film separation for printing Experience Workers

[bob carnie]

Is there anyone here that is currently working in the industry making film seps, or aware of this workflow, I am wanting to ask a bunch of film and process questions of someone with hands on experience.

[sanking]

Is there anyone here that is currently working in the industry making film seps, or aware of this workflow, I am wanting to ask a bunch of film and process questions of someone with hands on experience.

I have heard that Delta Graphics in Oregon prints imagesetter negatives for color carbon and for other printing processes. Andy Jones is apparently the person to contact about this. www.deltagraphics.net

Sandy

[bob carnie]

thanks Sandy, I am most interested in recommendations for film to go in my Lambda.

[interneg]

I take it that means you want a con-tone, not a halftone film? Answer is likely to be Agfa Graphics, though their Alliance film selection seems to be largely halftone films for CTF filmsetters. I also presume you want a film that's cheaper than O+ or Ortho 25? Kodak used to make 'Gravure Positive Film' which sounds exactly like what you are after, but it's not been made for 20+ years from what I can tell. I've been working through a few boxes of the stuff & there's not a lot of difference between it & O+. Historically, I understand that the separations for offset, letterpress etc were largely made as screened separations, so it would have been halftones from the start. For various reasons, rotogravure used a continuous tone film for making the positive, in a similar manner to how you would work with hand wiped gravure. Today, a great deal of rotogravure uses direct laser engraving of the cylinder - thus why the film materials have fallen off the market.

[bob carnie]

Yes Contone or a film that will accept laser exposure like Ortho 25, and must be in current production and come in rolls... am I asking for the missing link?

[Pere Casals]

A film that would be ideal is Kodak 2238 color separation film, but it's only sold in 35mm and 70mm. If an end of a master roll could be located at Kodak...

It's ISO 6 so perhaps ideal for a lambda. Some shot it at 25.

[bob carnie]

I am looking for 20 inch , 24 inch or 30 inch roll stock by 100ft or more

[Drew Wiley]

Is there any way you could use RA4 transparency material monochrome? I realize it might not build sufficient density for your purpose. You want to contact Jim Browning at Digital Mask. He uses a Chromira, but at least it's analogous, and he has contacts abroad using laser exposure. But most big UV work involves old imagesetter supplies and halftone. I assume you are already aware of those folks. Bill Nordstrom, the godfather of modernization of color pigment printing, might still be alive,
and was one of the first to adopt Lightjet. Last I heard, he was operating a big alt operation near Santa Cruz, CA. If anyone on earth knows how to secure appropriate bulk film, he does.

[bob carnie]

I considered Ciba clear and then Fuji Clear, when I had a RA4 machine in operation, but as you probably know that film is extreme cost and is not permanent therefore my lust for silver film rolls.

[sanking]

Bill Nordstrom, the godfather of modernization of color pigment printing, might still be alive,
and was one of the first to adopt Lightjet. Last I heard, he was operating a big alt operation near Santa Cruz, CA. If anyone on earth knows how to secure appropriate bulk film, he does.

I saw some of Nordstrom's LightJet prints at a conference in Santa Fe in the early 2000s, after he quit working with his pigment color EveryColor process. Had not heard about the alt project, if anyone has more information please post.

Some details about his work with EverColor in Twentieth-Century Color Photographs: Identification and Care, by Sylvie Pénichon, published 2013 by the Getty.

Sandy

[Drew Wiley]

Sandy, he's been inventing various alt tweaks his entire career. Evercolor was just one of them. The last one I've heard about is large scale thermal printing on metal.

[Drew Wiley]

I dunno, Bob. If it were me, I'd be looking to adapt something modern, like inquiring about acquiring a master roll remnant of Arista Ortho Litho II. It's thin, but inexpensive and has the highly desirable property of a tiny amount of texture, designed to both suppress Newton rings and facilitate tight drawdown under a vac blanket. Unfortunately, I had to shift gears and break off con-tone experiments this past Spring. I'll probably start up again after the rains seriously begin. Since you're scanning anyway, you can adjust profiles and use an ortho product. I am personally interested in double-neg technique contacts. The actual color separations from color negs (interpositives) are done on TMY100, which is miserably expensive in 8x10. So it would be nice to have an affordable substitute for the subsequent final separation negative. Most of the con-tone work on this film so far seems to be rather amateurish and far from ideal in terms of developer choice. The nice thing is that it's available in a lot of cut sheet sizes for experimentation at least. So I don't know if this idea will turn out promising or not. But since I already keep on hand 8x10 sheets for hard highlight masking, it's going to be tempting to see if I can stretch its range of applications or not. The tricky part is the first step anyway - the actual separations on pan film. After that, things should be
highly predictable, provided the characteristic curve can be tamed.

[interneg]

Yes Contone or a film that will accept laser exposure like Ortho 25, and must be in current production and come in rolls... am I asking for the missing link?

What you want is Kodak 4133 (https://www.photogravureinformation.com/description). TMX in something fairly vigorous might not be far off - problem is the UV blocker on the poly base version.

[Drew Wiley]

Correct. TMX is not a good idea for UV printing; but it doesn't come in giant sizes anyway, even if that kind of option were affordable! But Arista Ortho Litho is engineered for UV exposure. It's now version 3; but the version 2 which I have on hand should be suitable for ballpark testing. It's about 3:1 more sensitive to blue light than to green. The problem is that everyone working with it con-tone can afford near-miss results, and have figured out how to use highly dilute Dektol for single images. Matched color separations impose a far more strict protocol of exposure and development. I work with CMY dyes, and don't have experience with CMYK, but will eventually get there. Kodak 4133 died off at the end of the Mesozoic, same time as the
dinosaurs. So I wouldn't count on that option!

[sanking]

Sandy, he's been inventing various alt tweaks his entire career. Evercolor was just one of them. The last one I've heard about is large scale thermal printing on metal.

Looks like Nordstrom started this printing company back in 1997.
http://www.laserlightprints.com

Sandy

[Drew Wiley]

Sandy, I suspect Nordstrom has a lifelong itch to explore and develop new color media, even if the commercial viability is often a long shot. I was stuck indoors today. Even though the closest horrible fire is 200 miles away, the wind flow is reverse and the smoke is blowing here to the coast. So I pulled out some lith sheets just to test my dubious advice to Bob. In this case, a 6x9 color neg was turned into 8X10 RGB interpositives, and today, those in turn into the respective RGB negatives by contact onto 8x10 Ortho lith film. I don't have time to fine tune the protocol yet, or tricolor print it, but it's apparently quite doable. In a couple of days I'll make a black and white print from the blue separation just for fun. But the thought of working on ultra-thin lith film in big roll sizes, with its horribly finicky response to dev temp and concentration at very short development times, well, that would be intimidating.