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Author Topic: Conventional colour print from slide  (Read 15201 times)

cliffshen

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Conventional colour print from slide
« on: December 13, 2013, 10:26:42 pm »

I was wondering if there is any place, preferably in Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal, still do conventional colour print from slide. Last time I asked (around 2~3 years ago) and it seems like every store scans it first and then print it from digital file. I wasn't pleased with the result. If there is no such place in Canada, are there suggested place in the States?

Thanks!
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2013, 11:07:01 pm »

The paper/chemicals for such a process used to be known as Cibachrome, later Ilfochrome, if I am not mistaken. Both are out of production now, mostly due to environmental concerns (toxic). I am not aware of any other process that replaced it. When printers knew what they are doing, the resulting printouts were gorgeous (Michael Fatali comes to mind). However, there was a strong buildup in contrast, so often contrast masks were necessary to tame it.

I strongly believe that scanned transparencies and digital post-processing offer more control and similar end results, with much less hassle today.

cliffshen

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2013, 11:16:42 pm »

Thank you for your reply... I think I'll reconsider it and probably send to other print shop to try it out!
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Rob Reiter

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2014, 07:22:56 pm »

Just a bit of info on Cibachrome chemistry…from my 30 years of running a Ciba lab. The toxic question seems to come from the sulfuric acid bleach bath, but as such it's not considered a toxic chemical. Dangerous, maybe, as the numerous holes in my clothes from those years testified. It is was always neutralized with baking soda before disposal.

The dyes used in this dye-bleach process were in the paper and very little got bleached out and thus into the waste stream. Those toxic dyes were much more of an issue with all other common color printing methods, where they were present in the developer which could end up down the drain.

All things considered, from an environmental view as well as overall print quality, we are much better off these days with modern pigment inkjet printing. I don't miss the darkroom at all.

The paper/chemicals for such a process used to be known as Cibachrome, later Ilfochrome, if I am not mistaken. Both are out of production now, mostly due to environmental concerns (toxic). I am not aware of any other process that replaced it. When printers knew what they are doing, the resulting printouts were gorgeous (Michael Fatali comes to mind). However, there was a strong buildup in contrast, so often contrast masks were necessary to tame it.

I strongly believe that scanned transparencies and digital post-processing offer more control and similar end results, with much less hassle today.
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bill t.

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2014, 01:05:06 am »

Cibachrome prints featured bright, saturated colors, but had the most brutal contrast of any print media I have ever used.  It was the #5 Brovira of color printing.  If a Kodachrome had maybe 6 stop of dynamic range, when printed on Cibachrome that was knocked down to more like 4 stops.  For a good looking Cibachrome you had to do very special lighting at about 1/3 the contrast ratio you wanted to be implied by the print.  Or you had to mask the transparency with Kodak Pan Masking film, which was exceedingly time consuming and quite tricky if you wanted to keep something like decent color.

Used to run Cibachrome in a 3.5 gallon tank processor with a nylon mesh basket holding twenty-four, 8x10 prints.  Also had a couple of weird contraptions that would do, for instance, one folded-over 24 x 30, more or less.  Nitrogen burst agitation, balky temperature-control valves, fumes, fumbling in the dark, it was awful!  And yes, the checmical sets came with a big bag of (I guess) sodium bicarbonate to prevent the blix from dissolving iron pipes, which apparently didn't take much time.

Another process at the time was Kodak "Type R" prints.  The R stands for reversal.  A much tamer but more complicated chemical set and much less contrast buildup than Cibachrome.  Also a surface that looked much nicer than the rather plastic-fantastic look of Cibachrome prints.  Atkinson-Stedco was the supreme Type R lab in LA, I often used their services in the good old 70's.
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Deardorff

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2014, 12:21:25 am »

Do they still make Type R paper? Print directly from slides?

Fuji Supergloss was an excellent, highly saturated paper with a finish that scratched if you looked at it too hard. The prints looked as if the paper was wet, they were so saturated. Very nice for some types of images.
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Alan Klein

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #6 on: April 17, 2014, 12:52:00 am »

I use to send out my 120 MF chromes (slides).  The lab with shoot duplicates on 4x5 negatives and print on R paper from that.

langier

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Re: Conventional colour print from slide
« Reply #7 on: April 17, 2014, 02:00:57 am »

You can still get chromogenic prints from scanned slides/transparencies, however direct prints (Ciba/Ilfochrome, Fujiflex and Type R) are now part of history unless you know someone with a frozen hoard of the material who wishes to share.

From a well-crafted scan and a good photographic craftsman, you should be quite pleased with the results.
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