Who DID buy all of the AZO????

Donald Miller · Dec 1, 2005

jmdavis said:
Donald,

I worry less about the hijacking and more about the attacks. I have conducted business with MAS for paper and books. I have taken the Vision and Technique Workshop. I am looking right now at one of his prints above my desk from the Toledo series. I think that if it is possible to bring a substitute for Azo to market, he is the man to do it. As for his ethics, I trust him.

Mike Davis

Mike,

I recognize that you trust him...there are others that don't share your opinion. They are as entitled to their opinion as you are to yours. I really wish that you would learn to allow others the dignity of their opinion.

I have no intent or desire to discuss this further.

James Bleifus · Dec 1, 2005

wbryant said:
Who did buy all of the AZO??? someone must know.

I've been wondering the same thing. I know my local camera store was always telling me that I could order Azo through them if I was willing to purchase enough (I wasn't). In a post on his site Michael said that several people approached him after Azo was cancelled asking for very large orders. He declined. Clearly those buyers went elsewhere and ordered their paper. If the order(s) were large enough they probably were able to talk their way into a discount, too. There also seems to be some resentment towards M&P being the only real dealers of Grade 3. I suspect that resentment also caused a few people to pool their resources for a large purchase or two through another dealer.

Not only do I sympathize with M&P because they don't have enough Azo for themselves but I've been recently emailing with a photographer who is in the process of printing a group of portfolios to accompany his forthcoming book who will now have to find another paper and start from scratch since there's no grade 3. It's impacting a lot of folks.

Cheers, James

Alex Hawley · Dec 1, 2005

Hey guys, the last thing I want to see is another thread turn in to a slug fest, so why don't we all just drop it a go on.

Photo Eng, while I applaud you efforts in making a hand-coated gelatin emulsion paper, I have my doubts that this will be a viable option. It seems to me from the problems that you have realated that there are just too many variables involved. Given the variables, I'm afraid it will be too time consuming and too unpredictable from batch to batch. I'm not one who likes to flutter from material to material. I would rather concentrate on one set of materials and concentrate on making the best use of them I can.

My intentions for the short term and near long term are to switch over to pt/pd prints, something I've wanted to do anyway. If a replacement for Azo comes along, that will be good and I will no doubt use it. If the replacement doesn't materialize, then I won't be missing anything. Things in the world change so I'm rolling on with the change.

Donald Miller · Dec 1, 2005

Alex,

I agree about dropping things...thanks.

You are moving right along if you are moving into pt-pd. I remember when you first got a 4X5...LOL

Photo Engineer · Dec 1, 2005

Alex Hawley said:
Hey guys, the last thing I want to see is another thread turn in to a slug fest, so why don't we all just drop it a go on.

Photo Eng, while I applaud you efforts in making a hand-coated gelatin emulsion paper, I have my doubts that this will be a viable option. It seems to me from the problems that you have realated that there are just too many variables involved. Given the variables, I'm afraid it will be too time consuming and too unpredictable from batch to batch. I'm not one who likes to flutter from material to material. I would rather concentrate on one set of materials and concentrate on making the best use of them I can.

My intentions for the short term and near long term are to switch over to pt/pd prints, something I've wanted to do anyway. If a replacement for Azo comes along, that will be good and I will no doubt use it. If the replacement doesn't materialize, then I won't be missing anything. Things in the world change so I'm rolling on with the change.

Alex, I see your point. I agree with you in some respects, but I cannot accept that conventional silver halide will vanish without a fight and that there will be no alternative. If I don't do this type of work, who will. Most other retired emulsion makers are completely disinterested in this problem.

So, you go ahead with pt/pd. I will concentrate on giving the interested parties a range of paper and film speeds with varying contrasts from conventional silver halide. If that were possible from pt/pd, and if it were not so expensive, perhaps we would be using it now instead of AgX. And, if AgX vanished, where will the higher speed film emulsions come from except from work on AgX emulsions for home preparation?

In any event, at some point, conventional will fall below some sustainable level for all of those manufacturers out there and more will fall by the wayside and as they do, the price will go up and up and quality and choice will go down and down.

Maybe someday you will be contacting me for help. IDK. My work is to try to give the artist and serious professional out there a choice not a mandated fact dictated by a company or a market or by digital consumerism.

PE

photomc · Dec 1, 2005

Agree with your last post PE...we all may be coating silver, just as we do plt/pld, vdb, etc today. The work you are doing will hopefully provide us the opertunity to have an enlarging paper (not just a contact paper) and in my mind, that will be a good thing. While my hope is that there will be a manufactured paper available for the remainder of my lifetime (and way beyond that) it is very possilbe that there will not be. So, it is my hope (dream) that the number of members here and on other sites will be just a fraction of the total number of people still wanting silver paper. Rather than bicker about who does what, or what company xxx should have done we should continue to support the mfgs that are left - the product may not fit our needs perfectly, but without knowing they may be better. I feel like we should be positive about the future, because it is too easy to be negative and just say the heck with it.....learning new products will hopefully make us better at our craft, giving up does nothing for it.

Alex Hawley · Dec 1, 2005

PE

I don't want to see AgX paper vanish either. I intend to keep using it for enlargements as long as I can. This weekend, I will also be testing some of my negatives made for azo on some enlarging papers to see how they look. However, this disruption of the paper supply is hard to artistically cope with when in the middle of a series or while producing a portfolio for exhibition. The change in print tonality can and does make a difference to me. I can imagine how this feels to someone who is making their living selling prints that are known for their distinctive look. These things happen over the years. We all know emulsions of the same brand have changed. That is an incremental change easily adapted to. But the sudden and unanticipated loss of a particular material is somewhat traumatic. I have less than 30 sheets of grade 3 Azo left and then there is no more.

So rather than weep any more over what I cannot possibly control, I'm switching to a method that is as immune to changes in corporate world as psossible. And its one that I know will produce very consistent results without a great deal of frustrating R&D on my part.

Once again, I applaud what you are doing and I'm hopeful for success. And if you do come up with a relatively painless technique, I will be glad to try it. In the meantime though, given the R&D that you are going through, and given the risk of an Azo replacement from another source, I plan to go on down the road with a proven methodology. Besides, I'm a mechanical engineer, not a photo engineer, so emulsion R&D is best left with someone like you who knows what you're doing.

Donald Miller said:
You are moving right along if you are moving into pt-pd. I remember when you first got a 4X5...LOL

Sheesh Don, you're right. It wasn't all that long ago was it. Time flies when you're having fun.

Photo Engineer · Dec 1, 2005

In the middle of my last post, I lost my internet connection so this will have to suffice.

Most all of the emulsion makers are either disinterested in what I am doing or disagree with it. I don't want to see AgX vanish in your lifetime as each manufacturer vanishes from the scene due to the change in the market.

I want to leave a legacy of easy to make silver halide emulsions for contact, enlarging, and film speed materials as a stepping stone into the future (whatever that may be) so that AgX photography will survive. Maybe Kodak will make other formulas available, but some of them are so complex that I doubt that the average person will be able to handle them.

As I said to several people who are urging me to charge for all of this, I want to go surrounded by 100 friends not $100 bills. To me this does not seem appropriate to the current situation where conventional photography is an art.

PE

Photo Engineer · Dec 1, 2005

BTW, there was a fleeting 7th page that vanished. Am I going crazy or just getting older than I thought.

PE

jandc · Dec 1, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
JandC, I've been able to duplicate this in my home darkroom.

The proof comes when you test all 3 grades for reciprocity, latent image keeping and raw stock keeping for starters. You might also include the image scale and tone in that and a few others such as product uniformity and batch to batch variations. And how about defects across a 20x24 sheet for one? Or dust specks, gel slugs and 'pepper' which is common in AgCl emulsions.

How about the spectral sensitivity?

A deviation in any of these will make it non-Azo like to some user out there. This is important if the product is to survive the marketplace.

I can't live up to those other tests yet, and I doubt if the manufacturer of the material you tested can either with such a short interval from conception to sample.

Some of the details on making Azo are published if you know where to look. Apparently, the guys that did the work for M&P knew. I assure you that they don't know everything!

PE

Nobody said it was AZO. It's a similar replacement for a product that has been discontinued. The first samples of this paper were created almost two years ago. Nobody just whipped it up in a matter of days or weeks. What you are not taking into consideration is that other film factories in the world produced silver chloride papers years ago. Kodak was just the last to discontinue it. Kodak's technology is not needed to produce this paper.

I would contend that if the product looks good and performs well than it will survive in the market place even if it is not 100% a copy of Azo. Perhaps people will have to slightly modify their technique or chemistry to optimize for the new paper. Perhaps the final product will be so close that people will use it just like AZO. Either way it doesn't matter as long as it gives the final result.

After all you are the one telling everyone to coat their own with all the variables that entails. Surely you cannot be saying that a photo factory that has been coating papers for decades and used to produce a silver chloride paper in the past is less capable of producing a good product than someone at home.

Batch to batch variations, that reminds me of the last few runs of AZO!

Defects across a 20x24 sheet, Try and perfect that one at home.

Spectral sensitivity, within reasonable bounds it doesn't really matter, You adapt to the characteristics of the paper.

Would it be best if Kodak had kept producing AZO on their state of the art machinery using all of their technical resources. Sure it would but that's not the reality of it. So the options are nothing, make your own or use a replacement paper from a different manufacturer.

It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks about the viability of producing this paper or it's market potential. If enough people put up the cash to make it happen the market will provide the answer. It seems to me that people here should be hoping it happens even if they don't use AZO. A win here in creating a replacement product could be what's needed to convince investors in the future to back other analog ventures.

David · Dec 2, 2005

Mark Twain quipped about the guy who wanted to be an optimist but he didn't think it would work. That seems to ring true with the doomsaying pessimists.

c6h6o3 · Dec 2, 2005

jdef said:
And what would a loss here portend?

Jay

It might serve to hasten the demise of film, which is my personal worst nightmare.

jandc · Dec 2, 2005

jdef said:
Except perhaps, for potential investors?

And what would a loss here portend?

Jay

Jay, you're too smart a guy to genuinely ask such questions.

Alex Hawley · Dec 2, 2005

jandc said:
I would contend that if the product looks good and performs well than it will survive in the market place even if it is not 100% a copy of Azo. Perhaps people will have to slightly modify their technique or chemistry to optimize for the new paper. Perhaps the final product will be so close that people will use it just like AZO. Either way it doesn't matter as long as it gives the final result.

I agree John. I for one am not expecting this new paper to be an exact duplicate of Azo. All I ask is that it be similar in its characteristics. Hopefully similar to the Azo of three or four years ago.

Its a funny thing about technology that keeps being mentioned. Since Azo started a hundred years ago, I wouldn't think state-of-the-art technology would be required to produce it.

markbb · Dec 2, 2005

SchwinnParamount said:
can you imagine if the last AZO were in the hands of some muddleheaded and non talented photographer? Good paper wasted on garbage photography! Let us hope this is not the case.

I disagree. I find the concept that materials should only be accessible to a chosen few appalling. I see you shoot 5x4, do you have to show examples of your work before buying film? How would you feel if you had to? And how would you feel if that particular dealer didn't like your work?

a simple example: I've seen some of Adams' early work, quite frankly it's cr4p. Under your regime he would never had a chance to progress.

Curt · Dec 2, 2005

When I asked my local photo store to order AZO they said it would take 27,000 years.

Curt · Dec 2, 2005

I came to this conclusion today after a week in Paris where photography is dead and tripods are not even allowed. People overseas don't even know what photography is. All you hear is "my battery is dead" or "shit, i'm out of memory cards". It's a black day and it's going to be a black future for "regular" photography. We are in the Finis of traditional photography.

avandesande · Dec 2, 2005

The funny thing is the same thing (digital) that killed Azo will make this new paper possible. Before the internet bringing a new paper to market would of been a complete waste of time, how would you market and distribute it?
If MAS can get together the 100k needed to get this off the ground (not an insurmountable amount), all one would need to do is get J&C, Badger and perhaps Freestyle to carry it and it will sell. Another thing that would be a nice "what if" would be if the new paper falls within the specs of institutions using it for archival purposes, there may even be some money to be made.

I agree with Jdef, the new paper will not be AZO, but IMO this is a good thing. There were better contact papers out there anyway(I prefer haloid industrio). Perhaps for some of us the new paper will be better than AZO.

jandc said:
Prints of the same negative on old Azo and the new paper are very similar. Which is very amazing to me considering the new paper was devised from scratch without knowing any of the Kodak details.

clay · Dec 2, 2005

LOL. Have any of you ever dealt with private equity/investment banker types? I have. A proposal like this would not get past the receptionist. I can see the conversation now at a trendy lunch spot:

Equity Investor: "Well, what do you expect your eventual total market to be?"

You: "Oh, about 2000 people in the world using, say, maybe 4 boxes of paper a year on average."

Equity Investor: "Check, please!"

Seriously, this will have to be retail-level investment in the same vein as selling burial policies door-to-door.

Not to say you can't do it that way, but I can guarantee that no 'for profit' money guys would ever spring for this.

Good luck. I hope everyone gets the paper they need.

avandesande said:
100k needed to get this off the ground (not an insurmountable amount),

avandesande · Dec 2, 2005

Who pays 10k for an ebony camera? Who buys prints from MAS for 1k or 2k? I am sure that for many of these people investing 10 or 20 thousand dollars for the preservation of artistic photography would be a drop in the bucket.
25 boxes a month would pay off the investment in less than 4 years. The only real risk for the investors were if the keeping properties of the paper were poor, not a big gamble with silver chloride paper IMO.

argus · Dec 2, 2005

Curt said:
I came to this conclusion today after a week in Paris where photography is dead and tripods are not even allowed. People overseas don't even know what photography is. All you hear is "my battery is dead" or "shit, i'm out of memory cards". It's a black day and it's going to be a black future for "regular" photography. We are in the Finis of traditional photography.

Curt,

please don't exaggerate or generalize. Photographic knowledge is not limited to the people we call overseas.

I'm not from the kind that wishes to speak about the doom days of traditional photography, on the contrary. It came to my ears that Kentmere runs 35% more than 2 years ago, partially becausse other players vanished or had some other trouble, but also because the interest in traditional/analog photography is growing.

G

clay · Dec 2, 2005

I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying people will be doing it for love, not money. IOW, it is an 'investment' in the same sense that buying a Ferrari is an 'investment'. You do it because you want to, not because it makes financial sense. You would never get anybody in the financial industry to make an investment in a venture like this. That is why I said it will be retail level investment. I hope they are able to pull something together. I'm just saying it is incredibly naive to believe that there is anybody nowadays with serious money who will sink it into something like this purely for financial gain.

avandesande said:
Who pays 10k for an ebony camera? Who buys prints from MAS for 1k or 2k? I am sure that for many of these people investing 10 or 20 thousand dollars for the preservation of artistic photography would be a drop in the bucket.
25 boxes a month would pay off the investment in less than 4 years. The only real risk for the investors were if the keeping properties of the paper were poor, not a big gamble with silver chloride paper IMO.

L Gebhardt · Dec 2, 2005

Jim Browning was able to get a run of his replacement Dye Transfer Film made by Efke. It is currently available from J&C. I know he developed the formula for his small automated sheet coater and Efke worked with him to scale it up and run it on their line. I see a greater market for an Azo like paper than Dye Transfer film, so I would say it is likely that it will get off the ground.

avandesande · Dec 2, 2005

If anyone is listening Kodak let the trademark for 'Super-XX' expire.

zenrhino · Dec 2, 2005

Curt said:
I came to this conclusion today after a week in Paris where photography is dead and tripods are not even allowed.

no tripods? anywhere?

Who DID buy all of the AZO????

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