking gear, which is a bit difficult to come by
nowdays, especially for anything large than 4X5. I personally find darkroom work relaxing, so am attracted to this sort of process. Masking involves some fairly ordinary
black-and-white film techniques, as far as chemistry and sink gear are concerned,
though there are some distinct tweaks to making it work well. But no need for an
expensive scanner. Films like TM100 or FP4 can be used for masking. No need for the
discontinued Pan Masking film recommended in older literature. So if there are some of
you who don't want to follow the herd down the digital path, Ciba is a beautiful option.

Brian Ellis
24-Aug-2009, 11:43
Brian, he's not back. His post was from September 2007.

Ah, I see. Well maybe he'll come back. He posted to this thread in 2004 and 2007 so he's due to return again in 2010. I'm sure the thread will still be going.

This resurrection of ancient threads seems to be a relatively new thing, I don't remember so many in the past. Maybe one of these days I'll learn to look at the dates before responding.

poco
24-Aug-2009, 11:52
If you'll explain to me what makes a silver print "hand made" and why it's any more "hand made" than a digital print I'll be glad to reconsider. But just informing me that my statements are "absurd" isn't going to do the job.

Then nothing will convince you. You maintain that printing 10 prints individually in a darkroom is the same as scrolling to "10" in the print dialogue box ...and that's self-evidently ridiculous. It's like equating taking the steps to the observation tower of the Empire State to hitting the right elevator button.

Absurd.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 12:09
Then nothing will convince you. You maintain that printing 10 prints individually in a darkroom is the same as scrolling to "10" in the print dialogue box ...and that's self-evidently ridiculous. It's like equating taking the steps to the observation tower of the Empire State to hitting the right elevator button.

Absurd.

i'd agree that the effort involved in the two scenerios isn't exactly equal... but I would agree with Brian that there really isn't much to silver or color darkroom printing, once the first print has been resolved. There's a *great* amount of creativity and skill necessary to resolve that first print.. but a good darkroom printer will document that.. and the mechanics of the process after that are really something that can be done with very little thought. take paper out of box, (either use right paper, or dial in color for proper contrast), push button. wait. take paper, dip into dev,stop, fix. possibly toner. wash. dry

i could teach an assistant with very little experience, but with the ability to follow directions that in the same amount of time i could teach them to boot my computer, bring up photoshop, load a file, load paper, and push print.

neither of those tasks are rocket science, and neither require much creative skill. What does take the skill is bringing an undeveloped negative to the point where this can be done (as well as a digital file). I'd spend days working a negative/print to where i want it... as well as many, many hours of testing and calibration prior to that to really understand the materials. There's nothing different in that as to what i do with a digital file and environment.

Brian Ellis
24-Aug-2009, 12:31
Yes Brian you're confusing the hell out of me. I've picked up on this thread because I still print using Ilfochrome - I love the medium. But I've also started to print digitally from 35mm to 4X5 chromes.

The whole thread is replete with silly arguments, but as always the points of view are interesting.

Fact is that IMHO a high degree of technical craftsmanship is required in any and all photographic processes in order to achieve the highest quality images. This is generally what we all strive for. However it is about half of the task at hand - the other half being the uniqueness of vision and the capturing of it on film. I am finding that some images are still nicely suited to Ilfochrome renditions while others can fit my vision in Inkjet.

Per Rick Denny above - I think I'm recently having a bit more trouble with doing Ilfochromes than several years ago. I can't put my finger on it yet but can't seem to get the original snap - perhaps it is a muddiness in the print that bothers me. Maybe it is a trend of me choosing lower contrast chromes as originals to avoid the Tmax masking complexities.

BTW per other discussion here on longevity. My oldest Ilfochrome was made in 1974 and displayed in room light for the interim 35 years half in MA and half in TX. It's mounted under sodalime window glass and cropped by the overmat (museum board) around the edge. Removed a year ago the image under the mat shows no visual fading compared to the bulk of the print. Of course this says nothing about what past and current material may be like nor anything about processing variations or display condition variables.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

If I'm the "Brian" you're referring to, and if you care to tell me which of my various statements is confusing the hell out of you and why, I'll be glad to try to clarify.

Marko
24-Aug-2009, 12:47
Then nothing will convince you. You maintain that printing 10 prints individually in a darkroom is the same as scrolling to "10" in the print dialogue box ...and that's self-evidently ridiculous. It's like equating taking the steps to the observation tower of the Empire State to hitting the right elevator button.

Absurd.

The amount of creative effort that goes into each is the same. The amount of mindless, repeatable drudgery is not, that's why computers where invented in the first place.

What is both absurd and ridiculous is all the time and effort being wasted in threads like this instead of using it for something creative.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 12:52
The amount of creative effort that goes into each is the same. The amount of mindless, repeatable drudgery is not, that's why computers where invented in the first place.

What is both absurd and ridiculous is all the time and effort being wasted in threads like this instead of using it for something creative.

for creative, visit the alt process thread at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=51078 and look at gandolfi's work.

jim

poco
24-Aug-2009, 13:51
The amount of creative effort that goes into each is the same. The amount of mindless, repeatable drudgery is not, that's why computers where invented in the first place.

What is both absurd and ridiculous is all the time and effort being wasted in threads like this instead of using it for something creative.

I was responding to Brian's claim that a hand pulled print is no more "hand made" than one spit out by a computer. Which is more "creative" is a different and much broader question.

You might spare yourself the time stolen from your crush of creativity by READING comments before responding to them.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 13:58
Jim - you're in a dream world if you think color printing is like running a xerox machine.
Quality work involves not only things like very specific dodging and burning, but often
very complex masking sequences. I won't bore you with what goes into my Ciba prints,
but Chris Burkett has posted some comparable sequences on his website. The
processing per se is about 1% of the workflow. Even a good C print involves a lot
more than mere repetition, unless you're a 1-Hour drugstore printer. Then you've got
the really involved techniques like DT or color carbon. You know the saying, "garbage
in, garbage out". Quality takes effort. One of the better digital color printers I know
(Joe Holmes) recently told me that he spends an average of over thirty hours on
Photoshop before he makes his first print, and that it is more work than when he did
Ciba! (But faster than DT, which took him two years to make eleven prints). So everything is relative, and not all of us crank out mere commodities. There are basic
skills you can learn in a day, but then spend a liftetime fine-tuning. I can teach someone to process a black-and-white print in five minutes, but then, why do people
spend their entire lives fussing with improving their prints? Doesn't matter to me if they choose darkroom, digital, or hybrid; quality always takes skill and experience.

rdenney
24-Aug-2009, 14:19
The time and effort of making a print is a rabbit hole, it seems to me. Photographs do not get bonus points from viewers for being easy or difficult to make.

Good results from difficult processes increase the personal satisfaction for some, and, if so, require no further justification (or vigorous defense). They also earn the respect of fellow photographers. But then, so do good prints from the inkjet.

I do know photographers who believe the difficulty of the process somehow imbues special qualities to the print. If it's true for them, then it's true. But I can't think of how one could argue that it is a universal truth.

One think no inkjet printer can do is make up for not including the right thing in the image, not pushing the button at the right time, and not have a vision for the finished product that tells a compelling story. I've sure seen lots of work that missed all three of those marks but whose maker proudly stood by boasting about the monstrously difficult process required to make it.

Do people pay more for a Cibachrome than for an inkjet? Maybe. I don't know. But if they do, it's because photographers have sold them on it being better. If inkjets are more efficient to spit out once the initial process is completed, then the photographer should be able to sell them at reduced price and still make money.

As for me, I judge a print by how it looks. I have made inkjet prints that rival the Ciba prints I have hanging on the wall (made by far better photographers than me) in terms of color, vibrancy, and clarity. If the product was always a disappointment, I would remain dissatisfied and do something else--I'm a hobbyist and my own satisfaction is paramount. But I don't measure that satisfaction in blood loss.

Rick "seeing a lot of religion in these discussions" Denney

Nathan Potter
24-Aug-2009, 14:39
Happens all the time. We have no statute of limitations apparently. But the important thing isn't that you responded before, the important thing is that the responses be consistent. What's really embarassing is to take two diametrically opposite positions in the same thread. :)

Incidentally, it's nice to see you back. I used to enjoy your posts and your blog and have missed both.

Hey Brian, my confusion was in reading your post about Tim Atherton being back. Then Kirk pointed out he's not back. So these old resurected posts are what can be confusing. I also miss Tims posts. :) :)

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Marko
24-Aug-2009, 14:54
I was responding to Brian's claim that a hand pulled print is no more "hand made" than one spit out by a computer. Which is more "creative" is a different and much broader question.

You might spare yourself the time stolen from your crush of creativity by READING comments before responding to them.

"Spit out by the computer" or dredged up by an assistant, what's the difference?

Buying factory-made silver paper and dunking it in factory-made chemicals does not fit any reasonable definition of "handmade".

Seems like you could benefit yourself from READING comments before qualifying someone's opinion as absurd and/or ridiculous.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 15:27
Marko - 90% of the digital prints I look at stink. When Ciba was the rage, I thought a
lot of them stank too. Before that, most C-prints looked sloppy, and even most dye
transfer prints were miserable, with misregistration, bleeding dyes, and lint marks
all over the place. Which just goes to show, you can make either beautiful or miserable prints with any medium you choose. But what takes the most skill is learning
how to see and caring how to print. And that is why someone who actually did superb
work in an older darkroom processes like Ciba or dye transfer is likely to be the same person who does outstanding work if he switches to digital. It's all in the mentality.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 15:34
i'm not sure where the xerox machine came from... however..

I've done professional ciba printing in the past, for others as well as for myself. As I said before, the hard part was the first print.. making the masks.. contrast, color as well as dodge/burn masks (these were made if the print required more than rudimentary hand dodge or burning) Most photographers wanted (demanded) that their editions of a print be identical... and if there were differences, those were reprinted. I kept a file for each print i did with a complete set of masks and dup chrome, along with printing instructions (lot # of paper as well as color filtration). The goal is to make it easier with future prints.. not to re-invent the wheel for every print. If you or anyone else does very complex dodging and burning for each print of a run.. then that's your choice to make it more difficult. In printing from the computer, I can do the same thing... .each time i make a print, delete all layers and start over from scratch with the raw file. The difficulty would be the same.

I assisted in a custom lab (Limited Edition Photographics , in Santa Cruz) where custom Ciba, silver and 4 color carbon work was done. I did a run of Cibachrome prints for Cole Weston while working there. I understand fully the complexities of color printing, and the expectation of consistent output.

I also understand the 'zen' of darkroom work. It's a very meditative process to work thru a set of prints... the choice of making each and every print in an edition difficult is a personal choice.. but not a necessity. The lifetime work is in getting the final print realized from the initial source (be it negative, chrome or raw file). The excitement comes in seeing the outcome of that processes. Frankly i've never understood editions of 50 or 100 of a print.. i'd get bored of printing the same one more than a few times. That in itself should limit the availability of any given image.



Jim - you're in a dream world if you think color printing is like running a xerox machine.
Quality work involves not only things like very specific dodging and burning, but often
very complex masking sequences. I won't bore you with what goes into my Ciba prints,
but Chris Burkett has posted some comparable sequences on his website. The
processing per se is about 1% of the workflow. Even a good C print involves a lot
more than mere repetition, unless you're a 1-Hour drugstore printer. Then you've got
the really involved techniques like DT or color carbon. You know the saying, "garbage
in, garbage out". Quality takes effort. One of the better digital color printers I know
(Joe Holmes) recently told me that he spends an average of over thirty hours on
Photoshop before he makes his first print, and that it is more work than when he did
Ciba! (But faster than DT, which took him two years to make eleven prints). So everything is relative, and not all of us crank out mere commodities. There are basic
skills you can learn in a day, but then spend a liftetime fine-tuning. I can teach someone to process a black-and-white print in five minutes, but then, why do people
spend their entire lives fussing with improving their prints? Doesn't matter to me if they choose darkroom, digital, or hybrid; quality always takes skill and experience.

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 15:36
The whole "spit out by a computer" rhetoric comes from people who haven't worked with the process. I've spent years in the darkroom, sometimes tweaking and beating my head against the wall for days to get a silver print right ... and I've spent days at the computer doing the same with ink prints.

In general, ink is faster, because you have more control and you have this amazing what-you-see-is-almost-what-you-get concept, which reduces trial and error. And the working conditions are more civilized, which may or may not be a plus for you.

But the work is remarkably similar when it comes down to the fundamentals: taking materials that are very much part of the physical world, and trying to bend them to fit your esthetic vision.

I've now done two bodies of work with inkjet technology. One was black and white, using Piezo inks, which i did myself. Another was color, which I hired a friend to output for me. Both projects were work! Just like toiling in the darkroom, only different.

Cibachrome? It looks like Cibachrome. I find it an interesting material specifically because it has such a unique look ... very bright, very saturated, very luminous, very stylized. It's just wrong for any work that I've done. But if it's right for your work, there may be no better choice. This is the only significant issue: does ciba have the right qualities for your work? Or does some other material?

Marko
24-Aug-2009, 15:45
Marko - 90% of the digital prints I look at stink. When Ciba was the rage, I thought a
lot of them stank too. Before that, most C-prints looked sloppy, and even most dye
transfer prints were miserable, with misregistration, bleeding dyes, and lint marks
all over the place. Which just goes to show, you can make either beautiful or miserable prints with any medium you choose. But what takes the most skill is learning
how to see and caring how to print. And that is why someone who actually did superb
work in an older darkroom processes like Ciba or dye transfer is likely to be the same person who does outstanding work if he switches to digital. It's all in the mentality.

Drew,

For once here's something on which we can comfortably agree.

All I'm saying is that calling either of those handmade doesn't make any sense.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 15:47
Marko - 90% of the digital prints I look at stink. When Ciba was the rage, I thought a
lot of them stank too. Before that, most C-prints looked sloppy, and even most dye
transfer prints were miserable, with misregistration, bleeding dyes, and lint marks
all over the place. Which just goes to show, you can make either beautiful or miserable prints with any medium you choose. But what takes the most skill is learning
how to see and caring how to print. And that is why someone who actually did superb
work in an older darkroom processes like Ciba or dye transfer is likely to be the same person who does outstanding work if he switches to digital. It's all in the mentality.


100% in agreement... and it goes both ways.. I've seen technically perfect prints of images that should never have left a camera. the real magic happens when both avenues meet.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 16:06
Jim - sorry for my presumption. But I should qualify that at times I do make Ciba prints
which would be virtually impossible to reproduce - things that involve risky and lucky
maneuvers mid-process, especially with the bleach cycle. And I have one 3x40 hanging
in my own house where the dveloper was allowed to chill at one end of the drum yet
remain at optimum at the other, producing an uncanny glow based on relative saturation rather than density. It was very, very tricky (and lucky). I also age my
paper, so that subtle crossover in the highlights will go a particular direction. That is
why it would be extraordinarily difficult for anyone else to print my work (or for me to
make anything resembling a "limited edition" run). I rarely print more than one or two
of anything. And now I'm fumbling with new tweaks on dye transfer printing, which is
an especially welcoming process for unique techniques. It can all be fun; and if it seems that I'm often negative about digital, it's only because it's the standard kind of
printing nowadays, hence susceptible to the biggest crowd of sloppy printers. The
medium itself is never the culprit - it's neutral.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 16:19
yes... sloppy printing has always been here.. it's just a *lot* more prevalent now that everyone has their own '1 hour photo mart' on their desktop. I can't count the # of Cibachrome's i've seen done from labs with no masking.. completely blocked up shadows or blown highlights... the contrast looking nothing like the original. I've never been able to print a transparency and match it without at least a contrast mask in place.

Now you end up with green b/w prints, color prints so saturated and overcooked in photoshop. I don't believe this is the fault of the medium.... it's just doing what the operator says.

If you ever get a chance to see a b/w inkjet print from Richard Lohman http://www.richardlohmann.com/ or tom mallonee http://www.tommallonee.com/ do so.. they are masters of both craft and art with inkjets (richard was a very very good platinum printer before moving to inkjet)




Jim - sorry for my presumption. But I should qualify that at times I do make Ciba prints
which would be virtually impossible to reproduce - things that involve risky and lucky
maneuvers mid-process, especially with the bleach cycle. And I have one 3x40 hanging
in my own house where the dveloper was allowed to chill at one end of the drum yet
remain at optimum at the other, producing an uncanny glow based on relative saturation rather than density. It was very, very tricky (and lucky). I also age my
paper, so that subtle crossover in the highlights will go a particular direction. That is
why it would be extraordinarily difficult for anyone else to print my work (or for me to
make anything resembling a "limited edition" run). I rarely print more than one or two
of anything. And now I'm fumbling with new tweaks on dye transfer printing, which is
an especially welcoming process for unique techniques. It can all be fun; and if it seems that I'm often negative about digital, it's only because it's the standard kind of
printing nowadays, hence susceptible to the biggest crowd of sloppy printers. The
medium itself is never the culprit - it's neutral.

Jim collum
24-Aug-2009, 16:24
... and i'm *very* happy to see people continuing to work the darkroom/lightroom processes. I don't think they'll ever go away... people still shoot wet plate (take a gander at Kerik's webpage sometime (http://www.kerick.com) , print platinum, 4 color carbon, gum. There are thread over at APUG on coating your own film and paper. Digital isn't going to kill the chemical processes.. just push the die-hards into creating even more.

jim (still has his condit punch system) collum

Kirk Gittings
24-Aug-2009, 16:27
If you ever get a chance to see a b/w inkjet print from Richard Lohman http://www.richardlohmann.com/ or tom mallonee http://www.tommallonee.com/ do so.. they are masters of both craft and art with inkjets (richard was a very very good platinum printer before moving to inkjet

I would add to that extraordinary list, George DeWolfe (http://www.georgedewolfe.com/)

poco
24-Aug-2009, 17:31
The whole "spit out by a computer" rhetoric comes from people who haven't worked with the process.


I spent 7 months of 4-6 hour days printing my first show on an Epson last year, so spare the presumptuous, arrogant shit about knowing who has or hasn't "worked the process."

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 18:38
I spent 7 months of 4-6 hour days printing my first show on an Epson last year, so spare the presumptuous, arrogant shit about knowing who has or hasn't "worked the process."

I'm sorry to have hurt your feelings, poco.

Maybe the distinction is this: some people equate the work of printing with the mechanical acts of burning and dodging, putting sheets of paper in this tray and then that one, etc. etc..

I happen to like doing that stuff, but let's be honest: you could teach a monkey to do it. The skill and the craft--the rewarding part for me--is in determining what the print values aught to be, and finding a way to get them there.

Once that part is done, it doesn't make much difference besides convenience if prints 2 through 10 are made by me slugging it out with trays, or by an assistant doing the same, or by my finger clicking a print dialog box.

I actually like your analogy of walking up the stairs of the empire state building vs. pushing the elevator button. Walking the stairs is good exercise, but not especially interesting. Anyone reasonably fit can do it. It doesn't take the vision and skill of, say, climbing a new route on El Capitan. Given that it's essentially tedious, I'd understand someone pushing the elevator button and saving their time and energy for more rewarding activities.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 18:56
Thanks for the links, Kirk. Fun seeing what other people are doing, though the web no substitute for seeing actual prints. Reviewing some of the ancient posts on this
thread I'm a bit amazed at the misinformed stereotypes, especially regarding issues
of permanence and acutance. I've become convinced that most people don't know
how to use an enlarger correctly, or how to enhance apparent acutance with masking (duh - where did the term "unsharp masking" get stolen from in reference
to "sharpening" in the first place?). To this day I've never seen a single digital print
with the kind of detail I expect routinely in a Cibachrome. Again, not a knock on the
digital processes, but an observation of strengths and weaknesses of particular media. Right now I'm goofing around with DT, which is about the last horse to finish
when it comes to fine detail, but the first horse across the line for gamut and sheer
transparent vibrancy of the dyes. (Don't hang those in the sun - won't win there
either!)

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 19:14
I've become convinced that most people don't know
how to use an enlarger correctly, or how to enhance apparent acutance with masking (duh - where did the term "unsharp masking" get stolen from in reference
to "sharpening" in the first place?).

I think those are two separate issues. I think I know how to use an enlarger, but I've never learned how to do unsharp masking. The one person in the world I knew who did this was the graphic artist at the lab where I used to work. She'd work with the ciba printer on some expensive custom jobs (usually ones involving problem chromes). It's such a convoluted operation that I decided to devote my energies to learning how to focus, and to chosing my film and lenses wisely.



To this day I've never seen a single digital print
with the kind of detail I expect routinely in a Cibachrome. Again, not a knock on the
digital processes, but an observation of strengths and weaknesses of particular media..

I'd wager it's an observation on the particular prints you've seen.

rdenney
24-Aug-2009, 19:59
To this day I've never seen a single digital print
with the kind of detail I expect routinely in a Cibachrome.

I agree. I have some Cibas from well-known photographers--prints that impress me deeply--but you are right, their level of detail differs from digital prints. At least at the 16x20 size from 4x5, it appears to me that the digital prints have more.

Rick "calling it like he sees it" Denney

Greg Lockrey
24-Aug-2009, 20:13
I agree. I have some Cibas from well-known photographers--prints that impress me deeply--but you are right, their level of detail differs from digital prints. At least at the 16x20 size from 4x5, it appears to me that the digital prints have more.

Rick "calling it like he sees it" Denney

...(((:eek:)))...(((:eek:)))...(((:eek:)))...

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 21:06
This whole debate of digital vs. cibachrome makes no sense. Cibachrome is a material, digital is a way of working with information ... a print can be one or the other, or neither, or both!

The idea that one of these--digital workflow or the cibachrome material--will ever be the limiting factor in how detailed a print looks, is unlikely.

There will always be some bottleneck in the resolution of fine detail. It will usually be some factor unrelated to what we're talking about here. In my color prints that are printed as inkjets, the bottleneck is my soft negatives (made with a vintage lens). In my black and white 4x5 work, printed small, in silver or in ink, the bottleneck is the human eye.

Taking a step back, it would help to be more specific about "detailed" means. Are we talking about how much detail is visible at normal viewing distance? Or through a loupe? Or are we talking about image clarity and sharpness ... the subjective qualities that most people are really talking about. These issues are only slightly related to each other. I've seen prints that resolve over 40 lp/mm (visible through a loupe), which look muddy and soft under normal viewing. And digital prints that are Nyquist-limited to 14 lp/mm that have better sharpness and clarity than a contact print made from the same negative.

Drew Wiley
24-Aug-2009, 21:13
You need to compare apples to apples. A lot of transparencies are sharper than they
were twenty or thirty years ago. My own prints are a lot sharper than they were then too. Paper is simply incapable of holding the same level of fine detail as polyester. I am friends with some of the best of the best in digital printing - really
nitpicky types who charge serious money for their advice. And I live in the epicenter
of this kind of technology. I also have friends who have invested literally millions in
the very best of both optical and digital equipment (I'm talking enlargers in the six
figure range, and digital equipment far more expensive than that). They'd strongly
take my side in this question, because they know the limits of both approaches. I'd have to flip the coin over, and bet that you've never seen a really good Ciba. Beautiful prints can be done either way - I don't really care, but no sense prolonging a misconception either.

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 22:26
Are you talking about detail that can be seen with a loupe or with the naked eye?

If you're talking about a loupe, then I have no doubt that ciba would be a bit better than standard glossy paper and quite a bit better than cotton art paper.

But all these substrates can show finer detail than anyone can see with the naked eye. This can easily be demonstrated theoretically or with a simple hands-on test. Which means that differences in perceived sharpness are a factor of contrast at specific spatial frequencies ... easy to control with software, interesting to control with traditional masks!

Greg Lockrey
24-Aug-2009, 22:47
Are you talking about detail that can be seen with a loupe or with the naked eye?

If you're talking about a loupe, then I have no doubt that ciba would be a bit better than standard glossy paper and quite a bit better than cotton art paper.

But all these substrates can show finer detail than anyone can see with the naked eye. This can easily be demonstrated theoretically or with a simple hands-on test. Which means that differences in perceived sharpness are a factor of contrast at specific spatial frequencies ... easy to control with software, interesting to control with traditional masks!

Oh come on Paul.... you really aren't looking at a print unless you have your nose smearing the glass and a 10x loupe jammed into your eye. :rolleyes: :D

paulr
24-Aug-2009, 23:13
Oh come on Paul.... you really aren't looking at a print unless you have your nose smearing the glass and a 10x loupe jammed into your eye. :rolleyes: :D

I admit I like doing that!

But I started noticing that no one else looked at my prints like that. Ever.

Greg Lockrey
24-Aug-2009, 23:18
Same here.... I noticed that you have about 12 seconds of attention for a good print and 20 seconds for a great one. The observer tends to stand 2.5 times the diagonal from the piece. ;)

bob carnie
25-Aug-2009, 06:57
I think I fit into this group.

I have printed Cibas for 25 years, and indeed made complicated masks right down to highlight separation holding masks.
I have worked on Durst 8x10's *still do* and now Durst Lambda. ( In total over 1 million dollars of gear that today I would be lucky to get 5% on the dollar.
I can think of only a few labs or operators who have daily seen the difference of traditional enlarger Cibachrome and Digital Cibachromes*Lambda,Chromira or Lightjet*
In Canada it would be Jeff Wall and Elevator*my lab*
In USA it would be Hance Partner's , Lamont Imaging and a few others .
In total maybe 10 technicians.
We stopped doing Cibachromes last year *enlarger and lambda* due to lack of demand, spotty service by the manufacturer, and cost of keeping the line going.
A digital cibachrome in my opinion totally blows away a enlarger cibachrome, due to controls in PS.
If one is doing extreme masking for the transparancy and multiple hits on the enlarger , and if all this can be kept clean during the process then an enlarger cibachrome matches a excellent digital cibachrome.

I have looked at Cibas for years(with a 10xloupe) and there is something to be said for the Cibachromes paticular colour pallette, but they certainly are not sharper than lets say Fujiflex or metallic *Kodak , Fuji* colour prints.
There is a weight to them that I like and a range of subtle colours that is hard to reproduce with any other process... but that could be said about any printing process.
There is something about Photo Rag Inkjet colour gamut that is compelling and nearly impossible to get with other media.

In fact we bought the Lambda specifically after we ran a series of cibachromes on our enlargers and a friendly labs Lambda, and to our eyes could not see the difference.
I am pretty much a print sniffer and what I see today from various output is pretty awesome and what a great time we are living in.





You need to compare apples to apples. A lot of transparencies are sharper than they
were twenty or thirty years ago. My own prints are a lot sharper than they were then too. Paper is simply incapable of holding the same level of fine detail as polyester. I am friends with some of the best of the best in digital printing - really
nitpicky types who charge serious money for their advice. And I live in the epicenter
of this kind of technology. I also have friends who have invested literally millions in
the very best of both optical and digital equipment (I'm talking enlargers in the six
figure range, and digital equipment far more expensive than that). They'd strongly
take my side in this question, because they know the limits of both approaches. I'd have to flip the coin over, and bet that you've never seen a really good Ciba. Beautiful prints can be done either way - I don't really care, but no sense prolonging a misconception either.

paulr
25-Aug-2009, 08:08
I am pretty much a print sniffer and what I see today from various output is pretty awesome and what a great time we are living in.

Cheers to that!

Drew Wiley
25-Aug-2009, 09:19
Ciba can indeed be printed digitally, though a bit of resolution is sacrificed from large
format originals, using either Chromira (bit of a grainy appearance) or Lightjet, etc.,
but nowadays is less convenient than doing something analogous on Fuji Supergloss,
which is easier to correct for gamut, cheaper, and RA4 compatible. With polyester you
get something very analogous to film itself, with resolution limited almost at a molecular
dye-cloud level. Optics can potentially resolve things very, very fine. Ever hear of a
microdot? Now in the real world most people don't need or expect that level of detail,
and most of our large-format originals have depth of field issues, but probably also
certain areas that are truly in focus and contain a lot of detail. I am certainly not
exclusive in my opinion of what prints should look like - I often print poetic 35mm shots
where nothing can be said to be highly detailed - but one of the options I do like is to
make extremely detailed color prints which are almost like contact prints. I can tell the
difference and so can my potential clients. At this stage of the game, no type of digital
printing or paper medium can achieve the same look. Approximate it, yes; make the
correction of gamut and contrast much easier, yes; but match it, no. So I intend to
make use of Ciba while it's still somewhat around. That's all. It would be nice to make
a few converts, so that this option doesn't die off completely from too narrow a market
- but photography is inevitably about constant change and adapting to it!

Tyler Boley
25-Aug-2009, 09:37
The current state of the art of inkjet printing, by it's very nature, can not resolve original image information to the paper as well as the best light sensitive print materials, including cibachrome. How noticeable this is to the critical viewer's eye, and which is considered more satisfying depends on many many things outside the scope of the thread.
To each their own, Chris Burkett has achived an impressive look, subtable to his vision, at a very high level of expertise. Subjectively, I've never responded to Cibachromes, and find the new print materials absolutely gorgeous. Still, we have far to go to match the pure photographic outstanding performance of our light sensitive traditional craft. If you can skip the the bottom of this arduous read, you will see a Ciba sample to compare to the inkjet output earlier in the write-up.
http://www.custom-digital.com/2008/08/rip-work-pushing-photographic-quality-with-ink/
Unfortunately it was a very old print, made with an an enlarger with all the potential variables involved with that. Wish I had a contact print to compare for the post.
I'm making no judgment here, just passing on info relevant to the thread.
Tyler

rdenney
25-Aug-2009, 12:32
Approximate it, yes; make the
correction of gamut and contrast much easier, yes; but match it, no.

I think all would agree. But is this a relevant measure? If that's the look you want, then nothing else will do. I wonder if sometimes we fall in love with a look, based on familiarity or mutual struggle or great mastery, and apply a value to that look based solely on that emotional bond. Yes, clients can be persuaded to share that bond if the photographer is good at expressing it.

(I'm not talking about alternative processes, where a particular artistic objective is being sought by a particular manipulation of a particular process.)

Based solely on the look of the print, I suspect most people, even sophisticated print buyers, would look for other aspects, such as the power of the image itself. Does that power depend on the difference between a state-of-the-art Ciba print and a state-of-the-art Inkjet print? I have a hard time believing that.

We spend an awful lot of time trying to prove that digital prints can be just like traditional prints. We end up giving up the flexibility that the digital process gives us. An example is a recent large black-and-white print that I've been working on for the last couple of weeks. I spent a little time trying to emulate the exact look of selenium toning using ABW, when I realized that this was a fruitless exercise. It occurred to me that the exact look of selenium toning was not that important to me, even when I made traditional prints that I toned in selenium. I toned them mostly to make sure I didn't have any green in the tones, and also to add richness to the blacks. There are a lot of tints that will do that, not just the specific result of traditional selenium toning. I ended up adding a bit of magenta, and that fulfilled my actual requirements without duplicating the design of the traditional process. When we focus on the end rather than the means, we might find that for many of our purposes (even our most critical purposes), the digital prints get us closer to our visualization and therefore provide significant advantages over traditional prints, and that the aspects of the unique look of a given traditional process that we can't match do not actually trace to our requirements.

Rick "whose inkjet prints seem sharper than enlarger prints, but not based on how they look under a loupe" Denney

Drew Wiley
25-Aug-2009, 12:42
Well, Cibas look "different", and distinction is always a plus in a crowded market. But I'd
like to switch gears a bit and ask if any of you have worked with the newer Fuji Supergloss polyester material. I was printing on it directly from negs. They claim it is no longer analog compatible, and available only in rolls. But I don't see much difference
except that the toe is steeper and overall gamma a tad higher. This would be an improvement in my opinion, because it was too flat before, even for optical enlargement (compared to Ciba), and I would prefer something amenable to masking.
Since I print using narrow-band additive filters, I don't see what the difference would
be, and why it couldn't be printed on my enlargers. I know that they altered the curve
shape a bit to get deeper blacks, but that's fine with me. Beautiful medium in its own
right. Doesn't static mount well, but a thicker base than Ciba, and with the capacity
for the same extraordinary detail (with large format you generally don't have to worry
much about tranny versus color neg in terms of sharpness, especially with 8x10!).
Any INFORMED opinions out there?

rdenney
25-Aug-2009, 12:58
If you can skip the the bottom of this arduous read, you will see a Ciba sample to compare to the inkjet output earlier in the write-up.
http://www.custom-digital.com/2008/08/rip-work-pushing-photographic-quality-with-ink/

To me, a relevant quote from that blog posting is this:


it’s a completely different animal from the Cibachrome, and intended to be so.

Just as with any medium, it's more suited to our purposes in some ways and perhaps less suited in others, depending on what our purposes are.

In your first comparison, comparing the red-to-black grad with RIP to one using an Epson driver, the grain of the dithering process was indeed more pronounced with the Epson driver. I note that the display on my monitor is 5x enlargement of the print. When I moved back to five times my close inspection distance to restore the magnification to the original, I could no longer tell the difference. In fact, the RIP grad seemed to show a little banding that the Epson grad didn't, though that could just as easily be my monitor, of course.

In the comparison between the scan and the Ciba print, you describe the Ciba print (despite the acknowledged weakness of the comparison) as more "photographic".

That reminds me of a comparison I have made between a Yosemite Special Edition print (Tenaya Creek and Dogwoods) to a fine reproduction in Yosemite and the Range of Light. The reproduction was sharper at close inspection distance (unaided, of course). So, I looked again with a magnifying glass to figure out why. The half-tone screen was creating false edges around the dogwood leaves that were specular highlights in the print. At some point, the screen was unable to make a smaller dot, and a jump in tone occurred between that and paper white. The photographic print still showed gradation there, but it took a magnifier to see what was happening. To the unaided eye (even a photographer's eye), the reproduction was crisper. (This, by the way, is why I think the best inkjet prints seem to have more detail than Cibas--they don't when inspected with a loupe, but they seem to at unaided close inspection distance.) There is no doubt that the Special Edition print is more "photographic". Of course, our inkjet prints have far finer dithering patterns than even the high-quality duotone screening used in Yosemite..., so this effect will be less apparent. When comparing my own prints (not Ciba, but other traditional enlarger prints), a 5x loupe isn't enough to see what's going on.

Rick "inspecting his navel" Denney

bob carnie
25-Aug-2009, 13:00
I am printing a ROM show right now on this material, very beautiful material to work with , I actually find it thinner than Cibachrome stock.
I have been using it from day one on our lambda.
I see no reason for you not printing on Enlargers with this paper. I buy it in 30inch by 200ft rolls at $550 a pop.
We find this material hard to mount on any substrate but diabond*aluminum* does a very nice job with cold mount backlight adhesive.
Since I use the Lambda for this , I am not concerned about the source original.

QUOTE=Drew Wiley;501005]Well, Cibas look "different", and distinction is always a plus in a crowded market. But I'd
like to switch gears a bit and ask if any of you have worked with the newer Fuji Supergloss polyester material. I was printing on it directly from negs. They claim it is no longer analog compatible, and available only in rolls. But I don't see much difference
except that the toe is steeper and overall gamma a tad higher. This would be an improvement in my opinion, because it was too flat before, even for optical enlargement (compared to Ciba), and I would prefer something amenable to masking.
Since I print using narrow-band additive filters, I don't see what the difference would
be, and why it couldn't be printed on my enlargers. I know that they altered the curve
shape a bit to get deeper blacks, but that's fine with me. Beautiful medium in its own
right. Doesn't static mount well, but a thicker base than Ciba, and with the capacity
for the same extraordinary detail (with large format you generally don't have to worry
much about tranny versus color neg in terms of sharpness, especially with 8x10!).
Any INFORMED opinions out there?[/QUOTE]

Drew Wiley
25-Aug-2009, 14:06
Thanks, Bob. I've mounted Supergloss with MacTac products onto Ultramount and well
sanded Gator. This product should also have better light-fading characteristics than
Ciba, and I've got a pretty good technique for making precision internegs, though I
generally print RA4 papers directly from negs. I figure this product will still have a niche
if Ciba bites the bullet, and offer a lovely alternative.

bob carnie
25-Aug-2009, 14:51
Drew
You may want to give the Dibond a try, it really is beautiful and you do not get the orange peel effect associated with most other mounting products.

Here is my take on why the Manufacturers say the new papers do not work on enlargers.
It took me quite a while to figure this one out.
The biggest market for RA4 products are digital exposures rather than enlarger. To make these papers work on the different machines a lot of work was done fine tuning the responses of the papers to the lasers and led's.
You have probably noted that RA4 paper under an enlarger is significantly faster than the same product of 10 years ago. The sensitivity is much faster to fit into the lasers needs.
Therefore they say it does not work, basically to cover their asses when people complain about the changes, but I think they do work under enlargers, basically much faster than ever before.
These changes are going on as more units are coming onto the market place, thetas, chromiras, epselons, lambdas, lightjet and the list goes on.
I also believe this is why Fuji will not offer a profile for their papers as these changes to the emulsions, are ongoing and if a lab is not updating their profiles then eventually funny things will happen and the manufacturers do not want this responsiblity.
Bob

Thanks, Bob. I've mounted Supergloss with MacTac products onto Ultramount and well
sanded Gator. This product should also have better light-fading characteristics than
Ciba, and I've got a pretty good technique for making precision internegs, though I
generally print RA4 papers directly from negs. I figure this product will still have a niche
if Ciba bites the bullet, and offer a lovely alternative.

mandoman7
25-Aug-2009, 17:30
Not to prolong the beating of the dead horse (or maybe I am, actually), but I did do a fair amount of printing with cibachrome (1980's) and I really didn't like the process. I went to the workshop (Ilford?) and made masks, printing my own work mostly, but for a few clients as well, so it wasn't for lack of trying.
Sunlit subjects were a nightmare, with color shifts happening when burning and dodging, not to mention uncontrollable contrast. I don't mind hurdles, but I've got to really like the end result to want to bother.
If you happen to shoot simple, color saturated compositions, then you might get lucky. But otherwise, you were faced with losing major parts of your original image's tonality, invariably, and you paid high prices for the materials to boot. I hated the process before the digital print was available. I can still conjur that smell :(

Drew Wiley
25-Aug-2009, 19:49
Well, the whole point is to find a medium that suits you personally, both in terms of
vision and skill preferences. I just happened to get into color when Ciba was rounding a corner and it has been an exceptionally happy marriage, even though we
are both getting a bit old. But I also learned a lot of technical tricks, so if it exists on
a transparency, I can probably print it convincingly on Ciba. The younger generation
will learn a completely new bag of tricks, which will understandably be more
computer related. But as I've implies many times, its not the only color process I
practice, or the best solution for every kind of image. And it isn't the healthiest thing to fool around with in a poorly ventilated room!

mandoman7
25-Aug-2009, 23:01
Well, the whole point is to find a medium that suits you personally, both in terms of
vision and skill preferences. ...

Agreed.

Brian Ellis
26-Aug-2009, 00:25
Then nothing will convince you. You maintain that printing 10 prints individually in a darkroom is the same as scrolling to "10" in the print dialogue box ...and that's self-evidently ridiculous. It's like equating taking the steps to the observation tower of the Empire State to hitting the right elevator button.

Absurd.

That's exactly what I'd equate it with. Get to the same place in the Empire State building either way but one way takes a lot of physical effort (no creative effort, no mental effort, just a lot of physical work) and the other doesn't. Same with making 10 identical prints from the same negative after the first one has been made - you can exert a lot of manual labor (no creative effort, no mental effort) and do it in the darkroom or you can hit "10" in the printer dialog box. Same result (more or less) except that one required a lot of time and physical effort and the other didn't. But just because a lot of physical effort is involved doesn't mean there's any great skill required or that there's anything creative about it. And if you think there is then I'd guess you've never had to make 10 identical prints from the same negative in a darkroom.

I can't really figure out what exactly your position is but you seem to be saying that making 10 identical prints from the same negative in a darkroom somehow requires more skill or more creativity than putting "10" in the printer dialog just because more physical effort is involved. Which is, to use your favorite word, absurd.

MHMG
12-Sep-2009, 17:48
Gotta keep this thread alive! Working on a Guiness book of world records, aren't we?

Actually, I want to benchmark the Cibachrome (aka Ilfochrome) process in the Aai&A light fade database using modern test methods. I will have to go digital-to-Ilfochrome, and yes, it's a bit concerting that some think the product has changed for the worse, but it's all there is now, so I've got to live with it. I'm asking for suggestions on a good lab or labs, reasonable prices, good work, that I can send an sRGB digital file (ie., a standard Aai&A light fade test target) for output onto Lambda, or Lightjet, or both. Like Kodachrome, Ifochrome's days are probably numbered, but now is the time to get some updated information on light fastness.

thanks,

Mark
http:/www.aardenburg-imaging.com

TheSnowmonkey
24-Sep-2012, 08:31
Gotta keep this thread alive! Working on a Guiness book of world records, aren't we?

Actually, I want to benchmark the Cibachrome (aka Ilfochrome) process in the Aai&A light fade database using modern test methods. I will have to go digital-to-Ilfochrome, and yes, it's a bit concerting that some think the product has changed for the worse, but it's all there is now, so I've got to live with it. I'm asking for suggestions on a good lab or labs, reasonable prices, good work, that I can send an sRGB digital file (ie., a standard Aai&A light fade test target) for output onto Lambda, or Lightjet, or both. Like Kodachrome, Ifochrome's days are probably numbered, but now is the time to get some updated information on light fastness.

thanks,

Mark
http:/www.aardenburg-imaging.com
----------------------------------------------------

hmm well thought I would revive this thread, since there was a request to keep it going, mind you not sure if any of original posters are around. It is though I guess now an academic question since the Company that split decided to no longer market Cibachrome or Ilfochrome as it was later known...great shame I have always had my transparencies printed on this..first I use to send it out, then I learnt how to do it when I joined a photographic club. There were only two of us printing and when I left and returned 5 years later I found the machine had been gathering dust and needed cleaning before I could use it again. I worked both with 35mm and 6x7 transparencies and printed on sizes up to 20x16 which I would use for exhibition prints. I loved the richness of the colors, and the quality was second to none. For me I have yet to see a digital image that can match it..and I was saddened to learn ( only today) that it has been discontinued, as I now have a 5x4 camera and wanted to work with slides and print them.
I am searching on line to see if anyone has a second hand machine and a stock of paper that might have been stored so it's still useable., though Im not holding out much hope. Just as a parallel, if you take IMAX film personally I think nothing beats it for color, detail and sharpness if you look at it's digital version for me there is no contest . A true IMAx film can be blown up the size of 10 double decker buses and still retain sharpness, a digital version blurs at edges...going back though to the original point, I don't like the colors from an image that has been digitally scanned or printed..even now I find it can't cope with colors such as red, burgundy just confuses it. You never got that with Cibachrome , plus a Ciba print lasted forever...how long will a scanned print last ? Different topic but wish they had not discontinued Kodachrome...a Kodachrome transparency printed on Cibachrome paper was a marriage made in heaven. them were the days.

Leigh
24-Sep-2012, 09:43
I made a series of glossy Cibachrome prints over 20 years ago that was used in an outdoor display about light pollution.

It was recently taken down, and I compared those prints with my file copies. I could see no difference.

- Leigh

Drew Wiley
24-Sep-2012, 13:41
Cibas definitely didn't do well under UV. I've tested them under all kinds of conditions, some
deliberately abusive. I know how to make one fade in a week. The nice thing is that all three of the dyes fade at approx the same rate, so color shift doesn't occur until you're
right on the edge of the cliff in terms of print life. If there's no direct sunlight or other strong UV source like halogen, or in dark storage, they hold up wonderfully. But the consensus that current Crystal Archive prints have better display permanence is probably
true, at the expense of dark storage ultimate permanence (eventually yellowing due to
residual couplers). With inkjet the question is way more complex, because you've got so
many ingredients in those inks, some of which are dyes inferior to those in Ciba. Nothing is
truly permanent. Even the Sphinx in Egypt is a mess compared to what it originally was.