The Future of Slide Film

[Poisson Du Jour]

+ 1

Here is a news flash. Digital scans of slides still do not compare well to using a slide projector. Just because there is a newer way does not automatically make it better.

The 'newer way' is actually very old. It's the

That is incorrect on several counts.

The "gold standard" for printing from transparencies depended on one's aesthetic preferences. To my taste, Cibachrome/Ilfochrome were gaudy, over saturated, excessively glossy things. They did last a long time in the dark, but, since I thought they were rather ugly to begin with, that was a disadvantage to me. On display, they faded perceptibly.

B

No, that is not true, Ilfochrome Classic does not fade perceptibly under spot illumination and the manufacturer published information explicitly laying out the requirements for exhibition illumination to maximise viewing quality with no compromise to print integrity. Photographers here in Australia received detailed briefings from the lab (ChromaColour, defunct now after Ilfochrome Classic ceased in 2010). Dark storage is another matter and much drum beating has been made of chosing this media on that alone. But why would you shuffle beautiful prints away never to be seen again on the premise that they will last 500-600 years (ChromaColour's lab estimate)? How is this a valid point? That dark storage should somehow sway photographers to use Ilfochrome Classic harks to the disease of storing digital images on so many hard drives, never to be seen again. Sadly, there are out there legions of photographers who have gone to the expense of Ilfochrome Classic production and only laid their eyes on the finished print once or twice. Then... —? To my knowledge the biggest Ilfo prints produced here in Australia, pano prints of more than 2.6m across, are still on display in private and commercial galleries under configured spot illumination. Peter Lik's originals from 1992 are still on display, even if the man himself has long since fled the Southern Countrie. We all know Ilfochrome Classic would have been a poor investment if there was proven, documentary evidence of perceptible fading in ordinary, everyday illumination, but there is none, only accelerated lab fading tests which have no resemblance to professionally designed illumination (galleries, for instance).

 

[Lachlan Young]

I've made Fuji Supergloss prints from color neg film that even experienced lab pros couldn't tell apart from Cibachromes. There have of course been
many other pathways. The joke about Evercolor was that it had all the beauty of a plastic placemat. Color rendition was outright awful, and the surface like a piece of newsprint. I spent quite a bit of time chatting with those folks in their facility once. A noble effort, but overall a misfire, and
utterly unaffordable compared to current scanned options. There were predecessor attempts at commercializing halftone carbon prints, such as the Polaroid permanent process, but none gave the relatively seamless look of continuous-tone carbros, carbons, or dye transfers, none of which are the best choices if high detail resolution is a priority. I'm too much of a beginner at dye transfer printing to know what I can or can't do with it; but I do know that Ciba, and now certain RA4 prints, can be brought to a high level of color reproduction if one is willing to expend the effort to really know the process. I made a number of high-quality internegs from 8x10 chromes a couple years back - I mean with a lot of meticulous masking and so forth - in one case eight different masks involved before the final interneg - but don't know how soon I can actually print them to see the result of all that effort. It's just so much easier to shoot new color negs rather than adapt old chromes; but I've sure got a stack of 'em, and really don't like the look of inkjet prints (at least for my own shots).

What was the substrate that Evercolor used?

I wonder how much of an improvement better colour management strategies & stochastic screening/ very fine linescreens would bring to bear on CMYK carbon. Super fine linescreens can be stunning in offset, but have a whole sequence of headaches & limitations.

Baryta inkjet can hold a pretty fine dot, but has other deficiencies I don't care for & the matte surfaces have gamut and resolution problems of their own. This is especially annoying as my own paper preferences tend much more towards dead matte to at most a very subtle lustre/ semi-gloss (less shiny than air-dried F) FB look.

The graininess of DT from transparencies can be quite startling - what are Pan-matrix derived DTs like?

 

[Sal Santamaura]

What was the substrate that Evercolor used?...

White polyester.

By the way, that Evercolor print on my wall is as close a match to the original transparency as I've ever seen any print achieve. The photographer who shot this image reported, however, that the problem was lack of repeatability. He laments not having two made when ordering mine. Additional copies obtained later did not satisfy him.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There were two versions of Evercolor. One type was made simply by contact printing three digital separation negatives to an early version of ordinary
Fuji RA4 paper. That can be replicated. The other was a pigment system custom coated by Polaroid, contact printed by halftone using a tweak of the
Agfa proofing system. Typical Stoesser press registration gear was used for final assembly. When they attempted stochastic, there were bonding problems, just as in other commercialized color carbon systems. Too fine a screen led to the same kinds of issues. I have sample of both kinds of Evercolor. There were also serious flaws in their software program, which could have hypothetically been improved. So basically, what you end up with is a very expensive print that looks a lot like a halftone poster. The RA4 version came out a bit gaudy, with poor separation between related hues, even from chromes. All this was doomed anyway because it didn't offer much to compete with inkjet. Inkjet is probably not as permanent because it is not a true pigment process, but only time will tell. There's quite a bit more to the story. John Wawroncek (sp?) bought the rights, but
none of these prints could sell well against his own stunning dye transfer prints, even though these fade much more easily. DT is another subject altogether. The last pan matrix prints from color negs were being made by Ctein here in the SF area. Most people used the standard matrix film starting with chromes and separation negatives. Matrix film has been revived a couple of times special order. Pan Matrix has not, though could be
hypothetically done again if you've got a million or so bucks for a master roll. Dyes and paper can be user-revived all kinds of ways. But fully transparent dyes have a kind of buoyancy and life to them that inks simply do not.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

There were two versions of Evercolor. One type was made simply by contact printing three digital separation negatives to an early version of ordinary Fuji RA4 paper. That can be replicated. The other was a pigment system custom coated by Polaroid, contact printed by halftone using a tweak of the Agfa proofing system....I have sample of both kinds of Evercolor...So basically, what you end up with is a very expensive print that looks a lot like a halftone poster. The RA4 version came out a bit gaudy, with poor separation between related hues, even from chromes...

The large print in my living room (previously described) is the pigment version. Additionally, I have an approximately 13 x 15 inch RA4 Evercolor in another room that was made from one of my own smaller transparencies. Both images are of the natural scene outdoors. Neither of them exhibits the color deficiencies you describe. Each, when viewed from normal distance, is sufficiently fine-screened to avoid any "poster" appearance. Placing one's nose upon the glass does reveals that these aren't contact prints. I could live with that since, at the time, there were no alternatives which came close to matching them.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

That is incorrect on several counts.

The "gold standard" for printing from transparencies depended on one's aesthetic preferences. To my taste, Cibachrome/Ilfochrome were gaudy, over saturated, excessively glossy things. They did last a long time in the dark, but, since I thought they were rather ugly to begin with, that was a disadvantage to me. On display, they faded perceptibly...

...No, that is not true, Ilfochrome Classic does not fade perceptibly under spot illumination and the manufacturer published information explicitly laying out the requirements for exhibition illumination to maximise viewing quality with no compromise to print integrity. Photographers here in Australia received detailed briefings from the lab (ChromaColour, defunct now after Ilfochrome Classic ceased in 2010)...

It most certainly is true. Before he became manufacturer-funded, Henry Wilhelm was an independent researcher whose data were trustworthy. Unlike the propaganda ("briefings") from a lab built upon selling prints made on that material. Go to Table 3.2 on page 135 of this valuable document:

Dead Link Removed​

Note that Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints last roughly half as long as the already fugitive dye transfer prints.

...Dark storage is another matter and much drum beating has been made of chosing this media on that alone. But why would you shuffle beautiful prints away never to be seen again on the premise that they will last 500-600 years (ChromaColour's lab estimate)? How is this a valid point?...

Perhaps you didn't read my post closely enough. I dislike Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints so strongly that their excellent dark storage performance would be a disadvantage to me.

...Peter Lik's originals from 1992 are still on display, even if the man himself has long since fled the Southern Countrie...

Any process that fades Peter Lik prints, on display or in dark storage, is appropriate as far as my aesthetic taste is concerned. I'm sorry he left there for here.

...We all know Ilfochrome Classic would have been a poor investment if there was proven, documentary evidence of perceptible fading in ordinary, everyday illumination, but there is none, only accelerated lab fading tests which have no resemblance to professionally designed illumination (galleries, for instance).

I view equating Lik prints with "investments" as very inappropriate application of the word. People with more disposable cash than concern for such matters have been making real investments in fugitive watercolors by the masters for a long time. That substantial funds are expended on an object is no indication of its permanence.

Once again, the illumination "specified" by a defunct lab that was in business to sell Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints carries no weight. Independent, meaningful research -- as well as personal observation of faded displayed prints -- is what I rely on in this situation.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

It most certainly is true. Before he became manufacturer-funded, Henry Wilhelm was an independent researcher whose data were trustworthy. Unlike the propaganda ("briefings") from a lab built upon selling prints made on that material. Go to Table 3.2 on page 135 of this valuable document:

Dead Link Removed​

Note that Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints last roughly half as long as the already fugitive dye transfer prints.

Perhaps you didn't read my post closely enough. I dislike Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints so strongly that their excellent dark storage performance would be a disadvantage to me.

No. I read as much of your post as I needed to, and no more than I wish, because of factual inaccuracies and later "propaganda" innuendo about the lab, when in fact one of the printers was a researcher into the material itself (since at least 1975) and Wilhelm's own researach was soundly discredited. So, there is no need for me to read any further (besides which I have a lot of reading to do in the nexxt 13 hours!).

That you do not like Ilfochrome Classic prints or that they are not to your taste is an individual problem, not gospel for the masses who still crave to have their best images committed to the media which is long gone (note that most of us would not return to Ilfochrome Classic given its litany of quality and produciton problems that caused so much recurrent grief over 5-6 years). If you don't like it — any type of traditional images, try painting. The RA-4 process is fine, certainly not mayhem. And it sells just as well as Ilfochromes. The key is quality of the image, the type of media secondary to the quality of the visual work.

 

[ericdan]

I don't see the "news" in this thread.

Right... you should probably report this offense.

 

[Roger Cole]

The problem with this analogy is that you had to convert your slides to 24-bit 2 megapixel images to view on your projector. Even your iPhone images were scaled down from their native 8 megapixel format.

When slides are projected in the analog manner, color depth is much greater than 24-bit RGB, and resolution is much higher than 2 megapixels (1080x1920).

Whether it makes a big difference is probably most determined by "normal viewing distance". As you move back from 1 and 1/2 screen heights, resolution becomes less important.

What your experience really points out is that digital resolution is vastly overrated, and megapixel counts are really just a marketing ploy to get people to replace perfectly fine cameras with more expensive cameras offering little quality improvement.

Did you have a chance to do a side-by-side comparison of your slides with a slide projector vs. the same slide scanned on projected with your Epson?

No, you misunderstood. Your last sentence is exactly what the entire show was. The slides were NOT projected by the Epson projector. The slides were projected by my Kodak Carousel. When I went through all the film slides I switched to the Epson for the digital shots.

You are right about pixel counts. After a certain point, and digital reached that point several years ago, noise and lens quality becomes far more important than pixel count.

EDIT: I re-read my post and see where the confusion arose. I wrote:

To round out the show I showed both slides and my digital shots via my home theater projector...

What I should have said was something like, "to round out the show I showed both my slides, projected by my Carousel projector, and my digital shots via my home theater projector..." I didn't go into that detail because to me - it's always obvious to the person telling the story - it was obvious that I would only use the Epson for the digital shots for which it was needed, especially when I pointed out how inexpensive 35mm slide projectors are these days.

My apologies for the confusion. But it did amount to a pretty fair comparison from that "normal viewing distance." Even so, the lack of detail in the projected digital images when viewed from much closer was far and away mostly due to the limitations of the 1080p projector and not the digital files themselves, though I'm pretty darned sure that my 35mm slides on E100G and Provia 100F, shot with my Pentax LX and MX, using mostly a Pentax 50mm f/1.7 and a Vivitar Series 1 28-105, mostly at middle apertures, would show quite a bit better if greatly enlarged and cropped than the digital files from the small sensor and limited lens in my iPhone.

 

[Alan Klein]

I like HDTV over digital projection. The latter reflects light so there's less "punch", colors, contrast, etc. HDTV has back lit and I'm looking forward to UHDTV. You can also create slide shows with music, narration, titles and credits, etc that makes the shows more interesting. It's also more convenient for guests who use to cringe when I pulled out my projector. Now I just start a slide show on the TV and they don't have time to make excuses to leave early.

 

[Jim Taylor]

I love shooting slide film, and I'm so pleased that companies like Ferrania are doing their bit for sustainable production. I really feel that the future of slide film very much depends on whether younger people take up the reins and keep shooting it!

For me (as one of the aforementioned younglings!) who is starting to shoot more reversal film than anything else, my future use of slide film rests on whether I can obtain high-quality wet-prints from the chromes, should I so choose. For this, I'd rather use a reversal paper, rather than scanning and printing by inkjet/send out for RA-4.

If Ferrania are listening, I would posit that maybe a reversal paper would help to ensure that people who want to keep shooting slide film do so, because of the flexibility of being able to create prints at home. Just another tool in the arsenal!

Just my 2p!

 

[Sal Santamaura]

... I read as much of your post as I needed to, and no more than I wish, because of factual inaccuracies and later "propaganda" innuendo about the lab...

There were no factual inaccuracies in my posts. The characterization of what a lab put out to support sale of its product as propaganda was not innuendo. It was a simple, straightforward statement of fact.

...in fact one of the printers was a researcher into the material itself (since at least 1975)...

That carries about as much weight as do claims made by "scientists" paid by the fossil fuel industry that climate change is unrelated to human activity. In other words, none. Specifying an illuminant tailored to the product, one not ubiquitous or even relatively common, to overcome an inherent limitation, is not "research."

...Wilhelm's own researach was soundly discredited...

Wilhelm's early self-funded research, upon which the book I linked to was based, remains completely credible. It could be relied upon when first published and can still be relied upon today. Additionally, I've personally hung Cibachrome prints under typical office illumination and watched them fade perceptibly within a decade.

...That you do not like Ilfochrome Classic prints or that they are not to your taste is an individual problem, not gospel for the masses...

My dislike of Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints is not a problem. It's simply an aesthetic preference. My taste is no more gospel for "the masses" than is yours.

...the masses who still crave to have their best images committed to the media which is long gone...

It's not clear just how many photographers "crave" another opportunity to print on the medium of Cibachrome/Ilfochrome. I suspect, but cannot determine with certainty, that the number doesn't qualify for characterization as "masses."

...If you don't like it — any type of traditional images, try painting. The RA-4 process is fine, certainly not mayhem....

I'm perfectly content with black and white now and have absolutely no talent for painting. RA-4 is adequately stable for my purposes, but, given a lack of color darkroom facilities and need to rely on commercial labs, not something I'm interested in dealing with.

...And it sells just as well as Ilfochromes...

I've never sold a print and have no plans to ever do so. The commercial viability of a process is only of interest to me insofar as it gets used enough so the materials continue to be available.

...The key is quality of the image, the type of media secondary to the quality of the visual work.

These threads discussing materials and processes almost always end up with those whose positions aren't accepted by others falling back on that argument. Whether one agrees with it or not, this thread is about a medium. It doesn't concern images, composition, etc.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Oh here we go again. I know how to make a Cibachrome fade in less than a week. But then I've still got ones which hung in mountain window light almost thirty years and look like they were made yesterday. All the ones in storage are immaculate. Overall, there is a vast difference between the
artificial torture of accelerated aging tests and attempting to extrapolate truth from that, and the multitude of real world variables. In this respect,
Wilhelm was wrong as often as he was right. Another generation of testing is going on with newer media, with pro and cons of its own. But Type R
reversal papers deservedly earned a bad rap long ago for being fugitive. Maybe they could be improved today, but nobody is going to waste serious
R&D money to do it. Inkjet permanence is misleading. You might run gray scale tests that say one thing, while actual prints could behave quite differently due to which particular hues are prevalent, because not all the inks are created equal. The achilles heel of inkjet is that every ink has to
get through those tiny nozzles, and that defines their selection to begin with, not permanence per se. With Cibachrome, you have just three dyes which
faded at almost equal rates, almost imperceptibly, until the precipice is finally reached, and then they crash relatively fast, with cyan lingering the
longest. Fuji Cystal Archive is allegedly more light stable on display, but will inevitably yellow and fade even in dark storage. So I'd say, pick your
poison, except that there aren't that many still to pick from. I've moved on to RA4, which offers a range of sheen suitable for diverse subject. But
I have no interest in playing that BS marketing game of predicting how long they'll last. I probably won't be around long enough the find out myself.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Sal, I should add that it is impossible to generalize the permanence of dye transfer prints, simply because there were so very many choices of dyes
which could be selected. Kodak alone changed their yellow dye three times in later years, not because permanence was their priority, but retouchability. Color Corporation of America had their own dyes, as did the Army color labs. Many practitioners formulated their own. It was the flexibility of the medium which pushed it forward. I own both Kodak and Pylam dyes. I wouldn't hang either under any kind of light with UV in it.
But Gasparcolor prints, the dye destruction predecessor to Cibachrome, still exist in fine shape from the 1930's. By contrast, many pigment prints,
in which the individual pigments might survive, have started to fail due to bonding and blistering issues between layers. This is particularly true
with color carbro. And not all pigments are created equal either. My own connection to that industry had made me very skeptical of accelerated aging
tests except in a relative sense. It's useful, but talking in terms of years, decades, or centuries based on such testing is nonsense. The best part of
what Wilhelm did was based upon observation of extant older media, and how they have fared under known storage or display conditions.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I also think what slide is to go and gum print is to stay. It has nothing to do with archival characteristics. But slide film is next to non-profitable industry now, while gum print is one man show from more widely available ingredients.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There is nothing inherently "gaudy" about Cibachrome, anymore than there is something inherently loud and annoying about piano music. It's just a medium, and I personally made a lot of delicatedly nuanced prints on it. Other than their RC version, classic Ciba was indeed inherently glossy and needed careful display lighting. The fact that certain people like Peter Lik once created their abominations on it doesn't condemn the medium anymore than the digital output media he now splatters with fluorescent Fauxtoshop crime scenes. But if gloss per se bothers you, I did get some "off" batch
Ciba a couple times which they blamed on bad gelatin, which has the most wonderful lustre to it I've even seen in a color print, neither high gloss nor
RC-ish gloss. Just a hint of 3D. But they never paid much attention to the fact I actually liked it, and simply sent me more paper for free to offset the
manufacturing error. RA4 has a full range of sheens, and I actually work with several of them, depending on the subject.

 

[Trail Images]

There is nothing inherently "gaudy" about Cibachrome

Totally agree. I have a mixture of 16x20 and 20x24 prints in my home and they're excellent.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

There is nothing inherently "gaudy" about Cibachrome...

Unless one thinks of "shiny object" and "gaudy" as synonyms.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Certainly not everyone likes a high gloss print surface. There were ways to tame that a bit on display. But it came with the territory of the medium.
On the other hand, if you had reflections or iridescence in the subject (like an abalone shell, for example), only high gloss does it justice. Hell to display in big prints without careful lighting and very very flat mounting. Ciba certainly wasn't a silver bullet, and had significant color reproduction
issues of its own. But it filled a big void for over two decades.

 

[Sirius Glass]

deleted

 

[Lachlan Young]

White polyester.

There were two versions of Evercolor. One type was made simply by contact printing three digital separation negatives to an early version of ordinary
Fuji RA4 paper. That can be replicated. The other was a pigment system custom coated by Polaroid, contact printed by halftone using a tweak of the
Agfa proofing system. Typical Stoesser press registration gear was used for final assembly. When they attempted stochastic, there were bonding problems, just as in other commercialized color carbon systems. Too fine a screen led to the same kinds of issues. I have sample of both kinds of Evercolor. There were also serious flaws in their software program, which could have hypothetically been improved. So basically, what you end up with is a very expensive print that looks a lot like a halftone poster. The RA4 version came out a bit gaudy, with poor separation between related hues, even from chromes. All this was doomed anyway because it didn't offer much to compete with inkjet. Inkjet is probably not as permanent because it is not a true pigment process, but only time will tell. There's quite a bit more to the story. John Wawroncek (sp?) bought the rights, but
none of these prints could sell well against his own stunning dye transfer prints, even though these fade much more easily. DT is another subject altogether. The last pan matrix prints from color negs were being made by Ctein here in the SF area. Most people used the standard matrix film starting with chromes and separation negatives. Matrix film has been revived a couple of times special order. Pan Matrix has not, though could be
hypothetically done again if you've got a million or so bucks for a master roll. Dyes and paper can be user-revived all kinds of ways. But fully transparent dyes have a kind of buoyancy and life to them that inks simply do not.

Polyester would certainly bring the dimensional stability issues under control, on the other hand, it sounds awfully like it was just trying to be a cibachrome lookalike. Regarding the bonding issues, my immediate reaction is that it was probably dot gain rearing its ugly head...

I suspect that making pan-matrix would be considerably less than $1M, from what I can tell not a complicated emulsion to make, but needs some highly specific sensitising dyes - which are probably hideously expensive.

Not that I'm going to try - I'm much more interested in exploring pigment/ carbon processes on printmaking papers & seeing how far I can go from a darkroom standpoint.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Oh you could simply make your own pan matrix film if you built a decent coating machine. Jim Browning could probably even give you the formula.
That would amount to an awful amount of work just to get up to bat, then maybe a decade more of learning how to print proficiently on it, provided
you could keep making the necessary film in exactly the same manner every single time. Nobody is going to coat it for you without a major investment, which is no guarantee it will work well! I am convinced tweaks on color carbon could be significantly improved if somebody took the
time to explore more modern pigment options. I have a good idea which direction to go, but no time to personally explore that path. I've got enough
things to print already, and enough ways to print them. Sandy King hosts a site on carbon printing, with some color experimenting going on there too,
though via more traditional techniques. And lastly, No, Evercolor was not trying to look like Cibachrome, nor did it even vaguely resemble it. Polyester
base material is not automatically glossy, and Evercolor was almost matte. They did need that kind of substrate for dimensionally stability, since it
was a registered "assembly" or build-up process. If you want a lengthy discussion of where Evercolor's software went wrong, talk to Joe Holmes.
Sure it could be updated, but where is the financial incentive? Remarkably, both Charles Berger and Bill Nordstrom are still alive and still inventing
new pigment printing tweaks!

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Polyester would certainly bring the dimensional stability issues under control, on the other hand, it sounds awfully like it was just trying to be a cibachrome lookalike...

...No, Evercolor was not trying to look like Cibachrome, nor did it even vaguely resemble it. Polyester base material is not automatically glossy, and Evercolor was almost matte...

That's absolutely correct. The large Evercolor pigment print hanging in my home could not remotely be described as glossy. I'd say somewhere between "semi matt" and the air-dried surface of glossy Ilfobrom Galerie FB, to put it in terms of current black and white FB paper surfaces.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The Polaroid Permanent process was a more distinctly glossy. I did not like the effect. And the surface of Cibachrome itself is quite fragile. But it does static-mount well up to about 20x24. Fuji Supergloss is more forgiving, but static mounts poorly, indicating these substrates are really quite different.
A lot of my own work was based upon complex plays on the picture plane itself - reflections upon reflections, puzzles of depth, etc. Ciba was a wonderful medium for this. If you just want big namby-pamby postcard scenes with loud colors, well, there are the usual suspects. That kind of thing
never interested me. And although chrome film is generally better color balanced than color neg film, the latter has the range advantage, has dramatically improved, and overall, I think that I'm in a better spot now with RA4 than with Ciba. Of course, that mandates some special printing
tweaks. And there is always that threat hanging over my head of Kodak discontinuing some crucial film. But my freezer can buy quite a bit of time.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Ah - I heard 'Polyester' & immediately assumed same finish as Ciba - which was available in other finishes, but not on the poly base, if I remember correctly. The almost 'liquid' nature of ciba could be remarkable if done well, but otherwise C41/RA4 offers much more. I'll blame my not paying attention on a frustrating day of fighting with an unsharp mask & 35mm...

In fact, the surface of Evercolor sounds quite like the finish of Yupo or similar synthetic substrates when used for carbon.

What are the pigment options worth looking at?