The warmtone range that my local shop stocks only starts at $100, that's a bit much just 'to try', and I don't even think they have coldtone.
Next time I order from B+H I might throw in a cheap box of each, but that happens once a year.
Then if I like it that's another year wait, or cough up for high shipping or high aussie retail prices.
So if there were a sample pack of cold/warm tone etc, and I could get it from my local shop for less than $30, I'd be all over it, and may even like it enough to buy a box of 100 and get to know it better.
Add some film or something you need anyway to bump the order to $49 and get free shipping:
Dear Dr.Croubie,
We make the most lovely printed swatch book, the trouble is we have so many papers it costs us a great deal to make each one, but every reseller should have one to show customers, so please ask.
Whilst I appreciate you looking for a manufacturing solution, we would never stick anything on a sheet of unexposed paper :
Why ? The act of pressing on a sticker possibly could stress the paper
The adhesive may affect the paper, the base and / or the chemistry
To do the checks, including incubation which we would... would take a long time and cost.
In manufacturing paper is not allowed in the 'open' long enough to have a sticker hand applied.
Applying a sticker takes longer than bagging.
Hand applying thousands of stickers is not what we would expect our finsihing people to have
to do.
All is possible...but you have to start with the 'best' quality route.
Thanks
Simon. ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited
HI Simon, thanks for the response. I'll ask at my local shop again, but I'm pretty sure they don't have the swatch book (I know they've got the swiss Ilford inkjet book because I've looked at it there). But they're the only retailer around here that sells darkroom paper or chemicals at all.
Besides them, there are 3 serious film-sellers (two are the only remaining E6 labs within 1000km), and another few camera shops with a few token rolls of film (not counting supermarkets selling unfridged Gold400). Not much but we're actually doing better than other state capitals compared to our size.
So if they don't have the swatch book then noone else around here would.
It sounds like the sticker option is out then, in which case it'll have to be multiple bags (come to think of it, I peeled a sticker off one of the Moab papers and tried to print over that, it didn't work and the colours actually changed. If something damaged the emulsion from pressure that's just as bad, especially when you're trying to showcase stuff).
I'll also presume you can't / won't want to just print on the back of the paper either just for these special samplers (as you can't print on the back of all of them like Crystal Archive does, that'd ruin the ability to contact-print paper negs).
So yeah, I see your point, it does sound like a sampler-pack would just price itself out of the market, especially with all the hand-loading multiple bags into one box and all that.
The only viable thing left that I can think of is just smaller and cheaper boxes.
For example, a 25-pack of 5x7 regular MGiv is only $10 at B+H, but the cheapest FB cooltone is $24, FB warmtone is $30, Art300 is $30, and Galerie is a whopping $48 just to try, all of them are in packs of more of bigger size sheets.
Maybe instead of a sampler, it might be worth investigating just some smaller packs of smaller sheets, like 10 - 25 sheets of 5x7 or 8x10s, whatever gets you within the $10-15 mark? I regularly cut up smaller 4x6s and 5x7s for test strips, so nothing would go to waste if I decided I liked it and bought bigger sheets.
They'll probably have low sales and tight margins, but if it's the gateway-drug that gets someone interested in a paper that wouldn't otherwise be, it could lead to more sales down the track. (But that's for your BDM and Marketing to decide, don't listen to me, I'm just the Engineer with the wild ideas).
Done, and thank you so much for the opportunity.
I like the idea of the sample pack also, but understand how expensive producing one can be. I was given a Kodak darkroom guide a few years ago and it has a swatch book of papers in it. I love the textures, mostly no longer available. I'd like the option of buying a similar book from Ilford because actually seeing the difference between tones and textures would be very nice as there is no industry-wide standard for descriptive terms like glossy, pearl, semi-gloss, or matte. It's a bit frustrating to buy an expensive box of paper only to find I don't like the surface. As for the swatch book being available at retailers, I'm seldom in a area with a brick and morter photoshop.
Thank you again, Ilford
Shawn M.
engineers change the world...
As an engineer, i give two thumbs up to this comment!!
I dutifully filed my negative away in a "safe place" and I may yet find it some day..
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