Could Cibachrome come back?

[twelvetone12]

I bet the Chinese could do it, and even with all of your barriers.

Well we could do it too, the factory here in Marly is still standing and the equipment it still there, this is not the question. Would it make any sense nowadays to do so? I guess the response came when it was discontinued in 2012.

 

[halfaman]

Cibachrome/Ilfochrome was always a minor printing technique in terms of sales beacuse of the price and difficulty to obtain good results. It is also a very complicated product to produce that need not only machines but technical expertise too. To finish my case, slide film is nowadays at a price level of delicatassen not affordable for any pocket.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Cibachrome/Ilfochrome was always a minor printing technique in terms of sales beacuse of the price and difficulty to obtain good results. It is also a very complicated product to produce that need not only machines but technical expertise too. To finish my case, slide film is nowadays at a price level of delicatassen not affordable for any pocket.

No, it was never minor, and specialilst labs offering this were very often run off their feet with production. I know this from very long experience. Yes, it requires technical expertise and proficiency, particularly contrast masking, and it was also not suitable for poor quality photography e.g. very contrasty slides where either shadows or highlights have been compromised, or under/overexposure of more than 2 stops.
For exhibition/display quality photographs, it was the go-to medium for a long, long time. Its latter day problems had nothing to do with cost, but a lot to do with factory problems of quality control, delivery, expiration and unreported faults.

Slide film is not expensive when it provides the known, guaranteed quality of imaging that is required in landscape/scenic photography.

 

[BMbikerider]

You think the Chinese could do it? Right. About as good as the crap they dump in Aldi stores because nobody else will accept that shit quality.
.

Well how about the current Kodak Ektacolor RA4 developer? That is made in China. (Or so it says on the labels!) Apart from some bad translation in the directions of use, the chemicals are as reliable they have always been.

 

[BMbikerider]

One point that seems to have been glossed over and that is the source of the images for Cibachrome was always as far as I know, transparencies. So unless there is a dramatic resurgence in the use, the market will flounder from day 1. The price of slide film now is almost into the realms of a luxury item. As much as I appreciate a well exposed and saturated slide image, I will not be using it unless the price drops dramatically.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ciba was extremely popular for at least twenty years. Huge labs specialized in it. I made thousands of Ciba prints myself. During that era it was considered an extremely easy and affordable alternative to the other high-quality option for printing chromes, dye transfer. Type R was the poor country cousin who faded quick.
Color neg RA4 papers were also rather fugitive and didnt have much color snap. It was a beautiful process but did have idiosyncrasies demanding intelligent
masking for not only contrast control but improved hue accuracy. No big deal. But that era is over.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

One point that seems to have been glossed over and that is the source of the images for Cibachrome was always as far as I know, transparencies.

Not necessarily. But there were specialist skills involved in producing an image from in-camera to print with slide film. Precise exposure taking into account Ilfochrome Classic contrast is one of them.

Ilfochrome Classic could be printed from negatives and also (but less commonly), digital files (RAW and unlayered/unprofiled .tif files). However, by and large, the results from analogue production e.g. Fujichrome Velvia and Provia to Ilfochrome Classic were always outstanding, and the plain and simple reason for the medium's rampant success over the decades, save for occasional known problems with red (with Velvia especially), at which times Kodachrome was recommended -- one of the very, very few exceptional occasions PKL/PKR was recommended over Fuji. Not every emulsion was oozing Fuji-love: Fuji's Velvia 100F also caused a lot of grizzles and negative feedback for its dull muggy palette, particularly mustard-like greens and beetroot reds (no love lost when it was discontinued for lack of popularity) and pale yellows. Velvia 100 -- the uber-saturated brother of Velvia 50, was also less suitable for Ilfochrome Classic because of the way it rendered all channels particularly boldly -- 'way, way over the top', if you will.

Prints produced from negatives, particularly Portra 160, never had the sheer visual impact of prints produced from transparencies. I printed B&W to Ilfochrome Classic with spectacular results; I think Delta 100 or TMax at the time (c. 2003).

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ciba was extremely popular for at least twenty years. Huge labs specialized in it. I made thousands of Ciba prints myself. During that era it was considered an extremely easy and affordable alternative to the other high-quality option for printing chromes, dye transfer. Type R was the poor country cousin who faded quick.
Color neg RA4 papers were also rather fugitive and didnt have much color snap. It was a beautiful process but did have idiosyncrasies demanding intelligent
masking for not only contrast control but improved hue accuracy. No big deal. But that era is over.

I have to respectfully disagree. Color neg did have built in hue accuracy and contrast control, and dye stability was quite good when processed properly. I have prints on the same paper that kept fine, but others of the same era which went bad quickly. And, each generation of both the film and paper got better. I have plots of dye fade to show this.

PE

 

[DREW WILEY]

Every single RA4 print I've got from, say, 30 yrs ago, whether Kodak or Fuji paper, has somewhat yellowed. All the Cibas look like they were made yesterday except
a few that were displayed in direct sunlight for a couple decades. Newer RA4 materials have allegedly improved in this respect, and I have a number of big prints
displayed in less than ideal conditions receiving daily UV to see what does happen over time, though there is always the possibility I'll fade away first and never know the answer! The problem with color neg printing versus chromes is that technicians just took it in stride that high quality prints from positives were going to be a fair amount of work. If half that amount of fuss were put into color neg printing then they too can be optimized. Yeah, there's an orange mask already; but I regard that
as not really a hole in one. Maybe just a mild putt or two gets it in, whereas Ciba often required a bulldozer to get the ball out of the sand trap. But stunning results were possible. Velvia was wretched to print from, but I did that too. My philosophy was simply to dance with the idiosyncrasies of Ciba - but it was my own work.
I shot for the specific medium. Commercial labs had to deal with what they were given, so I can understand their frustration at times. I happen to mask color negs
about 30% of the time, sometimes contrast-increase masks, sometimes contrast-increase. With Ciba, masking was a given, sometimes even multiple masks.
Ciba was hell to mount and display in large sizes, and fragile to handle. A single kink mark could ruin it. And what really killed it off, at least in the US, were the
baboons in the warehouse of the US distributor, who made sure the paper got damaged. But inkjet would have killed it off anyway. Not the same look. Fuji Supergloss is a worthy replacement and easier and less expensive to print. But I saw the handwriting on the wall, and switched over to shooting mainly color
neg film well in advance of the inevitable.

 

[Wayne]

I find Fuji CA much easier to kink than I ever did Ilfochrome, but maybe thats because I use trays now. That's the only drawback I've found to processing in trays, because you do have to be super careful with it.

Although there is the Ciba demographic of people who masked and contorted and leapt through moving hoops of fire to get masterful prints, I hear a lot less about another demographic that I belonged to. I never learned to mask until the very end and never got good enough at it to make a difference, but I made hundreds of prints that are still some of the best of my life. Rather than leap through flaming hoops I learned how to shoot appropriately for the print medium, and how to not even bother trying to print the hardest ones, and basically just to accept that it was what it was. It was high contrast and it was lurid and I loved it anyway. One did not need to be a master to get great prints with Ilfo-Ciba although the masters may disagree. I would still take it for all its faults to have the advantage of color positives rather than negative orange things to work from, and though its not for everyone to me the Ciba look is superior to RA4 in its peculiar way. RA4 just doesnt have the punch and character that ___chrome had.

 

[BMbikerider]

Basically taking everything else aside Cibachrome/Ilfochrome, call it what you like is just not coming back. There is not sufficient commercial market for it. Thank the bean counters who run the boardrooms of the companies that used to manufacture and process these materials who are not going to invest large amounts of hard cash in a project that has little or no future. The simple desires of amateurs will not feature, simply because the market is very small and they will loose money. For company boards that is a priority which is right at the top of the list of non-starters.

For the home processor or even commercial, RA4 is hanging on by the skin of it's teeth but that is a relatively simple process, likewise B&W.

The same can be said for Kodachrome. Both that and Cibachrome had a big following in it's day, but that day has long gone. Sorry guys, but it is time to face the cold facts and reality of commercial life. The coffee smells nice in the morning, I woke up a long time ago.

The world is changing. No, make that it has changed and there is little prospect of going back in time.

 

[railwayman3]

When Cibachrome was available from some "professional" labs in the UK, I tried many times to order prints from my favorite slides, but was never satisfied with the quality; in the end, I put it down to the difficulties of the system (and, perhaps, lack of interest from the technicians). (At the time, I did my own color neg printing, so I knew that it could be time-consuming and frustrating to get the results you hoped for).
OTOH, I have, more recently, scanned and inkjet printed the same slides, relatively quick and easy and the results are far better than the "professional" Cibachrome efforts. (And no fading after 10+ years, so long as framed prints are kept out of direct sunlight).

 

[halfaman]

Type R was the poor country cousin who faded quick.
Color neg RA4 papers were also rather fugitive and didnt have much color snap.

I have RA-4 prints done in the mid 1980's which seems to be done yesterday, they maintain perfect colors and contrast. I have RA-4 prints done in mid 2000's that have dramatically faded and will not last another decade. I am with PE, it is not the process but to follow it properly or not.

When Cibachrome was available from some "professional" labs in the UK, I tried many times to order prints from my favorite slides, but was never satisfied with the quality

That happened also to a friend. Never got a cibrachorme print that satisfy him and he worked with a professional lab.

 

[Wayne]

When Cibachrome was available from some "professional" labs in the UK, I tried many times to order prints from my favorite slides, but was never satisfied with the quality; in the end, I put it down to the difficulties of the system (and, perhaps, lack of interest from the technicians). (At the time, I did my own color neg printing, so I knew that it could be time-consuming and frustrating to get the results you hoped for).
OTOH, I have, more recently, scanned and inkjet printed the same slides, relatively quick and easy and the results are far better than the "professional" Cibachrome efforts. (And no fading after 10+ years, so long as framed prints are kept out of direct sunlight).

Starting with RA-4 then going to Ciba, you were probably one of those wishing it could be wrestled it into doing what it wasn't good at. That's part of your dissatisfaction with it. Likewise, my expectation of Ciba-like results leaves me somewhat underwhelmed with RA4 by comparison. I like it though. I just havent adjusted my expectations fully yet. I probably should throw out all those Ciba prints I have so I cant remember what they were like.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

When Cibachrome was available from some "professional" labs in the UK, I tried many times to order prints from my favorite slides, but was never satisfied with the quality; in the end, I put it down to the difficulties of the system (and, perhaps, lack of interest from the technicians). (At the time, I did my own color neg printing, so I knew that it could be time-consuming and frustrating to get the results you hoped for).
OTOH, I have, more recently, scanned and inkjet printed the same slides, relatively quick and easy and the results are far better than the "professional" Cibachrome efforts. (And no fading after 10+ years, so long as framed prints are kept out of direct sunlight).

That old finger pointing at the lab bit again...
I take the view that the great, vast majority of problems in printing from slides can be traced directly to the photographer's lack of technical grasp in exposing slides specifically for Ilfochrome Classic reproduction. The material itself provided fairly satisfactory latitude for contrast choice, while masking did the rest. Some of the work I saw required 2, 3 or even 4 contrast masks (!) and the resulting print was still at the margin and not representative of the best the material could provide, because of the poor quality slide. Photographers just never were bothered (then or now!) learning the necessary tricks of balanced exposure in slides — it isn't rocket science! Neither highlights nor shadows take precedence in the exposure and detail must be visible in either/both. Ilfochrome could not show detail in pre-existing huge black swathes of shadow. Nor could it tone down any blown highlights; if you printed something with blacks and spectrals, the result would be, frankly, bloody awful. Such a scenario is still relevant today with alternative RA-4/hybridised methods.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Wayne - if you knew how to mask I could tell you how to put the punch back in color neg printing. Or try Ektar. .. But Poisson, you fail to understand the fundamental mismatch between slides and Ciba paper. I knew all the alleged tricks to reduce chrome contrastr during the shot; but the cure was often worse than the disease!
And contrast control was only one aspect of the repro problem. There simply was no way around skilled masking if one expected optimized results. And most commercial labs simply could not afford the time or materials to do it right. A compromise was inevitable. Yeah, once in awhile I'd accept someone else's chrome,
but I'd charge dearly for it, just like a dye transfer print,

 

[Wayne]

That old finger pointing at the lab bit again...
I take the view that the great, vast majority of problems in printing from slides can be traced directly to the photographer's lack of technical grasp in exposing slides specifically for Ilfochrome Classic reproduction. The material itself provided fairly satisfactory latitude for contrast choice .

This is in line with what I was saying. It wasn't that hard to get damn good prints if you chose your subjects and exposed your transparencies carefully and knew that some just werent going to pan out.

 

[Wayne]

Wayne - if you knew how to mask I could tell you how to put the punch back in color neg printing. Or try Ektar. .. But Poisson, you fail to understand the fundamental mismatch between slides and Ciba paper. I knew all the alleged tricks to reduce chrome contrastr during the shot; but the cure was often worse than the disease!
And contrast control was only one aspect of the repro problem. There simply was no way around skilled masking if one expected optimized results. And most commercial labs simply could not afford the time or materials to do it right. A compromise was inevitable. Yeah, once in awhile I'd accept someone else's chrome,
but I'd charge dearly for it, just like a dye transfer print,

I do use Ektar and I did learn to mask (Ilfochrome) but never became highly skilled at it. I don't have the time or money to invest in photography like I did in the Ilfochrome days, and that may be part of the problem. I'm just not as good at using Ektar to its capacity the way I did transparencies. I knew how to expose them to get what I wanted and needed to print them on Ilfochrome. But, for example I shot less than 10 rolls of Ektar 120 and about 6 sheets of 4x5 last spring, and didn't get around to developing and printing until November-December, and this year is likely to be similar. Back in the day I was shooting dozens of 4x5 slides in a good week. Its hard to get good at something when you dont practice enough. But I am getting better at RA4, my last batch was my best yet but still fell short of my best chrome prints.

 

[mikeallen]

Bit late to this one, but I've just unearthed some Cibachrome prints I made 30+ years ago and as noted above, they look like they were made yesterday.

 

[halfaman]

I don't think anybody have doubts about Cibachrome longevity, but there are ideas about RA-4 dyes stability that sound like prejudgements. Even some curators think that all RA-4 prints are "doomed" and will dissapear quickly...

 

[Bob Carnie]

I don't think anybody have doubts about Cibachrome longevity, but there are ideas about RA-4 dyes stability that sound like prejudgements. Even some curators think that all RA-4 prints are "doomed" and will dissapear quickly...

I owned a Ciba Processor and did this process for others for many years... they indeed are not stable as stated,

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I think it's highly unlikely. I loved the stuff despite the contrast is so hard to control. The stuff is pretty caustic and toxic that if the user didn't mix the developer and blix before dumping down the drain, it would ruin your pipes. It's unlikely to make a comeback

But I've see some digital prints on aluminum that looks close. Maybe others could comment?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I disagree somewhat with Bob. The problem in each case (Ciba vs RA4) is the conditions. In dark storage Cibas can be very stable; every one of mine stored in a print box looks like it was made yesterday. But I've even hung em in INDIRECT sunlight for thirty years without an issue. But back then expensive galleries would often use intense hot projector halogen track lighting high in UV which would fade them out in less than two years. Low voltage halogens and many fluorescent tubes are also high in UV, and they don't like UV, whether artificial or direct sunlight. Chromogenic "C" (RA4) prints deservedly got a bad rap due to fading and yellowing. But they've steadily improved over the years, and now certain types might actually hold up better under display lighting than Ciba did, but not necessarily in total lifespan under ideal conditions. The problem with chromogenic prints is not only that they fade, but yellow due to residual dye couplers. So we'll see. I've had a number of big Crystal Archive prints under less than ideal mixed lighting for about a dozen years now in a commercial installation, and it will be interesting to see if any have changed. There are just so many variables that using anecdotal evidence from one particular person or a limited range of conditions can be misleading. The nice thing about Cibas is that the three dyes faded at about the same rate, so the color balance held up and the print looked good until it finally crashed. With today's inkjet prints, you've got a cornucopia of pigments, lakes (dyed inert pigments), and dyes themselves which all differ in this respect, so it becomes rather difficult to make any accurate assessment. The marketing custom of terming them "pigment prints" per se is misleading. A few Gasparcolor dye destruction prints behind Ciba technology are allegedly still vibrant from the 1930's. So are some dye transfer prints, though the very same ones might have long ago faded out in a few months under sunlight. But some of those same dyes turn up in numerous inkjet ink patents, so there's no free lunch, regardless. And as for true pigments, well the only one's known not to fade are the colors you can see on the surface of Mars with a telescope, or along some sun-baked desert slope like Artist's Drive in Death Valley.

 

[DREW WILEY]

MaineCritterCollector : Home-use Ciba was easy to neutralize if the bleach was poured into a bucket containing some baking soda. On a commercial scale it was a different story. I knew a lab that held 200 gals at a time in the vat, and to finally sell the building, the plumbing repair was $600,000. Digital prints on aluminum are unrelated, as are Kodak "metallic" prints. But Fujiflex Supergloss medium, itself on polyester, is capable of a very similar look, but much easier to attain if you are printing from color negs rather than chromes.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I disagree somewhat with Bob. The problem in each case (Ciba vs RA4) is the conditions. In dark storage Cibas can be very stable; every one of mine stored in a print box looks like it was made yesterday. But I've even hung em in INDIRECT sunlight for thirty years without an issue. But back then expensive galleries would often use intense hot projector halogen track lighting high in UV which would fade them out in less than two years. Low voltage halogens and many fluorescent tubes are also high in UV, and they don't like UV, whether artificial or direct sunlight. Chromogenic "C" (RA4) prints deservedly got a bad rap due to fading and yellowing. But they've steadily improved over the years, and now certain types might actually hold up better under display lighting than Ciba did, but not necessarily in total lifespan under ideal conditions. The problem with chromogenic prints is not only that they fade, but yellow due to residual dye couplers. So we'll see. I've had a number of big Crystal Archive prints under less than ideal mixed lighting for about a dozen years now in a commercial installation, and it will be interesting to see if any have changed. There are just so many variables that using anecdotal evidence from one particular person or a limited range of conditions can be misleading. The nice thing about Cibas is that the three dyes faded at about the same rate, so the color balance held up and the print looked good until it finally crashed. With today's inkjet prints, you've got a cornucopia of pigments, lakes (dyed inert pigments), and dyes themselves which all differ in this respect, so it becomes rather difficult to make any accurate assessment. The marketing custom of terming them "pigment prints" per se is misleading. A few Gasparcolor dye destruction prints behind Ciba technology are allegedly still vibrant from the 1930's. So are some dye transfer prints, though the very same ones might have long ago faded out in a few months under sunlight. But some of those same dyes turn up in numerous inkjet ink patents, so there's no free lunch, regardless. And as for true pigments, well the only one's known not to fade are the colors you can see on the surface of Mars with a telescope, or along some sun-baked desert slope like Artist's Drive in Death Valley.

Hi Drew
I put two identical images on a outside north facing wall, one cibachrome one RA4 they both faded within one year, they were laminated which kind of skews things
Yes they were heralded to be permanent in dark storage, that I cannot dispel whether they were or not.
Ilford even gave a 200year guarantee on all my prints we even had the certificates they made.
I just had a group show at my place and included in the show was a Cibachrome Mural I had printed about year 2006, To all involved the print looked really good hanging with all the others, but for me it looked a bit off.. The AZO dyes and the fact the unwanted colour was bleached away leaving the image has its merits , but I strongly feel that over years , Once they bury you alongside Bigfoot which I truly hope is another 30 years so you and I can debate here , all those wonderful cibas will be faded.

Bob