[Leica] Film recorder services

[benedenia at gmail.com (Marty Deveney)]

Brian is not compulsive, he's just careful and professional.

The most important practical part of that presentation is: make prints and
keep them in a box.  I'd add to that to make the very best prints you can
using the best materials available, and match your media, particularly if
you're printing on paper with any sort of coating or finish.  If you make
them Letter or A4 size, it is not impractical to print a few sets and put
them in different places, including on different continents if necessary,
increasing their chances of survival.

Everything else Brian describes is normal common sense data management,
although it is explained unusually thoroughly and with Brian's usual
panache.

Ektachrome and colour neg film will show substantial degradation much
sooner than a good inkjet, probably in your lifetime, even if you are
already retired.

Someone should offer silver-emulsion archiving online. Any venture
> capitalists on the LUG?


I used to do this at the lab where I worked.  You need to make it very
expensive for it to be profitable.  Irrespective, that way madness lies.
 The equipment is temperamental, the materials change periodically, need to
be tested batch-by-batch, and since there is no longer any dye transfer
output possible, all you have as a printing mechanism is to scan the colour
separations and print them with a digital printer anyway...

Many labs still offer B&W negs from digital files but I don't know of any
that do colour separations anymore.

Marty




On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Howard Ritter <hlritter at bex.net> wrote:

> Thanks to all who answered. I appreciate the link to the Saloon Keeper's
> talk. Even if I were as compulsive as Brian is, the process would still
> stop when I can't move a mouse or speak to my computer any more, and I
> still like the idea of preservation on an archival analog medium. If
> there's no practical way to get digital files printed to silver emulsion
> any longer, I like the idea of making the best possible inkjet prints in
> the largest format practicable and storing them dark and dry. If the object
> is to make another print, not much would be lost in very carefully scanning
> an 8 x 12 print made with excruciating care, or even taking a photo of a 20
> x 30 print, and then printing it, exercising great care and technical
> expertise at every step.
>
> Another possibility, along the lines of the film recorder, is to display
> the image on the highest-quality monitor possible and photograph that on
> 35mm Ektachrome or color negative film using the lens best suited to
> high-resolution, distortion-free close-range work. The highest pixel count
> I know of is the MacBook Pro 15" laptop with Retina display, which has 1800
> pixels along its short side. A full-screen display of a FF image would have
> 1800 pixels per inch of the camera's sensor. This is well short of the 4000
> or so that a film scanner and the M typ 240 give, and in theory short of
> what an 8 x 12 print at 300 dpi has, but the greater dynamic range of a
> contemporary LCD screen might be a good tradeoff with respect to the print.
> And eventually Retina technology will make its way to the Mac's biggest
> display, so the count should go up to the equivalent of 2500 dpi or so,
> around 10 Mpix for the whole image, making for a very decent rendering to
> photograph.
>
> Someone should offer silver-emulsion archiving online. Any venture
> capitalists on the LUG?
>
> --howard
>
>
> On Mar 26, 2014, at 8:32 PM, Ken Carney <kcarney1 at cox.net> wrote:
>
> > Howard,
> >
> > My only experience has been using an imagesetter for making films for
> pt/pd printing (ancient technology, not good) and inkjet films for same
> (borderline OK for pt/pd, not for silver really).  I'm sure people like
> Salgado have more advanced procedures available.  But, it is a good
> question.  My grandchildren will probably ask, what was wi-fi and why did
> grandpa need a separate device of some kind for the internet?  I would
> probably look into dark storage for an inkjet print with non-destructive
> inks.  Just a good letter-sized print will probably produce a great
> wall-sized reproduction 100 years from now.
> >
> > Ken
>
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