Alternatives

[DougDolde]

I'm not sure which category this thread falls under but...I visited Shane Knight's gallery in downtown Flagstaff yesterday. Just happened to spy it on my way to the Grand Canyon and decided to have a look.

He prints all his color work on Cibachrome (done by a lab in Flagstaff http://www.hiddenlightllc.com/). There just is no way to describe how beautiful they are. If you've never seen a Cibachrome they put injet prints to shame.

To top it off he mostly shoots with a Mamiya 7.

Goes to show you all these high end digital cameras and printers still don't match the old fashioned traditional ways.

 

[Lars]

Film and paper color palette has been tweaked for decades. While it's more or less true that it's possible to get any color palette in digital, there has been a certain fixation over the last few years with getting a neutral palette from digital.

 

[DougDolde]

I didn't expect many responses to this post considering the number of entrenched digital gear heads on this forum (myself included).

 

[cmb_]

Cibachromes are very nice, very luscious. The closest I have seen from digital printed on inkjets is using Pictorico Hi-Gloss White Film.

 

[TRSmith]

Cibachrome and Die Transfer are two processes that get discussed a lot by those who value the look they provide. I have seen a few samples of each and they are pretty stunning. But there aren't many people doing them and even fewer who have mastered them to the degree you describe.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I tend to group them in with other time-intensive and costly methods of print making like Palladium. The results are beautiful but the process/cost/learning curve is very high.

 

[Lars]

Yep Pictorico is fantastic, as is Ilford's hi-gloss film. But you have to use dyes for acceptable results, which means longevity becomes a problem.

 

[woodyspedden]

Cibachromes are very nice, very luscious. The closest I have seen from digital printed on inkjets is using Pictorico Hi-Gloss White Film.

I don't know about Cibachromes but aside from Charlie Cramer and Ctein I know of no one else doing dye transfers. (and I think that Charlie is now done as well as Kodak has stopped making the dyes)

Woody

 

[Lars]

I don't know about Cibachromes but aside from Charlie Cramer and Ctein I know of no one else doing dye transfers. (and I think that Charlie is now done as well as Kodak has stopped making the dyes)

Dye transfer is much more of a craft than Cibachrome, which has a new home in the automated, digital world thanks to Durst Lamda.

It's too bad about the dye transfer chemicals, as digital opens up new possibilities with hybrid printing processes and contact printing from digital files.

 

[Stuart Richardson]

I visited Mary Ellen Mark's studio with a group from ICP, and she showed us her dye transfer prints from her Falkland Road series of prostitutes in Bombay. All shot on Kodachrome. I have never seen colors so beautiful in a print. They were literally like a different form of display -- the colors and saturation were like looking at a slide, though the image was on paper. They were staggering.

 

[PeterA]

Doug - a lot of fine art shooters down here still use Cibachrome for large prints. Recently though there has been a move to Epson - even in high end Gallery display. The Cibachrome is lovely - but inkjet ( Giclee) is catchin up for sure. I am thinking about buying a 3' X 9' panorama of Lake Eyre from a guy down here for my private gallery - it is stunning and made on Epson. I am completing my research on who printed it for him and how before making a decision.

 

[fotografz]

I used to do my own Cibachromes ... they still stand as unmatched by anything I can get from an Inkjet ... but they were a LOT harder to get right than the Inkjets, and I'm getting better each year with the Epson.

 

[Greg Lockrey]

Back in the day (30 or so years ago) I used to play with Cibachrome. Never liked the colors that much, myself. Too "rich". The colors never lasted all that long either. Might be better today, I don't know. As for Epson ink jet, I really like Epson's Enhanced Matt (Presentation Matt as they call it now) the best. If I want to "punch" up the colors for presentation I like the look of using a "Diamond Gloss" hot laminate. It appears to give me a gamma or two extra. If I want to go a tad better with detail being important, Harmon FB Gloss AI at twice the cost does the trick too.

 

[Ranger Rick]

Doug,

Just went to their website, and they have stopped doing Cibachrome :

"While we still believe that Cibachrome prints when printed by hand are the most beautiful color prints around we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the process at our lab.

To our knowledge the only labs still working with Cibachrome are:

» Lab-Ciba.com » laumont.com

Most Sincerely,
Stephen Saunders and Corey Allen"

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Been printing for years on the digital equivelent (minilab) of cibachrome made by ilford, called Ilford Hi-Gloss. Looks like Cibachrome in every way but you can print it from your digital files. Nothing inkjet comes anywhere close IMO, you can't replicate the look of an image within that super glossy paper by laying ink down on top of a gloss. Only problems are that it's rubbish for B&W (the lab have been trying for years to get neutral but can't) and it scratches if you even look at it the wrong way (like ciba).

If anyone is interested, my lab for this stuff, http://www.bpdphotech.com/ prints with the digital LED Cibachrome and also traditional Ciba prints. They are used by all the top landscape pro's in the UK.