vizzo
Hello,
What is an Ilfochrome? Is it similar to a Cibachrome, but in black and white?
Kind regards
Gast
No, it’s exactly the same. Only the product name has changed.
So, colour slide paper.
Best regards
Martin
Christoph
Ilfochrome is a colour reversal paper; in fact, it must be the former Cibachrome.
hambo
Yes, Ilfochrome is the old Cibachrome under a new name. A direct colour slide process. The prints are extremely durable thanks to the azo dyes. Fantastic colour saturation, but unfortunately the prices are just as fantastic. :angry:
Wolfgg
... and a terribly smelly organic Bleach bath. A €60 colour printer from Epson using pigment ink offers the same light stability, a wider colour gamut and significantly lower background density.
vizzo
Everyone says that printers have now improved the quality of Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints. My question is: do you really think a scanned slide of Velvia film, printed on a pigment ink printer, looks exactly the same as a Cibachrome print made from Velvia? I just really like the colours of Velvia, but it’s very difficult to achieve that look digitally.
Wolfgg
Naturally, a paper print can never match the luminosity of a slide, as the dynamic range of a slide is up to 1:1000, whereas that of a paper print is up to 1:50. The quality of colour printers has improved enormously over the last three years, and their colour gamut now exceeds that of colour photographic papers (colour negative-positive and slide-direct). What’s more, with EBV it is much easier and quicker to find the optimal filter settings.
Here is an example of a colour printer test with print samples; further examples can be found under ‘Reviews’:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interacti...1800/page_1.htm
Wolfgang
Schwedenstahl
Hello,
What are the running costs, such as paper and ink? I’m assuming that the 60
Gast
Wolfgg,
Well, a good print doesn’t look too bad either, but it isn’t very lightfast and it certainly isn’t waterproof.
And a printer for 60 euros – that’s a very bad joke.
I have 20-year-old slide prints that look better than prints that are 1–2 years old, and they’re only on Soviet slide paper.
Oleksander
Wolfgg
With cheap printers, the Rockefeller principle is naturally applied: the printer is practically given away for free, whilst the ink is sold at a high price. However, you don’t have to use the original ink; there are third-party ink manufacturers for these cheap printers that offer ink of almost the same quality – for Epson, for example, Inktec or Jettec – which makes colour printing cheaper than using photographic paper. Above all, it’s important to bear in mind that photo labs waste far more material through failed attempts (rejects).
Anyone planning a high print volume will naturally opt for a professional machine with large ink tanks; these can easily cost 2,000 euros – see here under large-format printers:
http://www.epson.de/product/index.htm
All inkjet printers suffer from the problem that they need to be used regularly (roughly every two weeks), otherwise the first of the many nozzles will start to dry out. Then you simply have to flush the system, which, however, costs ink. It’s just like with colour developing agent: you can’t leave that standing around indefinitely either; after two weeks, used developing agent no longer produces optimal quality.
However, we’re opening up a huge can of worms with the printer topic; if you’re interested in the details, please take plenty of time to have a look here, for example:
http://www.druckerchannel.de/forum.php?seite=menu
And for those interested, a word of warning, as we’re in a forum where black and white dominates: all those cheap printers may well produce great colour prints – the sort that would take an amateur ages to achieve in a colour lab – but they are not capable of printing a black-and-white image to the standard that an artist conjures up from photographic paper using developer and fixer.
Wolfgang
Gast
A €60 colour printer from Epson using pigment ink has the same light stability,
which remains to be proven. The marketing spiel from the esteemed manufacturers always comes with reams of small print.
With AZO papers, there’s genuine experience of ageing, and quite impressive results when compared, for example, to RA4 paper.
Completely bypassing the scan, i.e. printing the slide directly, has also become rare. My last enquiry to a specialist lab revealed that they now only do prints (i.e. from a scan) on Ilfo. (Not universally applicable). The one before that, at another lab, incidentally, only gave three question marks.
Regards
Martin
Wolfgg
Martin: In other words, the light stability of pigment prints has now reached a level where, due to a lack of long-term experience (even with Ilfochrome – after all, it’s only been 31 years since 1975), it is no longer possible to say which is more stable. My own ‘torture tests’ (the print half-covered for about a year in direct sunlight without glass) showed no visible change; only the paper had yellowed significantly. However, this only applies to pigment ink; with dye ink, the conditions are quite different (usually much worse). And what happens after 100 years, for example, is something we can only be certain of with B&W. When making such statements, one must above all bear in mind that it is not just about the colorants, but also about the substrate. And with Ilfochrome (high-gloss and semi-matt), the high plastic content remains an unclear factor. The same applies to RA4. With colour prints, on the other hand, one has a wide range of choice regarding the substrate and can draw on extensive long-term experience. Some printer paper manufacturers are now even drawing on the experience of silver photography and discovering baryta as a substrate and reflective layer.
Of course, Epson’s statements on light stability should be viewed with a degree of caution. Like all tests of this kind, they are based on the assumption that the fading process is linear, i.e. 100 years of daylight exposure is equivalent to, say, 1 year of 100 times the intensity of daylight. However, I am not aware of anyone who has yet been able to credibly refute Epson’s test results.
Regards, Wolfgang
Gast
Hi Wolfgang,
Where does the sun shine all year round? :lol:
Anyway, the only prints you can pass down to the third generation are silver, gold-toned or platinum-toned ones (and ideally gelatine-free, like Kalli, or direct platinum prints).
We’ve known for 31 years now that the AZOs in Ilfochrome fade, but they’re still quite ahead of the game. 31 years is quite something. And during that time, the ‘plastic’ remains remarkably white.
I just get a bit annoyed by claims like Epson’s 99 years. (Air-conditioned, dark, etc. in the small print). (The substrate just yellows, so what? Yeah, yeah).
Colour just isn’t meant to last forever.
Ultimately, a lot of craftsmanship will be involved in getting the colours right anyway, even with digital processing. The proof to the contrary flutters into my letterbox every day as a junk mail leaflet.
It’s actually fair to assume that a ‘good craftsman’ is easier to find in Photoshop than for the post-processing.
Regards
Martin
Wolfgg
Martin: I was referring to the year in general terms; after all, the print shouldn’t get wet in the rain. And UV radiation is supposedly only slightly attenuated by clouds. I’d love to know what colorants are used in pigment inks. Could they be azo colorants as well?
I’d been grappling with colour and filter issues from very early on, namely from 1974; back then, an analyser was still something you had to build yourself, and the paper boxes had paper base numbers printed on them, which might read, for example, -- 60 -- (Magenta 60 Agfa units = 30 densitometric units). Every new box was a new ‘colour adventure’ – dreadful. The paper was called Agfa MCN310/4, developed in Process 85 at 35°C in a tray, and was Agfa’s first colour PE. Yes, the water really did run down the walls. But at least it was already a three-bath process. Today, these paper tolerances have been eliminated and the temperatures are low, yet the advantages of digital colour processing are simply undeniable.
When I scan, optimise and print the negatives from back then and compare them with the enlargements from that time that I still have, I’m amazed at how far my filtering back then was from the optimum, despite my best efforts. On screen, you can simply test different colour tendencies much more quickly, and when you stop, you’re much closer to the optimum than with the old-fashioned fiddling around. Added to this are the possibilities unique to digital colour correction, such as adjusting colour contrast—where necessary, for specific colours only (‘the green grass should be richer’). And something that is often overlooked: colour saturation in traditional processing decreases with the enlargement scale, but not in printing!
Another advantage of digitally produced colour images is that you have the data file of the actual printed image as a backup (the plate currently seems to be the most reliable medium), and you could reprint the exact same image at any time with minimal variation, as the (minor) tolerances of colour printers are not a problem. It also no longer matters whether you have a slide or a negative as source material; once scanned, the processes are identical.
If you wanted to leave something colourful for future generations, however, the only option to this day remains buying a set of paints... or, like the Russian in the other thread, RGB on three black-and-white plates.
The situation with those cheap leaflets is something quite special. These are mostly one-man graphic design firms who quickly design something on a Mac using Photoshop and then ‘proof’ it on uncalibrated (it costs money, after all) amateur colour printers. The next day, the poor blokes stand there with their hearts racing and their breath held during the proof run next to the printing press – which is also almost never calibrated – and nearly faint at the first sheet because all the colours are hopelessly off. “Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out,” the boss usually says, and then they just fiddle with a few knobs until something reasonably passable comes out at the back, which the client just about accepts. That then ends up in the postboxes.
Regards, Wolfgang
Stagirit
Back to Cibachrome:
I had a rummage through my old man’s archives and got him talking over a glass of wine. He used to be absolutely obsessed with Cibachrome.
He’s still got prints that are a good 30 years old and don’t have the slightest colour cast. According to him, the yellow tinge isn’t caused by yellowing, but by the processing. Ciba Geigi combined the developer and Bleach bath, which sooner or later leads to the material turning yellow; if the two baths were separate, that didn’t happen.
I also learnt that Cibachrome was made up of nine layers.
