Pop

[imagedowser]

Has anyone started to fill the vacuum left by Kentmere? Is it likely there will be no commercial availability of printing out paper?

[D. Bryant]

I don't think POP will be coming back. If I remember correctly Kentmere was the last manufacturer making POP. The world wide demand just dropped too low to make it economically viable to keep producing this paper. There may have been other reasons involved such as environmental laws which may have adversely impacted production costs.

[Pete Watkins]

Don't blame Kentmere. POP was dropped by Harman after they had taken over Kentmere. Ilford made the stuff 80 years ago, Kentmere made it until recently but it seems that Harman cannot produce the stuff. Make your own conclusions.
Pete.

[Philippe Grunchec]

Some people transform "normal" printing paper into POP: how do they do that?

[Jimi]

There's a thread over on APUG, http://www.apug.org/forums/forum55/60378-pop-printing-out-paper.html, but the short of it is that you can dip paper in for example 2% solution of silver nitrate and re-expose as POP.

[kirkmacatangay]

Where can you source the 2% Silver Nitrate?

[D. Bryant]

Don't blame Kentmere. POP was dropped by Harman after they had taken over Kentmere. Ilford made the stuff 80 years ago, Kentmere made it until recently but it seems that Harman cannot produce the stuff. Make your own conclusions.
Pete.
I wasn't blaming Kentmere or Ilford either for that matter. I recall reading that Ilford shuttled the product because it wasn't profitable to continue to make it, partly because of some enviromental regulations (if I'm remembering correctly). At any rate it's gone for whatever the rationale.

A 2% percent solution of silver nitrate is simple to make. Dissolve 2 grams of silver nitrate crystals in 100 ml of distilled water or larger volumes using that same proportion of solvent and solute.

Don Bryant

[Charlie Strack]

Where can you source the 2% Silver Nitrate?

Photographer's Formulary has silver nitrate for sale.

[jnantz]

that link also has examples of images
that are not made from a dip of silver nitrate
but saltpeter .. one a 10% of sodium nitrate,
the other example was made from
a 10% solution of potassium nitrate.

i find it interesting that chemistry often
used in making munitions ( collodion and saltpeter )
are also moonlighting as photographic chemicals.

[Pfeiffer Duckett]

I wonder if anyone has tried this with azo?

I'm going to try it with potassium nitrate just as soon as I can get to Home Depot.

[Daniel_Buck]

no more POP? I was kind of hoping to try that sometime later when I had time :-\

[IanG]

Don't blame Kentmere. POP was dropped by Harman after they had taken over Kentmere. Ilford made the stuff 80 years ago, Kentmere made it until recently but it seems that Harman cannot produce the stuff. Make your own conclusions.
Pete.

Ilford still still made POP paper in the 1980's it was not sold to photographers but was included in education packs for children to make sun prints.

Ilford didn't deliberately drop POP, but the emulsion is corrosive and can't be handled & coated by Ilford's modern equipment & coating line. An additional problem is that making POP contaminates any plant & machinery that comes into contact with it with Silver Nitrate which causes a major Health & Safety issue. It was for this reason that Ilford didn't subcontract manufacture to another EU coating plant.

It's been publicly stated that the cost of R&D to manufacture an alternative is too high in light of the extremely low sales.

Ian

[jnantz]

i just ordered some potassium nitrate from
my local pharmacy and will see what happens.