Fuji discontinuing sales of pre-cut RA-4 sheets?

Fuji will no longer be selling pre-cut RA4 sheets, so if you want to print with color paper from now on, you’ll have to order either rolls of paper and cut them yourself, or order it from a reseller.

And I guess Kodak doesn't sell RA-4 paper in sheets either.

Chan Tran said:

And I guess Kodak doesn't sell RA-4 paper in sheets either.

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Well, you’d be mostly right. The thing you get wrong though, is that they don’t sell RA4 paper at all.

This is a non-issue for most of the world. This announcement relates to their Japanese domestic product 富士フイルムカラーペーパー（CLP）(Fujifilm color paper).

The paper for the rest of the world (edit: see post below by koraks for clarification, this is not completely correct), including the kind in sheets such as https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/748167-REG/Fujifilm_600008963_Crystal_Archive_Type_II.html

is made in the EU and packaged in the UK.

For what it's worth I've been trying to get my hands on some of the JDM CLP for a while, just to test it out and see how it compares to the papers coated in the Netherlands like DP-II and Maxima.

From what I've read, this stuff was optimized for optical enlargement by enthusiasts, meaning that it's likely this discontinuance represents the death of the last "optical native" paper.

Kind of a non-issue for me in the US since it's been unavailable, I couldn't even get anyone to forward me some.

Aidan Sciortino said:

For what it's worth I've been trying to get my hands on some of the JDM CLP for a while, just to test it out and see how it compares to the papers coated in the Netherlands like DP-II and Maxima.

From what I've read, this stuff was optimized for optical enlargement by enthusiasts, meaning that it's likely this discontinuance represents the death of the last "optical native" paper.

Kind of a non-issue for me in the US since it's been unavailable, I couldn't even get anyone to forward me some.

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There are 13(?) types of paper listed on this page: https://www.fujifilm.com/us/en/business/photofinishing/paper-lab-products

Do you know more about the types actually available and any differences? I've always been curious.

analogwisdom said:

This announcement relates to their Japanese domestic product 富士フイルムカラーペーパー（CLP）(Fujifilm color paper).

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Yes, that's right. For the rest of the world, the situation varies. In some locales, there's cut-sheet paper being sold in Fuji-branded boxes, supposedly cut & boxed either by or for Fuji. There's also places where 3rd parties cut & box sheets of Fuji RA4 paper, sometimes under their own brand name, sometimes under Fuji's product name, but no logo etc. And in some places, there's just no Fuji cut-sheet to be had, only rolls, or not even rolls.

So...it varies.

Aidan Sciortino said:

this stuff was optimized for optical enlargement by enthusiasts

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If this is about the paper linked to in post #1: well...possibly. It's never quite clear what's happening in Japan. If it's "optimized for optical enlargement", the most likely scenario is that this is just an old formulation from 20+ years ago when color paper was optimized for optical enlargement by default. Somewhere in that timeframe this 'optimization' was abandoned because that niche sort of disappeared, and the combination of digital dominance and economics (i.e. cost-down) dictated optimizations that resulted in slightly less optimal performance when the paper is used for optical printing. In practice, it's not all that much of an issue because the "digital" papers print quite well, optically.

However, I understand that when European RA4 paper manufacture definitively abandoned the full optical enlargement optimization, there was some pushback from Fuji Japan as they were concerned about this. I don't know what those concerns were, except that they were ultimately brushed aside. My interpretation is that Fuji Japan wanted to maintain that optimization as a courtesy to the remaining few analog printers, but that the European entities saw no way to rationalize a relatively costly legacy in the face of competitive pressure, and that the economic argument prevailed. Mind you, this is years ago.

To the best of my knowledge, no Japanese-made Fuji RA4 paper has been retailed in the US or Europe, or indeed most of the world, outside of Japan (this does not apply to FujiFlex, which is only made in Japan and sold internationally, but it's technically not a paper). So indeed, the disappearance of this particular cut-sheet product, which may or may not have been a relict of the old pre-digital era, is kind of moot for most of the world. It has very little practical implications one way or another: it wasn't available to begin with, and effective alternatives have been available all this time.

analogwisdom said:

There are 13(?) types of paper listed on this page: https://www.fujifilm.com/us/en/business/photofinishing/paper-lab-products

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Take the US website with a grain of salt. It's not necessarily representative of the actual papers manufactured. E.g. it still lists the FujiTrans product line, which was discontinued several years ago. To complicate matters, papers manufactured in Europe (which is what you buy in the US) are sometimes sold under a different product name in the US, even though it's the same paper. The net result is that the US website can contain reference to papers that are no longer made, papers that are made and sold under a different name in Europe, and papers that are available in Europe by the same name.
The official website for the RA4 paper and chemistry channel is this one: https://www.originalphotopaper.com/range/photo-papers/
This website is actively maintained by the business unit that markets the papers and oversees its manufacture. The US website is maintained by the American business unit which is not directly related to the paper business, other than that they act as an internal customer.

Thanks for the info @koraks. I edited my post above.

I started a post on Maxima last week. All the Fuji big roll products I've worked with so far work perfectly fine and quite predictably using optical enlargement - CAii, Super C, Fujiflex Supergloss, and now Maxima. But every label of cut sheet product I've seen is simply the least expensive Fuji Crystal Archive product. There's no more Kodak paper around at all unless its old.

Fuji's decision to no longer offer convenient cut sheet is something merely reaching its inevitable endpoint. It used to be, that you could buy all their professional papers that way, at least up to 30X40 inch sheet size. But today, all the major bulk users are equipped with programmable automated XY roll cutting machines, and most (not all, internationally) have gone over to industrial laser exposure printing devices, allowing for intermediate software correction of scanned images. So it's now simply not profitable for Fuji themselves to provide cut sheet anymore.

But if the demand is there, there's nothing stopping an intermediate marketing company from cutting down and boxing, and private-labeling, some favorite paper. But that necessarily involves a higher markup to the end user. They don't provide that service for free.

And given my recent tests with Maxima, which are still ongoing, I see absolutely no difference between its look, "digitally optimized" and prints from the same master
control negative on "optimized for both optical enlargement and digital printing"
Fujiflex, other than the sheen itself, due to the expensive polyester base. Just because something has been improved in its digital response, relative to laser printers, doesn't mean it has been dis-improved relative to conventional enlarger colorheads. I see more of a win-win scenario. The papers are better than ever, even for those with traditional colorhead enlargers.

I can't speak for narrow-roll Photofinisher snapshot papers, designed for extremely fast exposures. The different labeling of those between the US and the EU is a further source of confusion. About all I have figured out is, among big roll options, commercial Super C ii is apparently NOT equivalent to Euro DP II. But "Maxima" is Maxima everywhere, and "Fujiflex Supergloss" is Fujiflex Supergloss everywhere, and has existed in its "optimized" II version for the past 15 years. Here, CAii cut sheet is often marketed ambiguously as simply, CA, in its big roll fashion. Alas, even different dealers can have different designations for the same thing.

I know what is meant by "digital balanced", but I wonder, has there ever been any color paper, at least since the days of EP-2, that was really optimized for enlarging. The reason for my doubt is that practically all pictures made in commercial labs, excluding those made manually with enlargers, have always been based on additive system, with three separate exposures of R, G, and B. The results do not look exactly the same as those made with an enlarger using a subtractive color head.

Depends. I have both true narrow-band custom RGB colorheads as well as traditional subtractive CMY. Back in Cibachrome days, it did make a visible difference, and at that time big lab laser printers were far and few between, and produced rather disappointing results (there were both early Lightjet machines in my neighborhood, as well as an early Chromira; I knew the lab owners quite well). But with current Fuji Crystal Archive papers there is very little difference between RGB and CMY, provided the colorheads are reasonably modern and the dichroic filters still in good condition, and hopefully clean as well. Feedback filters also need to be clean if that technology is in play.

Subsequently, papers began to get tweaked a little. Green lasers were the weakest, so there was a slight increase in sensitivity to green in the paper itself. Complaints of blaah muddiness were common with digital laser printing, so increases in contrast and saturation in the paper itself came into play. None of these "digitally improved" changes have had any bad effect with respect to traditional halogen colorhead exposure. And I certainly wouldn't covet long-gone chromogenic color papers; "C" papers are a lot better now, although cheap snapshot services are still cheap snapshot services.

I can assure you that big labs with multi-million-dollar investments in the latest digital printing equipment couldn't make better prints than I could in my own personal darkoom - they could do it way faster (and as commercial services, they had to); but they couldn't do it better.

Color neg films were evolving at the same time. Most of my Super C printing overlapped with the era of Portra 160VC, and it was a nice fit. Now I mainly shoot Kodak Ektar, and have printed it on several different Fuji papers. In each case, the hue reproduction idiosyncrasies of the specific film itself were the biggest challenge, not the Fuji paper. Of course, lots of us still shoot film specifically for its given suite of "personalities" or "look". But the best renditions of Crystal Archive paper, like Super C, Fujiflex, and Maxima - all of these have a superior gamut, in my opinion, to common color inkjet options. One can obtain a more nuanced look on optically exposed papers. If someone just want loud noise instead, well, there's always the Photoshop "honey and jam atop sugar cubes" saturation megaphone out there.

This is leading full circle with what I implied on the earlier post - One simply can't purge all the marketing out of the official Fuji paper descriptions. They're making assumptions about what kind of look people expect from certain of their papers.
Large-roll commercial papers like Super C are often adapted to bold advertising display images including type. That's one of the known markets for it; and in multiples, it's a lot more cost effective than big inkjet prints. But it also makes a swell general purpose printing paper.

With a more saturated and contrasty paper like Maxima, they seem to be worrying that it might be over the top for traditional portrait studios still using enlargers (which do still exist in certain parts of the world - not every lab can afford half a million dollars for a wide full input/output dedicated laser system, scanner to dry print).

And we all have different esthetic tastes and expectations, which might require some personal experimentation with different films and papers to figure out. That's part of the fun of it, or perhaps part of the frustration. Either way, it has to be done.
Everything has a learning curve.

Thread Title tweaked, because as can be seen from the thread - "it depends" applies.