Great news for Rodinal addicts

Amund

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http://www.bjp-online.co.uk/public/showPage.html?page=305832


Rodinal isn`t dead yet.

Quote: "Mr. Michael Mueller, CEO of a & o group said in a statement: 'The contract of purchase has been signed. The production of chemicals for all films and papers that are necessary for the development of photographs will continue on this site.

'About 50 highly qualified employees of AgfaPhoto will be adopted too."


Morten, bring out the Champagne
 

janvanhove

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That is indeed very good news...

May the Rodinal be with you all...

PJ
 

fschifano

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Whether or not Rodinal will be continued doesn't make a whole lot of difference. If you can't get the Agfa branded stuff, there are substitutes available. It is good for some things, and works especially well with slower films in medium and large formats especially if you can tolerate the loss of a bit of film speed. Developing films to match their speed rating results in a somewhat higher than normal contrast negative; something that is not always and acceptable comprimise. In the worst case, you can mix your own from raw chemicals. Losing Agfa Rodinal is no big deal.

The discontinuance of Agfa's MCC and MCP line of papers is a much greater loss. Until quite recently, their papers represented a very high quality product at a very affordable price. Even the pedestrian MCP 310 RC Glossy paper had a special look to it that I liked. The MCP 118 FB semi matte paper was really nice. Of course there are other good products available to relace these papers. They will undoubtedly become more expensive as the competition dwindles. And you know what else? I'm lazy! I know the Agfa papers and don't really relish the thought of looking for and testing new papers.
 

Donald Qualls

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Frank, I'm sorry to have to tell you, but the future of B&W is going to be getting used to new papers pretty much every time you buy paper. Even if you find a brand with longevity, the base and gelatin will, within a few more years, no longer be specially made photographic products, but adaptations of industrial products primarily used in other applications -- and as such, changes that affect their photographic performance will be of essentially no import to the producers. Result: papers will change from run to run. This inability to guarantee long term consistency of product was partly behind Kodak's discontinuation of B&W papers well before film had run its course for them (or so I understand from my reading), and will surely become a significant issue with Forte, Adox, Foma, Ilford, Seagull, and any other printing paper you might settle on.

The only solution I can suggest is to find one of the rare products without developer-incorporated emulsion (there are still a couple, I understand), and buy a bunch all at once, with the same emulsion number. If it's not DI, it should store as well as old style papers did -- which is to say, decades in a freezer and it'll still print the same.

I can't afford to do it that way, so I'm starting to resign myself to the likelihood that I'll spend the first 20 sheets of a box of 100 learning the new paper well enough to get decent prints from it.
 

dancqu

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Donald Qualls said:
The only solution I can suggest is to find one of
the rare products without developer-incorporated
emulsion (there are still a couple, I understand), ...
Click to expand...

Developer Incorporated Emulsions. Not two years ago
I was assured by Freestyle that NONE of their GRADED
papers, FB or RC were of the DI type. They do carry a
large selection of Graded papers.

As for VC FB papers, I doubt there are any of the DI type.
If there are no DI VC or Graded Fiber Base papers then there
are NO FB papers with DI.

I do not know about VC RC papers. There may be some
DI. Although popular for machine processing some years
ago, prior and post processing stability was poor. Dan
 

NikoSperi

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I'm quite happy... although I now have about 8 liters of spare Rodinal!
 

haris


Great! And for those 50 employees too
 

jgjbowen

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I received previously backordered Neutol WA from Adorama with a new "Agfa Photo" label on it last week. The previous shipments from both Calumet and Adorama had an Agfa-Gevaert label. Looks like the chemicals are making there way into the pipeline.
 

jandc

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jgjbowen said:
I received previously backordered Neutol WA from Adorama with a new "Agfa Photo" label on it last week. The previous shipments from both Calumet and Adorama had an Agfa-Gevaert label. Looks like the chemicals are making there way into the pipeline.
Click to expand...

The packages marked Agfa-Photo are from the Agfa-Photo which is now out of business. The Gevaert product was form before the spin off of Agfa Photo last year. This is not new product.
 

ann

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I tried to go back and re-read that link again, but it doesn't seem to be working.

At the first posting i read that article many times, and if it is the same one i am thinking about it is very unclear about what is happening. Most of the article has to do with the minilab situation, not with paper, chemicals, etc. that we use. Am i the only one who took away this impression?

Altho, i use very little of Agfa products, i hope that the hopes of those who are using a great deal of their product are not just wishful thinking.
 

dancqu

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ann said:
Most of the article has to do with the minilab situation,
not with paper, chemicals, etc. that we use.
Click to expand...

Let's hope the Crumbs are worth their taking.
And continuing. Dan
 

Wayne

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well I cant even access the article so I am very skeptical that it contains good news. My good news is 9 bottles of Rodinal in the cabinet.
 

Donald Qualls

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Well, there's DI and then there's DI. Ilford's papers (I've read) all have low levels of developer incorporated, even though none of them have such high levels as to be capable of processing in a plain alkali solution. They do this to make the emulsion faster without resorting to larger halide grains, sensitizing dyes, and the like -- but it still reduces the storage life of the paper (even when frozen) compared to the multi-decade life of papers made in, say, the 1960s.

The bottom line is, it's hard to be certain -- a manufacturer will tell you what they think you want to hear, to some extent, knowing it'll be 10-15 years before you'll see the paper fog in storage and know they lied (and by that time, they can probably blame chemical or thermal fogging because few users will know the entire storage history of their paper, much less be certain it's immaculate). Ask PhotoEngineer about developing agents incorporated in papers -- he might even know if there are any brands you can be certain don't have it (but I doubt it).
 
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