Because the manufacturing facilities are often old and not cost effective to fix up
I have always been a little puzzled as to why super good, super popular products disappear and never seem to reappear. Yeah, sure, they might come back into production by name only and are not the same quality as the original. Or the brand name has been purchased and now the company is trying to pass of junk relying on the "brand name" to sell it. It sure seems that if Oriental Seagull was that good of a paper, and it was that good, then why isn't some manufacture picking up on it? Same for older Agfa, Kodak and Forte papers. If folks are willing to pay top dollar for some films then I'm sure they would do the same for a paper with a great Dmax and heavy silver content.
The problem that enlarging papers suffer, compared to the B&W films produced today, is that folks can used B&W film to produce Inkjet or digital prints. That means there is more of a market for B&W film than there is for a really top notch B&W printing paper. Or any printing paper for that matter. The lower amount of replies to this thread itself bares this out. The only solution to this problem is for all of us here to break our darkroom equipment out of storage and get going on some "REAL" printing. I'm not going to hold my breath!
That might be the case for film, but I don't buy it for paper manufacturing and coating. Also, why can't another coating facility coat an emulsion exactly like Forte or Oriental had onto a good quality paper. I can't believe that paper emulsions were as tricky to make as film emulsions since your are not enlarging the paper, only the film negative. Well, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it and will just use what's out there and be happy I, or we, stilll have that.Because the manufacturing facilities are often old and not cost effective to fix up
Because "super popular" often means "me and a couple other guys really, really like this", but there's no sizeable market and no opportunity for a healthy margin to be made. Because otherwise, the product of course would not disappear. Fondness for something in a small group of people just doesn't make a manufacturer any money.I have always been a little puzzled as to why super good, super popular products disappear
why can't another coating facility coat an emulsion exactly like Forte or Oriental had onto a good quality paper. I can't believe that paper emulsions were as tricky to make as film emulsions since your are not enlarging the paper, only the film negative.
I suspect it's because of the same reason why they've not coated MCC and MCP in a long time: the production economics would result in a retail price that's so high that Adox believe there won't be sufficient demand. An added complication going by old reports when they still actively updated the general public on the Polywarmtone project is that there was some production engineering involved in going from a working emulsion to an actually production-ready product.Not sure why they haven't made a paper.
I think the only way we would see papers like Seagull, MCC, Forte and others is if Foma or Ilford took the paper/emulsion formula and did limited runs so people could stock up on there favorite paper.
You are so right and that's too bad, but sometimes the truth is hard for me to swallow. I'd love to think there was a market for a really high class paper like there is for really high class cars, but there's not. We'll just have to get by with the good papers of today and forget the really good papers of the past.That's an interesting idea; sadly, Adox rejected it earlier when it was proposed them for their papers. The suggestion has been made by several people over the years to finance a production run for a paper by pre-orders from users, but Adox' argument was that they should invest in their own production and they wouldn't want to push this investment onto their customers in advance. Anyone can make from that decision what they will, but either way, it seems that they just don't want to go the
Kodak stopped making paper virtually overnight and personally their paper suckedI have always been a little puzzled as to why super good, super popular products disappear and never seem to reappear. Yeah, sure, they might come back into production by name only and are not the same quality as the original. Or the brand name has been purchased and now the company is trying to pass of junk relying on the "brand name" to sell it. It sure seems that if Oriental Seagull was that good of a paper, and it was that good, then why isn't some manufacture picking up on it? Same for older Agfa, Kodak and Forte papers. If folks are willing to pay top dollar for some films then I'm sure they would do the same for a paper with a great Dmax and heavy silver content.
The problem that enlarging papers suffer, compared to the B&W films produced today, is that folks can used B&W film to produce Inkjet or digital prints. That means there is more of a market for B&W film than there is for a really top notch B&W printing paper. Or any printing paper for that matter. The lower amount of replies to this thread itself bares this out. The only solution to this problem is for all of us here to break our darkroom equipment out of storage and get going on some "REAL" printing. I'm not going
John, I use both Foma and Ilford papers....mostly RC with either Dektol or LPD. I agree, the Foma papers (like 311 glossy RC) are slightly warm compared to Ilford.So, are you finding the Foma papers slightly on the warm side too or is it just me?
When I was doing a lot of gelatin silver (stopped in 2009 and I've only just restarted), my main papers were Forte Polygrade V, Oriental VC, and Ilford MGIV. I loved Polygrade.
A couple months ago, I picked up a 100 sheet box of 8x10 box Ilford MG RC. The price nearly killed me!
After I get that camera kit I've been after for a while...which I still haven't been talked out of... I'll be saving up for a 16x10 box of something...I would like it to be fibre based (back in the day, that is all I ever used). Not sure what my options are up here in Canada though. Easy to get is Ilford.
the distributor for Foma in Canada
I think more people may be getting into making enlargements (there are fairly frequent posts on here from people getting their first enlarger), but a lot of people are also packing up their darkrooms.
Yes, many of the "old timers" here half converted to digitizing and most newcomers wouldn't know an enlarger from a washing machine until they went to put there dirty clothes in it. There will be NO really good new papers for this reason.You may be right but given what I have seen on Photrio, few if any newcomers are other than "hybriders"
I'd be amazed if as many here are still darkroom users as was the case when I joined 20 years ago
pentaxuser
Judging from how well they have done, Foma should have a different distributor in Canada.
Converting to digitizing is about as appealing to me as converting to false teeth. I'd like to avoid both as long as possible. Sorry to hear that so many of the younger generation were born without teeth, so to speak.
Converting to digitizing is about as appealing to me as converting to false teeth. I'd like to avoid both as long as possible. Sorry to hear that so many of the younger generation were born without teeth, so to speak.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?