Deepblue, very nice. Keep up the good work.
Deepblue, very nice. Keep up the good work.
Cibachrome was nice in the respect you could just look at a chrome atop a lightbox and have a good idea of where to go from there. But Supergloss is a better color balanced medium and a lot easier to handle (that is, once you've cut it down from a big heavy roll - quite a chore in the dark with my painful hands). Just as stunning, and way faster printing speed than Ciba. More affordable, but not like chromogenic RA4 RC papers per se; definitely something deluxe instead, worthy of a significantly higher price point. Overall, printing from color negs is easier than Ciba was, unless one starts with a chrome and needs to generate a precision interneg first, which can involve a lot of work. I've got a couple of those in enlargers right now for this afternoon's session - a 4x5 as well as an 8x10.
I've set aside numerous images more appropriate for a lower sheen RA4 paper. Perhaps there will be better paper availability next year. I've used Super C in the past in various sheens for large prints; but I need to make some small ones too. I'd like to try Fuji Maxima, but can't get straight answers about it at the moment. No problem. I have plenty on my plate already.
Mark Sampson - Thanks to. There is no longer any analogue lab in the world. Only in our darkroomsExposure directly from the negative
There are quite a few "analog" optical enlarger labs in the world; they just might not be where you expect them. Not everyone can afford to drop a couple million dollars on a big thru-put scan to Xy cutter to laser printer to big automated RA printer-dryer, plus all the other requisite features. And chromognic RA44 prints are still a lot more cost efficient in large sizes and multiple quantities. I'm not going to elaborate or argue about this. But I do have an idea what countries many of the last real commercial enlargers went to, and for top dollar. So it's not surprising to see Fuji revise some of their printing paper brochures to make it more plain that even some of their really big roll products are fully compatible with both laser digital printers and traditional optical systems. They wouldn't do that if there wasn't a real market for it overall somewhere. We personal darkroom printers are just a tiny portion.
Yes, there will definitely be an analog lab somewhere. But you will not see them on the street anymore. I have not yet found a single public analogue lab here in Europe. At home, surely someone has it, but for public operation does not have financial coverage. It never occurred to me that there would be no real photograph of the optical-chemical process on the street anywhere. Good light
One thing digital did is give me "permission" as it were to concentrate on black and white. I did color darkroom work before there WAS viable digital, because it was the only way to make color images. But I never actually enjoyed it. I enjoy black and white darkroom. So I happily punted the occasional color over to digital and reserved the darkroom for the black and white processes I always enjoyed and loved anyway. YMMV. I'm a complete amateur hobbyist. I only do it for myself and I have only myself to please and to answer to.
Autumn at Kodachrome is fantastic! I'm just on film color
The good news is that high volumes of RA4 papers are being consumed by laser-printing devices which are in routine commercial use, keeping up paper demand, and that most of those same papers are excellent for standard optical enlargement as well. So the necessary supplies and chem should still be available for quite awhile.
I'm afraid Kodachrome is way past winter now, and there's no spring behind it.Originally Posted by Deepblue
@Drew, yeah, we still ride the wave of large photofinishers keeping up demand with their high-throughput digital imagers. Until those turn to inkjet as well. It may take a few years, but it's bound to happen. Throughput isn't the argument anymore; them waterfall printheads go way fast. It's a matter of time before the business case flips over to all digital and then the RA4 party will be done.
Large size inkjet printing is more a small corporation thing for limited advertising or display projects, or as a niche service to photographers unable to do their own color printing. Anything in volume is just too expensive that way. The manufacturers of inks and receiver papers put a gigantic markup on those expendables. There's nothing particularly affordable about inkjet printing. And some clients don't like its look either. Therefore the two systems are likely to coexist in parallel for quite awhile, along with dye printers for office and casual home use. i'm not worried. Throughput with big automated laser printing connected directly to the processor is also quite a bit faster than inkjet; but the initial equipment investment is a lot higher.
A bigger factor is the proliferation of digital cameras, including studio usage of digital capture backs. That could hypothetically be input to laser printers too, but would seem like a fancy detour around the native software which relatively few know how to do. Locally, there's quite an uptick in actual film usage, especially among amateurs, and from there to scan and both output options. And certain studios are still shooting large format chromes, up to 8x10. It makes sense if especially precise color control is involved. And for quite a few portrait pros, there simply is no substitute for the combination of color neg film and chromogenic prints; a stunning amount of R&D has gone into that marriage.
i just picked up a roll of film from a niche lab that does high quality C41 in house, as well as offering scanning, small laser prints on Fuji RA4 paper, and up to quite large inkjet prints. A different outfit just two doors away specializes in Lambda laser color prints in fairly large sizes. It's all Fuji paper now, at least until Kodak is fully back on the horse again with their own RA4 papers. But my gosh, the hue output of inkjet, and especially the blacks, is soooo disappointing. Maybe certain people who write their own custom software and endlessly slither and dither the color corrections do a way better job at it, but don't tell me it's less work than optical enlarging.
Last edited by Drew Wiley; 18-Jul-2022 at 13:46.
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