Kodak Professional Endura Premier Paper

[tgtaylor]

Will,

FedEx just delivered the paper.

Thomas

[frotog]

I've been printing with the Fuji papers in the darkroom for the past 4-5 years on either a Colex or Omnipro processors. Unfortunately, I don't yet have experience with Premier (love to try it!). But I have used Kodak Supra Endura. You can't get the Supra Endura any longer but I'd guess it will likely be in a similar ballpark as Premier. My experience:

• Fuji Crystal Type II - This is the thinest weight paper of the three I have used--easier to ding, though not much a problem for 16x20 and under. It's the least contrasty of the bunch and skews a bit on the blue/green side of things.
• Fuji Crystal Type C - This is a thicker weight paper than the Type II. It's more contrasty and I've noticed it picks up magenta/reds stronger than the Type II.
• Kodak Supra Endura - This is the thickest weight paper of the bunch. It's also the most contrasty with very strong, vibrant colors. Makes the Fuji papers look like they came from a different planet.

What do I personally prefer? If I had a paper cutter at home, I'd probably buy rolls of Type C and use that for most of my printing. It's a nice contrasty paper, straight forward to color correct by sight (as opposed to using a color analyzer) and readily available on B&H. But cutting paper is a pain. So, I primarily use Type II. I personally found the Kodak colors too strong for my taste and more difficult to color correct than the Fuji papers. I would have loved to print on the old Supra but I came to color analog printing just as it was being discontinued.

What I hope people just starting out printing RA4 don't take away from this thread is that Type II is shitty paper. Because it's not. In fact, I work with advanced analog printers who prefer it as it offers a flatter look to their images. The irony in the whole "minilab" part of this discussion, is that if these labs weren't still around and doing decent business, there'd be no paper available at all. The paper manufacturers couldn't do enough business from the art crowd to justify continued manufacturing.

I've printed some spectacular images (IMHO) with Type II. I'm glad it's still around in cut sheets. As long as I have access to a Colex and Ominpro, I'll happily continue printing with it.

Your report on your findings is woefully out of date. You won't be printing on Supra Endura or Fuji Super C as they were both discontinued about five years ago (see here for a discontinuance notice on Super C...https://dgs.oce.com/PrinterSupport/L...diaTargets.htm.
Their replacements, Endura Premier and Fuji type CN, both digital papers, behave in a completely different manner altogether. I suggest you try them, reevaluate and report back.

I'm always baffled by people choosing paper thickness as a priority in their critique of a photo paper. Why would anyone equate thickness with quality? Besides, what does it matter once the image is mounted, framed, tipped into a portfolio or whatever? No, the criteria should be about how well the paper reproduces color. And given that the prevailing state of the art in RA-4 is laser exposure, no paper comparison is complete without factoring in how good a digital print looks on this media. Once an "advanced analog printer" sees the results from a high end scan outputted on Fuji Super type CN or Kodak Premier, the comparison print on the lowly Fuji CA II does indeed look "shitty" in comparison. If the "advanced analog printer" can't see these differences then... well then maybe you should reconsider the use of the word "advanced". Of course if you're a "master printer" like Drew Wiley and prefer to spend your time making contrast masks and color masks in order to make world's sharpest and most authentic c-prints ever then you could just skip that comparison and rest assured that you know best and all these pixel farming hipsters are just lazy sell-outs who don't know better.

BTW, the bulk of the RA4 market is display, not minilab output.

[Drew Wiley]

The most accurate color reproduction I've ever gotten with ANY color medium so far has been on Type II with the latest Kodak color neg films, OPTICALLY printed. In fact, this is specifically why I went with CAII, besides the alleged improvement in fade-resistance. I'm specifically trying to reproduce very tricky gray-greens and golds that were previously unthinkable with color neg film (and typical of our Calif landscapes to those who want something other than candy-colored postcardy stereotypes), and so far I'm very encouraged with the results. I suspect this kind of color reproduction is attainable with dye transfer printing from certain chrome films (all now discontinued), but am just a beginner in that particular process, with a limited amount of supplies. There are some distinct color temp issues with respect to exposure to begin with, and masking is not all that difficult (compared to Ciba and esp dye transfer) - and not in fact always necessary - but it is distinctly different in the specifics. That's the sad thing. If people can't do something sitting on their butt punching buttons they seem to think it's impossible. Hell... the Zone System is harder to learn than this, and making fine black and white prints of comparable size probably more expensive! Some of the
best digital printers in the world live around here, even within walking distance of me. They know me and that I'm not bluffing.

[frotog]

Gray-greens and golds! That's so specific! ...and so difficult to reproduce. And you say that your gray-greens and golds are not candy colored? Holy shit! How'd you do it? By printing on fuji's budget, low silver-content, bottom of the line minilab paper, CA-II? ...With a nuclear powered, custom made, additive color enlarger head? Simply amazing! Those best digital printers in the world who print within walking distance of you (and who know you) must be in awe of your darkroom wizardry, if not your forum group participation. Show us a scan or a repro shot! (that is, of course, if you're not bluffing). ...after all, curious minds love to know.

[Drew Wiley]

Frankly, the previous poster is on "ignore", as he should be. This kind of nonsense only appears if I unfortunately do not log in first, and has about as much relation to
reality as some of those old Bigfoot threads in the lounge.

[tgtaylor]

Here's an old work print I ran across last night of an image shot on Fuji color negative and printed on Fuji CA (before the digital optimization). I'm having major computer problems (time for a new desk-top) and this is a shitty scan (the print is smooth and well balanced).



Filter pack was 0,25,25 and the exposure was 12 seconds @ f11.

Thomas

[tgtaylor]

Got a few empty 11x14 paper boxes w/ the lightproof wrapping in good condition? I need about 5.

Thanks,

Thomas

[mups]

Hello, I'm color printer in Paris France and I want to tell this little story, in case it can help other color printers running into the same problems...

About five years ago, after working the same way since 1996, I had to switch to rolls because Kodak stopped selling sheet boxes (at least here in France).
Soon after, I had to switch to Fuji Chrystal Archive because the only Kodak papers available were aimed at digital printers and had way too much contrast for enlarger use (especially for proof sheets). For the following four years, I occasionally went nuts trying to get rid of a weird magenta haze in some of the prints (roughly 20%, the ones with medium tones, grays, roads, concrete, etc...). I asked other printers what could be causing that, some said it was because of the Fuji color balance, some said it was because of the lower contrast of the Chrystal Archive. Basically most of them didn't know and it was no big deal for them...

It got to a point where I couldn't anymore stand the stress of always doubting my chemicals, my eyes, my enlargers, or my skills, so I decided to find out for sure. I exposed a few strip tests of a problematic image and processed one myself. Two others were processed by big labs also using Kodak chemicals and the last went to a lab using Fuji. The results speak for themselves :

OK, now I know you can't process Fuji paper in Kodak chemicals (and vice versa) so let's switch to Fuji chemicals. New problem, sometimes I have very little work (and therefore use very little chemicals) and the cool new developer in two parts only exists in packs to make fifty litres, way to much for me. And their old dev in three parts doesn't suit the rate of "machine bath renewing" (?) I have.

In some of the other labs I visited for the test, I noticed they were using Kodak Premier, a paper that didn't exist when I switched to Fuji. So I gave that one a try and, bingo ! More contrast than the Chrystal Archive but not enough to be a problem, and no freakin' magenta issue...
In march, I bought a couple of rolls and painlessly started working on a big Nirvana exhibit.


Next job, Alaska. These were smaller prints that I worked on in batches of fifteen to twenty photos. Strip test them all for a good part of the day, and when I'm happy, print them all. Compared to the tests, the prints all came out with an extra 2CC of magenta, extremely obvious with all that snow in the pictures. After trying a few things, like turning off the lights on the Pictochrom remote, etc... I finally found out that this Premier paper behaves very differently whether you process it immediately after exposure or if you wait a few minutes. I tested Fuji paper for that latent image problem but could barely tell which strip had gone in the machine instantly and which had waited ten minutes. And I don't remember having that problem with the sheets of Supra Endura I was using five years ago !
So I'm thinking again about switching to Fuji chemicals, as I like the low contrast of the Chrystal Archive and the thickness of their more contrast paper called DPII.

PS to the first part of my story : in the nineties, I was mainly working for fashion photographers and I remember bitching about those who used Fuji films, that didn't allow me to get the cold pale skins they all wanted. The face were always so red that I had to smear the whole image with cyan, it was uuuuugly. Now I understand that it was probably the same problem : those Fuji films had been processed in Kodak chemicals, and the two companies have a different way of cooking the recipe of the C41 and RA4...

[tgtaylor]

Hi Marc,

Thank you for your input. Am I correct in assuming that you would recommend processing each sheet of Premier immediately after exposure to prevent a latent shift? I am awaiting delivery of RA Developer Starter will be printing on Premier and CA later this week.

Thomas

[mups]

Thank you for your input. Am I correct in assuming that you would recommend processing each sheet of Premier immediately after exposure to prevent a latent shift?

Yes and/or no. What's important is to process your full sheet as fast (or slow) as you've processed your strip test. That's the only way to have a consistency. Because part of the problem is that, when I run tests on 15 photos, the first ones stay in the box for maybe 20mn and the last one, only 20s. And from that time depends the magenta drift...
For now, what I'm planning on doing is to keep on testing in batches, as I've always done, and when it's time to print, launch a last series of tests on which I add 1 or 2CC of green for "rush compensation" and throw those instantly in the machine. Fine tune them and go !