Lodima Fine Art Paper ready to take orders

Larry, It is best saved for Hybrid or a mystic arts forum -- as I suspect mere mortals wouldn't understand anyway.

What does one have to do and put up with to bring a new product to the market?

Every word you put forth says more about who says it then who it's addressed to .

Dignity !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All of this have one thing in common - PHOTOGRAPHY and it's bigger then all of this

Time , Time , Time

We don't have a lot of it , let's get this product out and use it , we all may be dead tomorrow

As a child doing photography , I felt that people were intentionally degrading me and my photography to put themselves on a pedestal , that was when I was kid ...Grow up

Your photography , his photography , mine, hers....................... what a hell ?!

It's first rate product , I have gone thru 4 boxes , I bought them from people who have no time to print now, I will buy every box you want to sell...

One thing that you have not said anything about ....darkroom flow ... there is no material or method on the market today(other then a computer) that will allow you to print in such a vigorous flow like contact printing , I have printed over 10000 negatives in the last 5 years and if I was working with something like lith which takes , someone said, 20 minutes in the soup and you can only get 3 or so sheets of paper thru it before developer exhaust itself I would be dead waiting for it ...

Platinum, Collodian ...Great stuff

As far as Seeing!!!!!!!!!!! you don't learn it from a master printer , it's a personal thing.

Why Salto uses 5 negatives? That's what they do. They feel the prints are richer when they make them that way. I believe each one is from a different part of the curve, but there probably is some overlap, and a skeleton black, which is why the black tones are so deep. But I am the wrong person to answer this. My technical knowledge about these things is supremely limited. I only know what I see. And the platinum prints Salto makes, curators and collectors have told us, are the richest they have ever seen, with the possible exception of some of Irving Penn's platinum prints.

No, the platinum prints that Salto makes do not have the same "quiet, gentle" quality of other's platinum prints. They don't care for "quiet, gentle" in prints they make. They feel, as I do, that "quiet, gentle" is often (note please I did not say, nor imply, "always") a justification for not being able to make rich prints with deep black tones.

Yes, they are digital negatives, but they are output to film; the negatives are not printed on an ink-jet printer. That is what I meant to say. Sorry not to be precise. The digital world escapes me. I know next to nothing about it. Fortunately our wonderful assistant, Richard Boutwell, who is a lot younger than we are, knows how to make scans and use PhotoShop, otherwise we would not even be able to get anything up on the Internet.

I gather that some think that I am proclaiming silver chloride paper as the holy grail. I am not. Vision, Seeing, ALWAYS comes first. ALWAYS. But then there is print quality. In my experience, looking at thousands of original prints from the masters of photography, the Westons, Edward and Brett, Adams, Evans, and many others, the silver chloride prints are the most beautiful. To me. If others prefer the prints made on enlarging paper, good for them. But I do wonder why, in a thread about our being ready to take orders for Lodima paper, those not interested in using the paper even bother to read it, let alone respond. Do you do it just to be negative?

Michael A. Smith

I guess I will jump on this one.

I assume Salto is doing multiple registration work from digital files.
I would imagine the paper is on aluminum to allow multiple hits , to build up density contrast or even build character in the print.
This is not unique to one printer in the world and has been very common.
We at elevator are now exposing digital files onto continuous tone film and processing with black and white chemicals.
We are using a high resolution laser printer ( not to be confused with a 600 line screen process)
We just purchased 200 ft of 20 inch con tone film from Europe to Beta test this and hopefully I will have the results for Photostock 2009 of prints done by a few printers I trust on different medias.

The end result will be for multiple film hits onto paper using any and all alternative processes... I do not think this is so unique, as Chicago Albumen Works have been making LVT negs from digital files for years and I believe Larry G here on APUG has been doing this for quite awhile.
What I think is unique is the layering of hits that build up an artists pallette that one single pass may not be able to do.
We have been making multiple passes on inkjet for years to achieve an improved print , so I believe this Salto is onto a good thing, but certainly not the only one in the world doing such crazy things.

CMYK and RGB being obsolete is curious as they are colour spaces for one to work in much like LAB. I would be interested to see their new spaces for working in.
I would like to see the new Salto profile .

Michael A. Smith said:

To my knowledge, no one but Salto does, or can do, what they do. They do not use digital negatives. They use film, real film. Our negatives are scanned, then enlarged digitally, but then five separations are printed on an image setter on real film in 600-line screen. These five separations are then exposed in register onto the paper. I was told that the DMax reaches 2.10. I have been told that is high.

A printer in the USA once told me that "no image setter can set 600-line screen." But he was obviously wrong. The folks at Salto really are amazing. What the owner says is that he is always trying to expand the boundaries of physics. Right now, among other things he is doing, he, along with mathematicians, engineers, and physicists, is working on a new way to reproduce color, one that will always reproduce it as it is. He believes this will make CMYK and RGB obsolete. The folks at Salto are way over the top. Makes me with our silver chloride paper appear to be a total non-achiever.

Michael A. Smith

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Salto: the paper is not on aluminum.

Yes, multiple registration from digital files. Then multiple exposures.

They use Kodak film.

What is LVT? What is LAB?

Salto's color stuff is, I believe several years away. They know what goal they want; getting there is not easy.

Michael A. Smith

jd callow said:

Larry, It is best saved for Hybrid or a mystic arts forum

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Good point. Sorry all, I shouldn't have brought the digital aspect up. Off to google or the hybrid site to try and understand.

Where do I sign up for the Mystic Photography Arts Forum? This thread has at least generated one very useful idea.

I have found this thread to be very interesting; however, sometimes I think a thread needs to be given a time out to let folks collect their thoughts.

slumry said:

Where do I sign up for the Mystic Photography Arts Forum?

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It's in Connecticut. Have some pizza while you're there.

Back to the subject at hand. Michael you will find my check for my Lodima in your mailbox hopefully before you leave for your trip.

I know how many thousands of hours of your time you and Paula have expended on the Lodima project. Without your collective absolute dedication to accomplishing this objective this entire conversation would not be taking place.

How many people are you hearing lately talking passionately about the visual marvels of POP? I think in this instance we need to back off a bit and let it go.

If you do not want to buy Lodima, then don't.

There are plenty of places where you can go to arbitrate your views. Move on please. You get respect by giving respect.

Cheers!

Michael Kadillak said:

....

If you do not want to buy Lodima, then don't.

There are plenty of places where you can go to arbitrate your views. Move on please. You get respect by giving respect.

Cheers!

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No shit...

scootermm said:

Michael ... Outside of Salto, who makes these excellent Platinum Prints?
Just out of curiosity.

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The best ones I've ever seen are by: Irving Penn, Cy DeCosse and Paul Strand. I think Michael Smith would agree that platinum prints by these photographers easily rival the greatest of the gelatin silver prints as beautiful objects.

c6h6o3 said:

The best ones I've ever seen are by: Irving Penn, Cy DeCosse and Paul Strand.

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I believe Cy Decosse's prints are made by Keith Taylor who also prints for his wife, Beth Dow ( http://bethdow.com/index.html ). We saw her latest show in NYC two weeks ago and congratulated both Beth and Keith on their beautiful collaboration.

Thanks for that link John, those Prints by Beth sand Keith are stunning.

jovo said:

I believe Cy Decosse's prints are made by Keith Taylor...

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Keith, I believe, is one of the true modern master printers without a doubt. He and Beth's work are among my current favorites. They're up in your neck of the woods Andy, but you probably already know that.

c6h6o3 said:

The best ones I've ever seen are by: Irving Penn, Cy DeCosse and Paul Strand. I think Michael Smith would agree that platinum prints by these photographers easily rival the greatest of the gelatin silver prints as beautiful objects.

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I agree. However I was directing the question specifically to michael... Per his initial platinum comment.

Wow!!

I have been following this thread for the past day or so, and almost replied to comments several times.

Thank God for the Delete button.

I agree with my friend Michael Kadillak. The road to respect for your thoughts, opinions and work is to respect the thoughts, opinions and work of others. And if you find it impossible to do that, shut up. Life is really that simple.

Sandy King

sanking said:

The road to respect for your thoughts, opinions and work is to respect the thoughts, opinions and work of others.

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It always helps when those thoughts are shared with a sense of mutual respect.

(Above comment not directed towards you, Sandy).

Murray

Just my two penny worth (and seeing as it's sterling it aint worth anything)... I've tried some of the initial run and I like it. I'm glad to hear it is now deemed to be G3 and that a G2 will be made. I will be ordering some for 8x10 and 7x17. I like it, I want to use it. The other thing is that I will use it with Neutol WA as that's what I use and the results were really good.

Never seen any of Michael or Paula's prints except for those on the web. Some look interesting, most don't. That's just me. I'm am however very happy that they have expended a lot of time and effort getting this paper made. If you like it, buy and use it. If you don't.... don't.

Finally, a level-headed voice!

I wholeheartedly agree with what Sandy said....

The ad hominem attacks on this thread, which were not started by the OP, are totally unwarranted. For one member to directly attack the photographs of another is beyond the most egregious behavior I have seen here.

Gentlemen, please agree to disagree, and keep the personal attacks out of the difference in opinion about processes.

Good heavens this thread has become more entertaining then a TV soap.

I do hope it gets the rights for a Film

scootermm said:

I agree. However I was directing the question specifically to michael... Per his initial platinum comment.

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It was at Michael Smith's suggestion that I see the Irving Penn platinum show at the National Gallery. He said that it contained some of the finest prints he had ever seen. It was at Paula Chamlee's suggestion that I get to know the work of Cy DeCosse for the same reason.

Paul Strand I stumbled onto all by myself.

The link takes one to some fabulous work! Thanks for supplying the information. Really, I don't believe that I have ever seen Platinum/Palladium prints of such depth and to have achieved such an "ethereal" quality. The prints must have been magnitudes better when seen in "real time". Some of the prints are redolent of the work of Robert Kipness, a well known artist of a few years back. Once again, I thank you for directing us to such great prints.

Ed

Interesting that they do not use aluminum, I am wondering how they get around the inevitable stretch , shrinkage that happens when paper is wet, It is possible that the multiple hits are accents*skelatin films as you suggests, One hit for detail which basically is what happens in the L channel if you work with LAB and a slight blur for the other mask much like one does to the A & B channels in LAB for colour work.
getting these separations*or as I would describe as detail and then accent films would be quite easy on a Image Setter or Light Jet.
The order of the hits I would believe would also be important.
I was just turned onto Kodak Kodagraph Mapping film which may be the product they are using, I am actually trying right now the Rollie Ortho film in large rolls.
Large strosser punch system with a flip top vacumn easal would be the ticket for exposure and a large enough sink for the processes you want with good humidity as I learned from Sandy King and Mark Nelson.
LVT is a image setter which comes in different sizes, 8x10 and 16x20 I believe . They will record digital files onto Tmax film... Larry G here has one I believe he could give a better description than I .
Lambda , is a RGB laser enlarger , up to 30 inch which I use for all types of end processes, not excluding final film for Alt processes , Black and White and Colour, I am working on the Black and White films as we speak .
LAB is a colour space that some printers, myself included that allows one to work in different ways than traditional RGB workflow.
It is like making using a sledge hammer to put in a finishing nail if not treated correctly , but for sharpening and contrast control there is not a better channel to use than the L of LAB.
Basically there are 10 channels available to work from and as well the inverse of them, RGB, LAB , CMYK which would then total 20 channels for potential accent usages.
By being able to harness these channels one can create masks that would be very valuable for Salto's work. I would imagine his lab is using these channels.
For colour separation work you only have to google Todd Gangler or John Bentley and you will find there is a contemporary history of multiple register full colour printing onto carbon tissues in the USA and Canada.
I have seen both their work and it is spectacular, basically a improvement of the Ultra Stable Process which I played around with in the mid 90's myself, but did not persue as my silver printing business was vibrant and the image setters and scanners required , at the time were way beyond my financial reach.
Today I have scanners and a monster image setter, and am very interested to make film and prints for my friends in the industry. I am not sure of the marketability of this thinking but since the 80's I have dreamed of such an posssibility.
If you want to see how these films work on your Lodima Paper you can contact me privately and I will try to make a film for your process. I am currently doing this with others for there particular process and it would be interesting to see how your paper responds. Unfortunately I have no experience in your paper as I am a Silver and Colour printer and currently am in love with mural silver prints off an enlarger .
The permanent colour prints will be for me and I have a couple of world class mentor's talking me through the jungle of 4 colour separation films on real film , making of the tissues and as well the process of these tissues, and I would probably only offer this service for those photographers willing to invest $$ into what I believe will be a costly process and of course my mentors who would have axcess to my Lab at any time.

I do apologize to the OP and the membership of APUG for this digital diversion, but the mixing of technology's that is happening today is and will be the way of the future for photographic fine prints. It is ongoing behind the scenes and my 2 cents is that being aware of the possibilities for the different process we use is important .

I have seen most end processes from Azo to Platinum, Silver to Lith, done by current top end printer/photographers and historical printer/photographers. I love them all and from my eyes cannot say one is better than the other.

A topic for a different thread , If I was deserted on an island what refreshment, what music and what photograph would I want ,



Cold Beer, Willy Nelson and a August Sander worker print.

Michael A. Smith said:

Salto: the paper is not on aluminum.

Yes, multiple registration from digital files. Then multiple exposures.

They use Kodak film.

What is LVT? What is LAB?

Salto's color stuff is, I believe several years away. They know what goal they want; getting there is not easy.

Michael A. Smith

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Bob, if I could take a year off from work, I'd apply to be your lab slave!


Oh...and Single Malt, an entire Bach Well Tempered Clavier array (any of several pianists or harpsichordists), and a Kurita platinum print on gampi paper.

I WILL take a year off from work and be your lab slave...!