Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/11

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Subject: Re: B&W Printing Papers
From: "Charles E. Albertson" <chucko@ricochet.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 22:21:25 -0700

At 04:04 PM 4/11/97 -0400, you wrote:
>One of the prime difficulties in finding 'good' b&w printing papers is that
>the production of such is an environmental disaster.  Thus, large-volume
>producers such as AGFA and Kodak have been forced to reduce the silver
>content in their papers to comply with environmental regulations, and this
>has led to greyer blacks and muddier whites in a lot of papers.
>
Marc---
	Stricter environmental regs may have something to do with it, but not to
be overlooked is the effect of the Hunt brothers' addle-brained attempt to
corner the silver market in the very late 1970s. (They failed, and were
bankrupt for a while). They drove the price up from about $7 an ounce to a
high of about $50 an ounce. Since about 90 percent of silver production at
the time went into photography, the price of film and paper shot way up,
too, and the manufacturers started looking for ways to reduce silver
content in both. This played a large part in the development of Ilford's
XP1 chromogenic film (and Agfa's competing product, which I haven't seen
for some time) --- more silver could be recovered from the processing
solutions than from conventional b&w films, and this was pitched as sort a
perk to photofinishers.