Ilford Quality Control - A Question

Early Riser · May 22, 2006

Steve Roberts said:
Personally I wouldn't do any of those things on the basis of being totally dependant on just one supplier, let alone all of them.

Steve

Well Steve risk is the reality of having your own business, I assume that you don't have your own business. Every business has dependancies on other businesses or suppliers. Ilford is dependant on Schoeller and many other supplier companies. I'm dependant on people who make film and photo paper.
What you hope for in business is that your suppliers are honest with you about their product and that they are sincerely commited to giving you the best product possible.

Photo Engineer · May 22, 2006

Early Riser said:
PE are you coating your own papers solely with your own use in mind or for possible mass manufacture and sale? Are you make VC papers or only graded?

I am teaching two workshops on this subject. One in June and one in September. You should come to one of them.

I cannot coat VC papers yet, but I know how. I am coating graded papers at the present time on a variety of paper supports.

I can agree with what Simon says. This problem is not apparent if you examine or test the baryta paper itself and does not appear with all emulsions. It may not even appear until sometime after the coating has 'aged'. This may be the reason that your expereience and that of Ilford varies somewhat as to the number of batches affected. It may be very hard for them to detect and may take a while to show up in some cases.

I use Ilford paper myself, and find it to be of excellent quality as are the films. The problem, as Simon points out, is that the production and testing of film and paper is not an easy simple task. It is one of the most technically complex processes going today.

Give them and Schoeller some time and I'm sure the problem will be solved.

Simon.... I may take you up on that offer. I have some nice emulsions here.

Just kidding. I really don't want to make anything that large in quantity. I'm happy with turning out a dozen sheets a night and making my prints on them. Thanks.

PE

Simon R Galley · May 22, 2006

Dear Early Riser,

Thanks for your note : Rod is out the office at the moment, when he returns I will speak to him, I will also speak to our QC section, we take any and every complaint seriously. As a Director of ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited I am aware
of all issues that affect the quality of our products, and at no time, in my personal opinion do I take a cavalier attitude to quality issues or to an unhappy customer, be they at the start of their career or at their zenith they are all customers. I will ensure this matter is fully investigated, I will publish the QC information ( and stats ) on this thread and hopefully resolve this issue to your satisfaction.

Kind Regards

Simon Galley

Steve Roberts · May 22, 2006

Early Riser said:
Well Steve risk is the reality of having your own business, I assume that you don't have your own business.QUOTE]

You're quite correct in your assumption, I don't have my own business. However, those I have dealings with do, as you say, accept an intrinsic amount of risk, but they also follow the old adage of "don't put all your eggs in one basket".

I'm sure we would all do well not to become too reliant on one brand or product with the current trend of shrinking options, regardless of whether or not we are in it to make money.

All that aside, I hope you eventually resolve your problems and soon get back to full production!

Steve

Bob Carnie · May 22, 2006

Early Riser

I do operate a small business that produces prints daily.
I would be out on the street if I was not able to print for 8 months.
I have in this quarter I have ran thousands of sheets of Ilford paper product. Cut Sheet, Roll Stock, fibre and rc.
I have not seen the mottle that you are referring to .
Last Year alone we cut open over 300 boxes of Ilford Warmtone 11x14 *purchased from Ilford direct and also from 4 different resellers in the city for ongoing projects. All perfect and consistant.
I will state again , we use Ilford Products in our printing lab for asthetic and consistancy reasons.
As far as film is concerned we run small batch one shot Jobo process and the only errors *ever* have been the operator.
Your ongoing problems with Ilford products is very strange indeed.

Early Riser · May 22, 2006

Simon,

I haven't been looking to give you or anyone a hard time, it is just that my concern over how I will be able to continue in my work causes me great discomfort after being shut down for quite some time. I have lost money, time and some very serious oppurtunities because of this and while Rod Parsons has taken considerable time to address the issue with me, I sensed in your comments that this was not being considered significant in the UK offices of Ilford. I have used Ilford products in large quantities for a long time and have never encountered a problem like this before. There is a reason why I standardized on Ilford papers. They always gave me the best results. But the current reality is that images that I was able to print before, without issue, are now unprintable and are also out of stock.

I sincerely hope that Ilford, and all of the other analog photography based businesses do well. Many of us have our own destinies tied up with the success of your company and the others in the analog photography world.

I will be away on location shooting for the next 2 months and will be unable to correspond any further on this matter until I return. Hopefully there will be good news when I get back. Thank you for looking into this matter.

Regards,

Brian

Simon R Galley said:
Dear Early Riser,

Thanks for your note : Rod is out the office at the moment, when he returns I will speak to him, I will also speak to our QC section, we take any and every complaint seriously. As a Director of ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited I am aware
of all issues that affect the quality of our products, and at no time, in my personal opinion do I take a cavalier attitude to quality issues or to an unhappy customer, be they at the start of their career or at their zenith they are all customers. I will ensure this matter is fully investigated, I will publish the QC information ( and stats ) on this thread and hopefully resolve this issue to your satisfaction.

Kind Regards

Simon Galley

Simon R Galley · May 22, 2006

Dear Brian,

I will post my findings to this thread, and I will get Rod to contact you on your return.
You are not giving me ( us ) a hard time I can tell how concerned you are.

Simon.

Early Riser · May 22, 2006

Bob,

As I stated the problem will not be apparent in most circumstances. It requires high contrast, no or low texture, large smooth areas. But please try this, expose a sheet of FB multigrade paper using a grade 5 filter, no negative, just fog it to zone 4 or 5 and then process it. If that print comes out clean then please tell me exactly what you are doing/using and give me the emulsion number of the paper so I can get some.

Here is a sample of a print that I can't print because of the mottle problem, it's 2 prints of the same neg, please note that the direction of the mottle appears horizontal in one and vertical in the other. This was caused by turning the paper 90 degrees to see if the mottle was enlarger or negative based or paper based.

Bob Carnie · May 22, 2006

Early Riser said:
Bob,

As I stated the problem will not be apparent in most circumstances. It requires high contrast, no or low texture, large smooth areas. But please try this, expose a sheet of FB multigrade paper using a grade 5 filter, no negative, just fog it to zone 4 or 5 and then process it. If that print comes out clean then please tell me exactly what you are doing/using and give me the emulsion number of the paper so I can get some.

Here is a sample of a print that I can't print because of the mottle problem, it's 2 prints of the same neg, please note that the direction of the mottle appears horizontal in one and vertical in the other. This was caused by turning the paper 90 degrees to see if the mottle was enlarger or negative based or paper based.

I will do this for you, I am in the darkroom this coming week. Ilford MG4 , Grade 5, No negative, lens totally out of focus, slight tone on print, Dectol 1:2 , 2min dev.

Early Riser · May 22, 2006

Bob Carnie said:
I will do this for you, I am in the darkroom this coming week. Ilford MG4 , Grade 5, No negative, lens totally out of focus, slight tone on print, Dectol 1:2 , 2min dev.

Thanks Bob, I will not be around to check the thread but please post it. Also you might want to contact Rod Parsons if the results are of interest. I just spoke with him and he thinks the R&D guys have made serious progress so maybe all this will be behind us soon. BTW not slight tone, more like zone 4 or 5, medium gray to dark medium gray. The problem does not appear readily in lighter areas.

Simon R Galley · May 23, 2006

Dear Brian,

Having checked your batch numbers 2 are from 2003 / 4 are from 2004 / and 3 are from 2005 ( the latest of which was coated June 2005 )

I will firstly contact Rod and get some freshly coated material for you to test

Regards

Simon.

Bob Carnie · Jun 1, 2006

Early Riser said:
Thanks Bob, I will not be around to check the thread but please post it. Also you might want to contact Rod Parsons if the results are of interest. I just spoke with him and he thinks the R&D guys have made serious progress so maybe all this will be behind us soon. BTW not slight tone, more like zone 4 or 5, medium gray to dark medium gray. The problem does not appear readily in lighter areas.

Hi there

I just finished the test , I used full sheets of 11x14 paper for the test.
I made prints that went from light grey, to dark grey.
I did notice a pattern in the lighter grey prints but not in dark grey. I would say that there definately is some pattern in the mid tone prints , I used grade 5 , with 135mm lens racked out of focus and I moved the prints during exposure to minimize any defaults in my set up ie the mixing box possibly providing a pattern.
Now would I see this pattern in a print with a negative in place ? I am not sure. I will try to print a negative with lots of nuetral grey to see if I can see any pattern.
This pattern is very subtle but admittedley it is there.
I will post again after printing the same emulsion with an negative in place with a nuetral bias .

z3guy · Jun 1, 2006

Well, I use only Ilford film and have never had a problem that wasn't my fault. I also use Ilford paper and start my students only on Ilford. The only problem was back in the " uncertain" days some matt paper came through as glossy but even then the supplier and Ilford cleared up any problems.
I am a happy Ilford camper!

Paul

Ilford Quality Control - A Question

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