Kodak color silver paper appears to be reshipping now

[brbo]

@LomoSnap, thanks for your comparison of various papers. Lucky SA-26 seems to be the best of the tested bunch. But if what @koraks said about the archival stability is true, that is then of little use.

 

[MattKing]

Moderator hat on: Please don't stray into issues with large political overtones.
Hat off

 

[Prest_400]

Absolutely, and I think Kodak was instrumental in setting up or otherwise assisting coating operations in China for their Asian market. But I think they pulled out two decades ago or so.

It's somewhat annoying because people keep associating the Kodak brand with the quality that esp. Endura offered up to a decade ago. For most amateur printers, this may be nothing more than a nuisance; our snaps may deteriorate a lot faster than we might expect, but what gives? My concern is with the few remaining fine arts printers many of whom still favor Endura and who might be enticed to jump into this quasi-Kodak adventure, only with their prints being inherently compromised, which is a threat to their livelihood. So my enthusiasm is...limited.

Given that Kodak and Fuji have the upper hand on product quality, I find it unfortunate if this is the case. Adding to that the closure of Carestream (ex Kodak) facilities and the loss of industrial knowledge that represents.

It is however good to Know that Lucky still have color product capability, they did exit the film business but this means they could re enter (big if).

 

[koraks]

The Carestream facilities aren't closed. It's a major player in other industries and they manufacture all sorts of stuff there - just not color paper.

 

[btaylor]

Unlike B&W, the supply chain seems so fragile it could collapse at any moment; at least that is the impression I get. Maybe I am just a pessimist.

Don’t be a Debbie Downer! Chin up, man. As koraks pointed out the RA4 industry is robust at this time. Very fortunately for us the “digital” papers still work well for optical printing in our little darkrooms. I loved shooting Kodachrome back in the day and printing on Ciba and Kodak reversal paper. Color negative wasn’t so great back then, but it is now. We have a wonderful selection of film stocks and Fuji makes great paper. Paper and chemistry are cheap, you probably already have everything else you need to get started. I encourage you to go for it, it’s a lot of fun.

 

[Prest_400]

The Carestream facilities aren't closed. It's a major player in other industries and they manufacture all sorts of stuff there - just not color paper.

There are some bad news about that which we might not have discussed in the forum, I don't know if the transfer will also encompass color manufacturing capabilities:

Carestream Prepares for the Closure of its Manufacturing Site in Windsor Colorado

www.carestream.com

A newspaper:

Windsor medical manufacturing plant to close, hundreds of layoffs

A medical imaging manufacturing plant in Windsor will close and more than 200 employees will lose their jobs, according to Carestream Health Inc.

denvergazette.com

 

[koraks]

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yes, that'll be the definitive end of US-produced Kodak papers. There's no chance they'll move a paper coating line from one site to another.

 

[LomoSnap]

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yes, that'll be the definitive end of US-produced Kodak papers. There's no chance they'll move a paper coating line from one site to another.

This is regrettable news. Kodak still has its base made in Germany, where ENDURA is made. So will all paper be produced in Germany in the future?

 

[LomoSnap]

@LomoSnap, thanks for your comparison of various papers. Lucky SA-26 seems to be the best of the tested bunch. But if what @koraks said about the archival stability is true, that is then of little use.

Yes, the stability of Lucky paper is very poor. Unexposed paper will show obvious color deviation after one to two years, which is much faster than Kodak paper.
I have some controlled storage expired ENDURA in 2020, and although the base color has turned slightly yellow, the overall color is still accurate!

 

[koraks]

Kodak still has its base made in Germany, where ENDURA is made. So will all paper be produced in Germany in the future?

No Kodak color paper coating ever happened in Germany to the best of my knowledge. Not now, and not in the past. There was a plant in the UK, but that shut down 15 years ago or so. The only remaining place where "real" Endura was being coated was the plant in Colorado, which was originally a Kodak plant. It was divested to Carestream around 2016 or so and it continued to coat paper for SinoPromise, which held the rights to sell it under the Kodak brand. This ceased when SinoPromise virtually disappeared overnight, putting an end to color paper manufacturing in Winsor, CO and apparently they have not managed to find a new customer for the business, so now the curtain falls.

This means the remaining sites where color are coated, are:
* The plant currently owned/operated by Lucky in (I presume) Shantou, Guangdong, China
* The FUJIFILM plant in (again, I presume) Ashigara (Kanagawa), Japan
* The FUJIFILM plant in Tilburg, The Netherlands
Out of these three, the latter produces probably 80-90% of the silver halide color paper. The Fuji Japan plant coats only a small fraction of product for its domestic/Japanese market (Fuji 'Ever Beauty' paper, which comes in a kind of cassette other than the bagged rolls consumed in the rest of the world). The remainder is made up by Lucky, which apparently has acquired the name to Kodak papers (thank you @LomoSnap for helping to figure out!).

Unexposed paper will show obvious color deviation after one to two years

This is actually quite normal; 1-2 years for unexposed paper is also the timeframe Fuji sticks to for its own papers. The problem of durability is not so much in the unprocessed paper, but the stability of the finished prints. This is an area where Fuji and Kodak made massive strides in the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Paper which has been stored too long prior to exposure will yellow on its own, and that will be evident on the margins after development. Eventually is will go anemic too, in terms of hue saturation and overall contrast. It also depends on storage conditions. But it is a serious enough problem that you might want to religiously avoid any discount seller offering prices seemingly too good to be true; the paper is probably outdated, and is being sold at a liquidation price.

It's harder to state how long freshly manufactured Crystal Archive paper will last before shifting. It's unquestionably quite a bit more than one or two years. But the whole point is that there is a period of time involved between manufacturing, distribution warehousing, and final use. So you want to keep that in mind.

Also ask the distributor specific questions. I once had a counter person at one well-known paper distributor tell me that RA4 paper never goes bad. I probably shouldn't repeat what I was thinking of him ("moron"). But at least he spilled the beans when he told me some of their paper rolls had been in the warehouse ten years or more, and was still "fine". Time to look somewhere else!

 

[koraks]

It's harder to state how long freshly manufactured Crystal Archive paper will last before shifting.

Around 2 years. This is according to the manufacturer and their colleagues at the print lab I visited in September. The manufacturer is a little more conservative and mentioned 1 year max until color shifts become a problem, but their standards are way higher than those of any of us. The print lab keeps paper around for up to 2 years at which point they find it's no longer possible to calibrate their machines to produce reasonable colors.

My own experience is that in 2-3 years the borders will have visibly yellowed and the paper has become unusable; this is at room temperature storage. You may get another year or so from it in cold storage; IDK, never tried, probably never will.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I've had big rolls of Supergloss on hand that only exhibited a tiny bit of border yellowness right from the start, and after 6 years in the lab, still the same; but another two years - hopeless. When I got it to begin with it wasn't totally fresh. Most roll stock from distributors isn't fresh unless it's a newly introduced product. But the roll of Supergloss I'm using now was completely fresh, with crisply white borders.

No big deal. Back in Ciba days, once you thawed it, it starting shifting color balance, and within 6 months was something quite different from how it had begun, and a few more months, completely worthless. Fuji papers are tame by comparison.

Keep in mind that this is a quite cool coastal climate most of the year, and seldom hot or humid. And films and papers are stored in completely different rooms than the sink and processing area.

 

[cmacd123]

I am given to understand that their is a supplier in germany that makes RC paper BASE for several photo paper product lines. Just like their is a suplier in Germany that makes a large percentage of the Triactite film base used by several suppliers.

 

[koraks]

I am given to understand that their is a supplier in germany that makes RC paper BASE for several photo paper product lines

That's right; Schöller. Virtually all photo paper is coated on Schöller supports, both inkjet and silver halide.

 

[MsLing]

@LomoSnap, thanks for your comparison of various papers. Lucky SA-26 seems to be the best of the tested bunch. But if what @koraks said about the archival stability is true, that is then of little use.

Well,to be honest,Lucky's products are not stable and enduring at all.An old photo which was printed on Lucky paper was found in my album and it was printed in 2014.Guess what,all colors had decomposed and it had such a yellow paper base that seemed like it was dipped in strong black tea and just picked up.If there was RC paper in ancient China,Lucky's paper do can be used to make counterfeits.
Anyway,though Lucky was a pride of Chinese industry,its quality cannot be phrased at all.Except their low price,no benefit I can find on Lucky's products.For example,sometimes after processing you may notice that some dots distributes on or in emulsion.Not only color paper but also B&W products have the problem.
Nowadays Kodak's AgX paper is often not easy to get.I only own few meters Endura which I'd use for important portrait enlarging.To take Kodak's place,Fuji is an equally excellent choice and it works better when printing landscapes,especially CA series.

P.s.:I'm sure that all photos are stored safe in dry and cool place with my dad's tea.Yes with tea.No sunlight can burn them.And only Lucky's paper has that disappointing situation.Most of those were my works in primary school.So sad I was.

 

[koraks]

I'm sure that all photos are stored safe in dry and cool place with my dad's tea.Yes with tea.

The tea concerns me a little bit; I can imagine that some of the phenols in tea can affect photographic materials. Having said that, prints stored dry for a decade should not have faded or discolored badly. I hope that Lucky is in the process of making improvements to the archival stability of their papers, but your report does confirm what I have heard so far from other sources. Lucky's papers do not have the protections built into them that make the higher-end papers more stable.

Nowadays Kodak's AgX paper is often not easy to get.

I'm afraid no real Kodak paper has been made for a while, and it seems that it will never be made anymore either. The only remaining factory that produced the real Kodak paper will shut down this month and hasn't been coating any paper for about two years.

 

[MsLing]

Something abnormal is that the predecessor of Lucky Film Shantou Ltd(Maybe I don't spell correctly because I don't know its English name) is China ERA company's color department,who had corporated with Kodak and Fuji and achieved their tech transfer.And ERA offered extraordinary photosensitive materials like FB paper,color film,color paper,BW roll film and sheets.Old photos on ERA paper still look well when I visited Shantou Industry Museum.But Lucky also corporated with Kodak and why it has such a awfully low quality?I can't understand because it has enough tech to produce enduring dye and coat emulsion well but it doesn't do so.
I want to mention some unrelated things. Today is a new day that I miss ERA again.I like there highest quality FB paper instead of Lucky's MG RC paper.According to my experience,ERA's FB paper is as pretty as Ilford's or Bergger's.But it has gone and maybe will never have chance to be back.Its B&W department and factories has been devoted into parts and rented to some workshops.Totally seeing,the industrial fringe is like a ruin.Dogs,hens and other domestic animals walked around and roads were dirty and uneven.

 

[koraks]

Thanks for sharing these insights @MsLing, this is the kind of candid look we generally don't hear about in the West. It's sad, indeed, but I think this mostly reflects the fact that the silver halide industry is only a shadow of what it was once. There's just not enough money to be made to keep a thriving and advanced industry alive. Color paper is a bit of an exception because it's still used at such a large scale.

 

[MsLing]

The tea concerns me a little bit

I think tea has been sealed well and in fact,they are not in same cabinet.My dad love his tea collections deeply and afraid they are polluted by smells,so he stores everything well.I think both tea and photos can't influence each other.

 

[LomoSnap]

Well,to be honest,Lucky's products are not stable and enduring at all.An old photo which was printed on Lucky paper was found in my album and it was printed in 2014.Guess what,all colors had decomposed and it had such a yellow paper base that seemed like it was dipped in strong black tea and just picked up.If there was RC paper in ancient China,Lucky's paper do can be used to make counterfeits.
Anyway,though Lucky was a pride of Chinese industry,its quality cannot be phrased at all.Except their low price,no benefit I can find on Lucky's products.For example,sometimes after processing you may notice that some dots distributes on or in emulsion.Not only color paper but also B&W products have the problem.
Nowadays Kodak's AgX paper is often not easy to get.I only own few meters Endura which I'd use for important portrait enlarging.To take Kodak's place,Fuji is an equally excellent choice and it works better when printing landscapes,especially CA series.

P.s.:I'm sure that all photos are stored safe in dry and cool place with my dad's tea.Yes with tea.No sunlight can burn them.And only Lucky's paper has that disappointing situation.Most of those were my works in primary school.So sad I was.

Lucky's consumer paper is indeed very easy to fade, I think this may be a compromise on quality for price.
After all, most roadside photo studios that use these papers don’t care how many years they can be stored, cheapness is important.

By checking Lucky's official website, I found that Lucky's professional product paper SH-8 is described as "optimized coating formula, more stable performance, less fading"
and even confidently claims that "near to the quality level of Fuji DPII and Kodak endure". "It offers the widest color gamut, maximum density for deep blacks and excellent color saturation"
I'm not sure if this paper Lucky is still available, but I'm very interested.

 

[LomoSnap]

No Kodak color paper coating ever happened in Germany to the best of my knowledge. Not now, and not in the past. There was a plant in the UK, but that shut down 15 years ago or so. The only remaining place where "real" Endura was being coated was the plant in Colorado, which was originally a Kodak plant. It was divested to Carestream around 2016 or so and it continued to coat paper for SinoPromise, which held the rights to sell it under the Kodak brand. This ceased when SinoPromise virtually disappeared overnight, putting an end to color paper manufacturing in Winsor, CO and apparently they have not managed to find a new customer for the business, so now the curtain falls.

This means the remaining sites where color are coated, are:
* The plant currently owned/operated by Lucky in (I presume) Shantou, Guangdong, China
* The FUJIFILM plant in (again, I presume) Ashigara (Kanagawa), Japan
* The FUJIFILM plant in Tilburg, The Netherlands
Out of these three, the latter produces probably 80-90% of the silver halide color paper. The Fuji Japan plant coats only a small fraction of product for its domestic/Japanese market (Fuji 'Ever Beauty' paper, which comes in a kind of cassette other than the bagged rolls consumed in the rest of the world). The remainder is made up by Lucky, which apparently has acquired the name to Kodak papers (thank you @LomoSnap for helping to figure out!).



This is actually quite normal; 1-2 years for unexposed paper is also the timeframe Fuji sticks to for its own papers. The problem of durability is not so much in the unprocessed paper, but the stability of the finished prints. This is an area where Fuji and Kodak made massive strides in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Suddenly I wondered, Kodak Park retains the film coating capability, is it feasible to switch to paper coating?
I think hard to believe that Kodak will abandon the color silver paper product line.

 

[koraks]

Kodak Park retains the film coating capability, is it feasible to switch to paper coating?

Nope. There are both technical and (mostly) economic reasons why that's not a very sensible thing to do.

I think hard to believe that Kodak will abandon the color silver paper product line.

They did just that years ago.

 

[MattKing]

They did just that years ago.

2005, to be exact.