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Thread: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

  1. #21

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Quote Originally Posted by agregov View Post
    You certainly don't need a lightjet to make mural c-priints. Any standard 4x5 to 8x10 enlarger with a color head should be able to make murals. You just need a drop table and focusing extension. That said, exposing c-paper in a darkroom is not easy. Without things like a vacuum easel and/or a space where you don't have to get on your knees to layout roll paper in the dark, making making exhibition quality analog c-prints can be tough. It's just too easy to ding the paper at some point between exposure and feeding into a processor. I've done C murals myself and it was a painful process.
    Is that what is demonstrated in this video?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-3IBi5tC08

  2. #22

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    To avoid creasing in the handling stage, a good practice to leave on the roll, secure edge, and carefully roll out material on flat easel, then cut while still flat (one at a time)...

    Always allow material to nicely roll up and follow it's natural curve, or those clamshell marks will appear somewhere on print... (This includes RC/fiber/ink jet paper...) Like unrolling a big old map...

    Go with the flow...

    Steve K

  3. #23

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Fujifilm suffered a ransomeware attack. Fujifilm did not pay the ransom demand. They shut it down, then re-loaded from back up.. done.
    https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...omware-attack/

    Properly run large organization that understands operations, logistics, value of technology and the folks who work there.

    Bernice


    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    I'm having a hard time finding a preferred Fuji wide roll paper. Also apparently a pandemic issue.

  4. #24
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Bernice - that's not why I having trouble with Fuji paper. It is manufactured in large quantities. But distribution itself is not even for one thing, and any kind of shipping and warehousing is dramatically influenced by pandemic issues at this time. One of their important manufacturing sites is in the Netherlands, which has been hit particularly hard. What that recent ransom ware event did is de facto increase their overhead for awhile. Their backup files were not of the nature that could be instantly re-loaded, but took a lot of effort and involved understaffing. So that will affect wholesale pricing, just as they formally announced.

    My personal issue is all the hoops I have to jump through to get certain roll products because they are trying to protect specific lab niches. That is common practice in numerous industries, and deliberately tries to weed out the little nuisance guy. I've been on both sides of that tug-of-war one time or another, so understand. But I'm hardly competition in any volume sense. I'm merely after top quality paper which they restrict. They have distribution policies in position favoring large volume roll paper users who not only preferably use their own big laser printing devices with integral service contracts, but only their own proprietary tweaks of chemistry. Closed-loop markets. But technically, whatever they claim is required in terms of proprietary chemicals or special software can easily by mimicked or even improved via optical enlargement and small-volume process timing, especially by someone as well equipped as me.

    Their latest flagship product is basically a clone of their superb Fujiflex emulsion onto more affordable and not quite as shiny RC paper base. But I'll probably just forget the whole issue and go back to Fujiflex per se. It's just harder to display well in really large prints due to its very high gloss. I do know how to handle secondary reflections, but it involves very expensive framing glazing. Some images look wonderful in that super-glossy "Ciba" kind of look, some don't. But I can always revert to Super-C for the latter. And when I get a chance, I'll follow up on Greg's posted lead.

  5. #25

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    One of their important manufacturing sites is in the Netherlands, which has been hit particularly hard.
    Hit hard - how, with what? I have no signs whatsoever that they were hit harder than the convenience store at the corner. Probably less hard, in fact.
    Furthermore, while supply of Kodak color papers here in Europe has been non-existent for at least 18 months now, there are no signs of anything comparably bad with Fuji. If you have any issues with supply of Fuji materials in the US, it's likely to be a pure logistics problem and not related directly to the Dutch manufacturing plant - which, as far as I can tell, is running normally. Albeit of course with color paper and flexo plates being under market pressure anyway, with focus of this plant shifting towards medical membranes etc.

  6. #26
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    koraks. I used to specialize in distributing product lines from the EU, especially Germany. It is a radically different ballgame at the moment, and this is unquestionably due to pandemic issues. Orders are now running at least six months behind. A marketing entity is only as good as its weakest link. It doesn't matter if the breakdown occurs at the supply end, as a labor shortage, within manufacturing itself, or in the phase of shipping and warehousing elsewhere. For example, here in the US, even though there's a significant backlog demand for new cars and trucks, everything is on hold at a number of plants simply because they can't get the electronics chips they need in time. That's all it takes. One literally little thing missing. I have a Dutch family member with dual citizenship, and even he couldn't get into the Netherlands for months as his brother was dying. Didn't even make it in time for the funeral. Everything was on lockdown.

  7. #27

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Drew, with all due respect, I'm Dutch, I live in The Netherlands, my professional career + PhD research have all been about high-tech supply chains & buyer-suppleir collaborations, the FujiFilm plant you talk about is about 1 mile from my home...and the situation here wasn't different from anywhere else in the EU. My question was about how the Fuji plant was hit 'particularly hard' as you put it. It wasn't hit any harder than anything else over the past 18 months.

  8. #28
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    Hit no harder than"Anything else" includes just about everything from the EU. I wasn't singling out the Fuji plant per se, if that is what you thought I meant. Just re-read what I previously posted. If things can't even get out of port on a timely basis, and onto trucks, it makes no difference if the plant itself is operating normally or not. Most plants aren't anywhere near normal. Nothing of this nature can affordably be sent in volume to distribution warehouses inter-continental by mere air parcel shipment. Truckers are stretched very thin regardless. Just getting a reply to a phone inquiry concerning availability has taken months more than usual here. That's not normal, though things are slowly improving. And I can't believe things are less a mess there. The supply chain is crippled at the moment. Everyone knows that, and that's all I was referring to. All kinds of things are hard or impossible to get at the moment. A phD thesis can't change that fact.

  9. #29

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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    My wife still prints with a Lambda for the few artist clients still getting C prints. She said they haven’t experienced supply issues yet, but I imagine they stock a lot of the same emulsion.

  10. #30
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: How is Large Digital C-prints made?

    It gets complicated because certain products might have in fact been available in warehouse in significant volumes all along. But at lesser turnover rates under present conditions, the inventory might not be as fresh. It takes me quite awhile to use up a big roll, so I want to start out with as fresh a batch as possible. But like I already hinted, just getting straight answers has been a headache. And I don't want just any product. I'll probably have to segregate the negatives I want to turn into full gloss Fujiflex prints from the ones better suited to softer RC presentation, and just print one category at a time.

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