Color Printing?

[DREW WILEY]

Yes, analog (or analogue) means an ordinary colorhead. But per Frotog's blatantly misleading series of rants ... I have no idea what specific papers automated minilabs use, nor do I know anyone who uses those kinds of marginal-quality services. Nor do I know what planet Frotog is chiming in from. But yes, right now, right at this moment, "Drew. Drew, Drew" does have forty inch-wide rolls of CAII sitting right there in his lab, and the big commercial lab down the street has even wider rolls on hand. All ya gotta do is look at Fuji's stock list or that of any serious Fuji supplier to figure that one out!! CAII is not just one product but a whole suite of them. I've even got the polyester-based Supergloss CAII on hand, and it really does deliver some rich blacks, and could even be mistaken for Cibachrome in this respect. Films have changed somewhat, and if you tend to go higher contrast/higher saturation like Ektar, color adjustment is like power steering and has to be done carefully. Maybe presents a bit of a challenge to people used to the older muddier films. And some very old colorheads have an excess amt of white light spillover that might induce a bit of crossover. But CAII is the standard line of papers being used in all serious labs around here, for both optical and digital large sizes as well as small "machine prints" in volume. Kodak still has some of the local specialty lab business. But
'scuse' me ... I better run down the road real quick and tell those folks that all those forty-inch wide color prints on their walls don't really
exist!

 

[EdSawyer]

Yes.

I will be interested to see frotogs comparison.

I have a large stash of cut sheet endura, though some has developed a very slight cast to the whites, it's really not noticable and is still very usable. It will be a few years before i run out probably. Hopefully by then things have improved... ?

-Ed

Thanks, so does an enlarger with an optical lens and using a halogen bulb such as I am pretty certain me my Durst M605 enlarger with colour head does, meet the definition of analogue printer?

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Per print quality per se, Frotog - you've never seen a single print of mine in your entire life, so what on earth makes you think you can intelligently pontificate on them? First of all, nearly every single color print I posted on the web was a Cibachrome. Second, it's the damn web, not the real deal. If you don't understand that distinction, then we don't even have the basis for a dialog. Again, I could care less... But I do care about keeping these kinds of analog materials alive, and hopefully making them even more widely available and convenient for
amateur use in cut sheet again, so would prefer more of a positive team effort than constantly going around telling everyone how stupid Fuji allegedly is and how impossible their products are. Thank you, but I think they know what they are doing.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Bingo - exactly what I was referring to... Ed, you don't need to wait until things improve. That's the whole point. The CAII products are damn good right now. Better than ever. Once some of this nonsensical badmouthing gets on the web, esp something like APUG, for whatever reason,it can do a lot of damage with respect to entry level users. If there are problems, analyze the workflow and find out where the chuckhole really is. Same goes for film ... I read all these posts of people trashing Ektar when the problem generally lies with some crude system of scanning. Do you really think that Fuji and Kodak engineers are a bunch of idiots who haven't ironed out the quality control issues relative to the potential range of applications? If there are idiots in the system they are more likely in mgt or marketing. Of course, not every single film or paper product is ideal for every application, and that's precisely why we need to keep choices alive. But starting a stampede
over an alleged quality and availability issue that doesn't even exist is a different story.

 

[polyglot]

Edit: I just emailed Freestyle to ask 'em who makes Aristacolor. Not much point speculatin' when we can just ask them. PS their website says "Made in USA"; hopefully that doesn't just mean "cut to sheets in USA"

"Unfortunately, due to our contract with the manufacturer, we cannot tell you this information."

Base thickness is about the same as FCA or any other RC paper I've used.

I'm not joining your dick-size war.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's not a "war" polyglot ... but hard fact based on actual printmaking vs utter BS. Do you trust the opinion about Crystal Archive who doesn't even know what it is? CAII is the standard commercial line of papers used by everyone I know, whether analog or digital, exclusive of inkjet, of course. I can't comment on Kodak or Arista color papers because I don't use them. There is no sense me even posting on something like APUGif it doesn't encourage people to go out an try for themselves. I could care less if some smartass doesn't like a product he has apparently never
even used. Nor, given the nature of the diatribe, would I trust his results if he did. Just too much doesn't add up.

 

[polyglot]

Introspection, man. You should consider it.

 

[pentaxuser]

I think Drew has a point about the alleged problems of Fuji CAII putting off newcomers to colour printing. I recall several threads on the new Fuji CAII paper in the recent past and can't recall as damning an indictment as that of frotog's.

Maybe frotog made the same indictment on those earlier threads but if he or other(s) did, it certainly didn't register with me in quite the stark terms it does now.

It just seems strange to me that Fuji whose CAII paper is apparently fundamentally and irreparably flawed in respect of analogue printing still produces cut sheets which home users need and yet Kodak whose paper is still suitable for analogue has ceased to do cut sheets. If things are that bad then it makes one wonder who is still buying Fuji sheet paper.

If it is indeed impossible to overcome the home user problems with Fuji you'd expect a lot more complaints on APUG and one would think this represents a market opportunity for Kodak to re-instate its cutting machines as consumers should have little choice but to switch to Kodak.

I have no interest in taking sides in this argument for the sake of enjoying a fight but like many others do have an interest in trying to decide if Fuji CAII with the benefit of cut sheets can do the job. After all the options are either to stop colour printing or put up with cutting one's own sheets.

On that basis can I ask that others who have used Fuji CAII make a contribution to this issue by giving a short resume of their experience.

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Fuji doesn't really even need any of our business. About 2/3 of the big Lambda, Lightjet, and Chromira printers in this country use Crystal Archive routinely, as do those still doing optical enlargement. Amateur home use is just a fraction of the sum. The pros certainly don't have
any problems with it, either way. I certainly don't. And what I routinely do is actually quite a bit more advanced than simple portrait printing,
which I learned to do with chromogenic papers decades ago. No need to take my word for it, not unless Fuji themselves are downright lying
on their own websites and tech sheets. But if you are interested in the convenience of cut sheet, as well as affordable small batches of RA4
chemistry remaining in the pipeline, this is something which needs the help of quite a few little guys to sustain. Even though I sometimes
make big prints, I'm not a high-volume user, in other words, not a commercial lab. So there are certainly times when it would be nice to pick
just up a box of something rather than a huge roll. And right now, the premium glossy version of CAII is ONLY available in big rolls. That wasn't the case just a few years ago, with the previous C version. Every little bit helps. Besides, making color prints if fun and affordable.
Don't believe everything the inkjet propaganda engine tells you. Analog chromogenic printing is better than ever.

 

[DREW WILEY]

PS - the ONLY condemnation of CAII I've ever read have either been on amateur forums like this one, or on analogous vendor feedback lines
likewise by firsttime users. No serious user of this kind of product talks that way. Like I said, Fuji could probably care less about losing 1% of
their potential sales to the same crowd who makes 99% of the complaints. Talk to any serious lab owner - not the sixteen year old kid behind
the counter at the drugstore - and get their opinion of this product.

 

[RPC]

Fuji CAII paper seems to be a bit of a mystery. There have been posts in the past saying it is great, is better than Kodak, and others saying that compared to Kodak it has low contrast, low saturation, high contrast, high saturation, poor color rendition, crossover, works with this developer but not that developer, works on saturdays but not sundays, you name it. It has also been said that it requires a different, proprietary developer from Fuji.

So just what is the deal with this paper?

It does have slightly higher contrast and saturation than Supra Endura paper, and whiter whites, in my experience. With the cut-sheet CAII paper I have been using I find that with Kodak RA/RT developer used at room temperature it is otherwise very close to Endura paper. With properly formulated home-brew developer it again closely matches Endura in RA/RT. This is at two minutes at room temperature; if one uses other temperatures and times one should test.

When I have tested my home brew developer and Kodak's with CAII and Endura paper I took many measurements with gray scales on my densitometer and found no crossover at two minutes and room temperature. You certainly can get crossover if developer is bad or time/temperature are incorrect or paper is old, as with any paper.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Let's just put things in realistic perspective. The largest quantities of RA4 paper are sold directly to the bigger labs, generally in rolls. So that
leaves the cut sheet products, which in the case of paper-based CAII still involves a significant amt of product being sold by places like Freestyle, B&H, and even our local camera store, which kept stacks of it on hand for the local colleges (though some have since switched to
inkjet). And all that volume adds up quickly. So how come the complaints are not proportional, if this is such tricky stuff, and it just keeps selling? Somebody must be happy with it - in fact, logically, way more people must be happy with it than the handful of shoot-from-the-hip
compaints one encounters over the web. I don't work for Fuji and certainly realize that there are difference tastes and preferences involved. But C'mon. Let's use a little common sense here.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I have been using fuji CA papers for over 20 years in my own lab, before that another 15 years a mixture of Kodak and Fuji, depending on which supplier my bosses liked best at the time.

I have been using Lambda laser exposing units for the last 8-10 years with Fuji CA paper. I have not made a colour enlarger print in that time.

one simple observation... Kodak and Fuji have been optimizing the speed of their emulsions for over 20 years to use with laser, and now led.
The paper has taken on a different characteristic under the enlarger... The speed of the paper is so fast now that I found it difficult to dodge and burn which in my world is critical.
I feel there is very little difference in Fuji and Kodak products and yes Fuji does know what they are doing... With that said both kodak and fuji are more concerned with roll paper and laser and led exposure which is pretty much the standard world wide.
They are not concerned with cut sheet paper for Enlarger work and some of these problems some may be having is due to this speed up of the sensitivity of the paper.

I am not interested in trying my paper **Fuji** under and enlarger as it is designed for Lambda use and I may find it lacking for enlarger work.
When the laser devices started coming out.. Lambda and Lightjet in 1998 both manufacturers did have paper that would work optimally under both enlarger and laser... The market changed like a tsunami wave to laser output and I believe the manufacturers had to change the emulsions or sink.

Finding an optimized paper for enlarger may be tough.
Finding one for laser exposure or LED exposure is easy.


I have spent half my professional life printing colour under an enlarger and now the second half with laser.

They both have their benefits, and I doubt very few people worldwide could tell the difference.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Bob. The big full service lab here uses exactly the same CAII product selection under enlargers as in the Lightjets. No difference. The "digital optimization" as far as I can see only amounted to about 5cc's of greater green sensitivity, since that is typically the weakest laser color. Yeah it's fast, but these big Durst commercial enlargers generally have some kind of ND selector. Ordinary household enlargers aren't that pumped up anyway. And a little more speed is sure nice when one is working with an attached silver mask and big enlargements. The Supergloss digital tweak simply involved a little more contrast in the extremes, since this product is often marketed to commercial display work with text. In my opinion it actually improved the general optical printing characteristics. The release of CAII RC
paper, in between the former Super C and Type P with respect to contrast, seems to have been a marketing decision. The base itself is whiter and the color a little cleaner. But in our analog world, contrast tweaks are simple enough by masking up or down, or tailoring the
neg film itself to the output contrast level. The current Fuji literature is unequivocal. The material is suited to analog as well as digital
printing. And from my own experience, I'd say it's damn well suited for enlarger use. I'd have a question mark about some of these room temp
chemistry kit etc. I use standard RA/RT in drums at 2 min, and everything is very consistent. Great product - has the punch and saturation of Ciba, without the idiosyncrasies. Conventional colorheads differ a bit in their
residual white light contamination, with the older subtractive units being the worst. I'll admit that my personal additive heads hit the nail on
the head a little more precisely, much like RGB lasers. That has it's advantages in terms of color purity, but it also means even one CC of
change can make a visual difference when printing from higher contrast negs like Ektar. But nm sensitivity is engineered identically with respect to the dyes in the paper, and theoretically should not make any difference between digi vs optical. But laser themselves are not
dead-on, and that's one reason why there are different parameters between different models. With respect to Fuji Supergloss, you need to
know the batch code to find out when the change took place between CA and CAII. They published this in advance, though it took a fair
amount of work to find the page. By now I'd imagine all the inventory is CAII, though some minilab suppliers seem to specialize in old product
of various descriptions at discount - more like liquidators than lab suppliers per se. So again, Bob, try it optically - you might be damn pleased
yourself at what you get.

 

[DanielStone]

Fuji CA works great for me, doing optical prints from both Fuji CN and Kodak C/N materials, originals 35mm->4x5(I don't have access to an enlarger that can handle my 5x7 color negs as of right now, otherwise I'd be enlarging 5x7!)
I much preferred Kodak's Supra Endura papers, the slightly warmer base(and thicker base too!) lent itself to what I wanted in a print w/o changing filtration and/or adjusting how I expose & process the film.
Alas, Kodak cut sheets are no longer ...

Fuji is still cutting paper down, and Freestyle(who I believe is re-packing Fuji-made paper, IIRC) is delivering a product that works well, and is; for all intensive purposes, a GOOD(but not excellent, IMO) paper for "the masses".

FYI: Fujifilm coats *paper* here in the USA for the N.A. markets, since we're such a huge market and Japan alone cannot keep up with demand(hence the "Made in USA" moniker):
http://www.fujifilmusa.com/about/corporate_profile/fujifilm_companies/manufacturing/about/index.html

-Dan

 

[DREW WILEY]

That's interesting. I haven't actually tried any of Freestyle's private-label paper. Their substitute RA/RT chem kit seem absolutely identical
performance-wise to Kodaks - in fact, I can interchange the ingredients without any difference. I still have some of the older Fuji C paper on hand and both the color balance and speed difference between it and the newer CAII are miniscule. The new paper has slightly cleaner hues. Supergloss is a little more punchy. The key to fine-tuning contrast in the darkroom is to learn basic unsharp masking. Otherwise, it's just about
the end of my color printing season - I'm switching into my black and white mode for the cooler months, as usual. It's a matter of keeping the
darkroom nice n cozy, vs high ventilation etc.

 

[polyglot]

Interesting that Fuji also manufacture in the USA. One thing I did note about the Aristacolor is that it's base isn't quite as white as the FCA; maybe it's an older version? Fuji were recently claiming to have made their base brighter.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You might be onto something there. Perhaps the new formula on remaining supplies of the older paper ??? Or maybe different paper sources
completely, due to different mfg locales. I really prefer the brighter base. But when it comes to the polyester base Supergloss, colors behave in a somewhat different manner in relation to the base color itself ... and I haven't quite figured out the relation yet, though my prints are coming
out excellent.

 

[Bob Carnie]

the four papers I use there is significant difference in the paper base well two are the same... the luster finish and the glossy finish are white .... The flex always seems a bit more yellow than the first two and the metallic is really grey by comparison.

Interesting that Fuji also manufacture in the USA. One thing I did note about the Aristacolor is that it's base isn't quite as white as the FCA; maybe it's an older version? Fuji were recently claiming to have made their base brighter.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The new Fujiflex has the same yellowish base color as the previous C version, but the hues come out cleaner anyway. Last nite I looked at a
few recent prints on it, and weirdly, there were white highlights in some of the prints which actually look brighter than the base. I pondered
over this before. Perhaps those "true" whites in the actual scene contain a tad of blue and just look cleaner, just like laundry bleach bluing or
how, when someone wants a really clean bright looking wall paint, a tad of blue is added to give it that impression under indoor light, even
though the measured reflectance might be less. But I don't think so. A few of my print borders are a bit brighter than others, so it must be
related to something else, and I've ruled out fog. And it seems to have no effect of the final image - haunted? A very minor difference, but
has me puzzled. I've checked temp and chem freshness, test strips vs big prints (no difference), and still can't figure it out. Anyway... The earlier supergloss never did that. Yet overall, for me at least, the current version is giving much better results, really nice and clean, esp from masked Ektar - rival Ciba, maybe even better. I never use metallic, so can't comment there.

 

[Bob Carnie]

The slight yellow is the Flex materials natural state, I have discussed this with Fuji, they could not tell me why but its something to consider with flex.. Kind of freeked me out the first couple of years as , yellow stain is generally not a good thing in process control for RA4 and took a bit of patience to get use to the base.
Still bothers me.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I just very carefully match the color of my matboard to the exposed margins of the poly base, that way everything looks "white". But the image area itself is so damn rich - even better than the RC version of CAII. (Maybe too good sometimes - there are obviously subjects where I want
to pull things back a bit, but without the "muddiness" inherent to Portra 160 or traditional neg films). I don't think it's a stain, but perhaps something which changes with even minor amounts of exposure. A very different base material from what Ciba used, that's for sure. Oh well,
I've got bigger fish to fry, cause the current CAII lineup is going to give me a lot of happy mileage...

 

[frotog]

one simple observation... Kodak and Fuji have been optimizing the speed of their emulsions for over 20 years to use with laser, and now led.
The paper has taken on a different characteristic under the enlarger... The speed of the paper is so fast now that I found it difficult to dodge and burn which in my world is critical.
I feel there is very little difference in Fuji and Kodak products and yes Fuji does know what they are doing... With that said both kodak and fuji are more concerned with roll paper and laser and led exposure which is pretty much the standard world wide.
They are not concerned with cut sheet paper for Enlarger work and some of these problems some may be having is due to this speed up of the sensitivity of the paper.

I am not interested in trying my paper **Fuji** under and enlarger as it is designed for Lambda use and I may find it lacking for enlarger work.
When the laser devices started coming out.. Lambda and Lightjet in 1998 both manufacturers did have paper that would work optimally under both enlarger and laser... The market changed like a tsunami wave to laser output and I believe the manufacturers had to change the emulsions or sink.

Finding an optimized paper for enlarger may be tough.
Finding one for laser exposure or LED exposure is easy.


I have spent half my professional life printing colour under an enlarger and now the second half with laser.

They both have their benefits, and I doubt very few people worldwide could tell the difference.

These are my findings exactly. Although I suspect that if Bob were to try CAii under an enlarger today he'd see that even the most indiscriminate of color correctors could easily tell the difference between the two. I also suspect that Bob, who prints for clients and thus has an eye for neutral color balance instead of the gross, dominant color casts that some here seem to prefer, were to attempt making a neutral balanced color print under the enlarger with today's papers then he'd more than likely come to the same conclusion that I have.

 

[Bob Carnie]

My reference to not being able to tell the difference ... was is that a colour print made in 1990 with an enlarger using the best papers available,, and a colour print made
of the same scanned negative today using a laser device and current best paper... I believe both prints are of excellent value and look, and very hard to tell which one is which. They both would be good and with good workflow I can see the benefit of both printing methods.
I have had the pleasure of doing both, I think that today its still possible to enjoy enlarger printing of colour, just not sure which paper is maximized for that process.

I do not have any experience using an enlarger with current paper optimised for current LED or LAser printing. There may be huge differences, I would be surprised it there were not complications.
I do not have any motivation at this time to try it , other than for my own edification, and currently I have work to complete rather than testing.

 

[frotog]

When it comes to comparing a digital c to an analogue print made in 1990, you're right, it's hard to tell the difference. But now try to print that same neg under an enlarger and you will confirm that your suspicion is correct - complications abound. No amount of tweaking will get you anywhere near the paper you were using in the '90's. I have tried every current paper under the sun (with the exception of metallic, which I abhor) and all digitally optimized papers suffer under the enlarger in ways that make it impossible to get a great print. I wish this weren't the case as I hate not being able to use my roller transport machine, it doesn't make sense to invest in a laserlight printer when I can use a service bureau nearby, and ink jet is just not the same as a glossy c-print. So currently I proof work on a cache of kodak vc (the predecessor to premiere, exhibits some of the nasty qualities of the digitally optimized papers but nowhere near as bad as the current crop), then I go to a digital flow for finished, exhibition prints.

Mind you, I'm just as much a die-hard analogue practitioner as the biggest retrogrouch here, however, what's the point of pretending that it's the same as it's always been when clearly the manufactors have directed their efforts solely towards the digital workflow (misleading manufacture's info and erroneous misinformed personal testimonials of luddites aside).