The end of RA-4 colour printing?

[nathancraver]

<p>That's why the Mayan calendar stops in December 2012, the end of real photography as an art, and the new age of "point, shoot, upload, and print". I don't know much about RA-4, but I sincerely hope wet process photography will continue for a very long time. Being a photographer, when I see a piece of photographic art, no matter how good it looks, it will always be in the back of my mind: "Did the artist actually develop and print this themselves, how many hours did they spend in the darkroom perfecting this print, or did they just take a picture and upload it to a print lab?"</p>

[dangoldman]

<p>i dont know about fuji, but if you want to get an honest answer from kodak on whether a film product is going to be kept in production, you're better off asking an eight-ball....</p>

[danielleetaylor]

<p><em>If you think you're getting accurate color prints from WalMart, well, what can I say? Enjoy it! We all like McDonald's cheeseburgers once in a while too, but it's not steak.</em></p>

<p>Cute, but ignorant. Like I said, prints from digital files at Walmart, Costco, Adorama, WHCC (pro lab), and my Epson match with minimal effort. You may dislike Walmart, but the engineers who built the Fuji Frontier they use know more about color than you could hope to.</p>

[danielleetaylor]

<p><em>The one thing chemical processing teaches is the need for consistent process control.</em></p>

<p>That's a mighty expensive semester diversion into an irrelevant process to teach an abstract idea.</p>

[steve_swinehart]

<blockquote>

<p><em>The one thing chemical processing teaches is the need for consistent process control.</em><br>

That's a mighty expensive semester diversion into an irrelevant process to teach an abstract idea.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Daniel, learning is what you make of it. Process control is hardly an "abstract idea" as it is relevant to nearly everything you do - whether it is cooking, baking, welding, metal working, woodworking - or photography. If I looked at all of the college courses I had to take in order to meet the requirements of the universities, I <em>could</em> have chalked many up to useless if I looked at education as narrowly as you apparently do.</p>

<p>Instead, I look at education as a way to learn as much as you can about as many things as possible. The very first photograph we had to make in my photography curriculum was using a pinhole lens board on a view camera. That certainly would fall under your definition of "irrelevant." But, it was not, as you had to make the same photo with a lens first and then match the field-of-view with the pinhole. What did it prove? It proved to everyone that did it, that you did not need a lens or even sophisiticated equipment to make a sharp image that was nearly indistinguishable from the same image made with a lens. Certainly useless in application professionally, but a learning experience I remember to this day - as it immediately reset any paradigms about expensive equipment and what was really needed to make a photograph.</p>

<p>Education truly is what you make of it - and I'm sure no one is forcing students to take a course in chemical color printing. If it's offered as an elective, and they want to take that course - what's YOUR problem with THEIR choice to do that?</p>

<p> </p>

[jenny_jaques]

<p>Steve, you are right of course, absolutely, every word of it.<br>

Quoting Kevin's quote re Larry Dressler's view:<br /> <strong>"... learning anything photo related gives ... more insight to Photography."</strong><br>

Kevin, I think you meant to say: "Dear <strong>Jeff</strong> , keep those chemical darkroom classes going."<br>

So to the bottom line, and back to Jeff with helpful answers, what RA-4 type papers are still around?<br>

... to the net for some searching >></p>

[andylynn]

<p>Daniel:</p>

<p>You'd rather, what, everybody just use inkjet? Wet prints, whether optical or lightjet, have not outlied their usefulness - there are looks you can get from them that you can't get with an inkjet, even if you call it "giclee". Whether or not you ever end up doing an RA4 print from a negative after college it is important to understand what it is and how it works. Maybe you can skip over it and just do B&W wet printing which is very accessible but if you can include both, why wouldn't you? Unless of course you just love film v. digital arguing.</p>

<p>Obviously RA4 printing is still a worthwhile thing to know about, and if you don't know anything about how it works you're just a consumer. It's absolutely appropriate for a college to be able to give the students the option of running their own prints.</p>

<p>I disagree very strongly with one of the premises people seem to be working from, which is that you shouldn't be teaching anything in a university environment that people aren't going to be using for work in the real world. It's important to develop a historical and theoretical background in the subject matter. This is as true in photography as in any other subject. If you only talk about things that are part of an average "workflow", you're not providing an education, you're providing training.</p>

[erie_patsellis]

<p>Andrew,<br>

I agree, to carry that assumption to it's logical conclusion, why teach Cyanotype, Gum, Platinum and/or dozens of other "historical" process? I feel that every process available to the artist allows one to stretch their creativity, especially in a BFA/MFA program, where the artistic vision is paramount and the process is simply the tools to accomplish the end result.</p>

[rustys pics]

<p><em>"Cute, but ignorant."</em><br>

Well Daniel, I'm glad you think I'm cute.<em> </em> But if you took my class likely you'd still flunk, since I don't accept work unless students print it themselves. ;)<em><br /> </em></p>

[kparratt]

<p>Russ, you are my kind of teacher. Brilliant! Years ago, teaching English to Norwegian teenagers, I told them that I wanted hand written work only, not the product of Microsoft Office. You should have seen the looks of shock and horror.<br>

The rich ones with the fanciest laptops complained bitterly. "The teacher we had before <em><strong>you</strong> </em> said we could use computers, and the spelling program is great!!"<br>

My reply: "He had an easy job then. I am now here to help you, and I can't do that until I know what you are capable of, ... " ( At the end of the semester, some of them actually thanked me. )</p>

[alec_myers]

<blockquote>

<p>Im aware many labs (including Walmart labs) will be going dry printing in the future, using Dye Sub for the process.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ink-jet I think - nobody has got the cost of dye-sub down low enough, as far as I see. Check out the Fuji Frontier DL410, based on Epson inkjet technology.<br>

RA-4 is still cheapest per print, by a wide margin, but you need big volumes to make it worthwhile. I wouldn't write it off in roll format for a while yet.</p>

[rustys pics]

<p><em>" I told them that I wanted hand written work only, not the product of Microsoft Office."</em><br>

Kevin, we are of Like Minds then! I recall taking an English Comp class in College, hating it because I wanted (of course) to write the great American Novel. After the first paper my weary professor just handed back my "masterpiece" with enough red ink to cover New York City! I realized I'd better suck it up and learn stuff like grammer, spelling, and sentence structure before I called myself a writer. I still wish I could thank that woman today....</p>

[bravin_neff]

<p>The hidden premise in Daniel Lee Taylor's remarks is that college or education is to be viewed only as a means to either a financial end or workforce end. To those that consider education useful for other things - like learning for the sake of learning, including learning abstract ideas, attaing a wider sense of historical perspective, etc. - the points about the irrelevance of RA-4 chemistry probably seem less useful than to those merely looking for entry into the workforce.<br>

I work with and know many degreed engineers. I don't know many of them that uses differential or integral calculus in their jobs, ever. Yet nearly all of them took at least 2 semesters of calculus before getting engineering degrees. If we adopt the only-useful-to-workforce-entry type of attitude, I suppose we could argue that schools ought to stop making engineers learn calculus.</p>

[jenny_jaques]

<p>It would mean a total prostitution of Universities - the death of Academy</p>

[william_varcas]

<p>Just because these companies are closing down, just watch and someone else would pick up the film production. There is a company doing to bring back the 600 polaroid film I heard.</p>

[larrydressler]

<p>Maco/Rollei has already picked up some of the old Agfa line and is using Agfa to produce it.. not the same but close... The Agfa plant in Germany was torn down all equipment sold as scrap... Film is not dead it will still be around and I see B&W lasting the longest..</p>

[25asa]

<p>Personally Im concerned all labs remaining will be going for ease of use over quality. I've seen dye sub prints and RA-4 prints kill dye sub in quality. Try enlarging a print from a scan of a dye sub print and you'll see what I mean. Ink jet prints are speckled in quality and pray you don't get water on them or the print is ruined. Personally RA-4 gives the best result, but labs don't want to screw with wet chemicals to make them anymore. To think dry printing will be any safer or easier (think toxic inks or printers constantly needed cleaning or repair), is a joke. I've been working in a photolab for 12 years now and I've seen so many changes during that time, that frankly Im not comforted by the desperation of labs to keep the business running. We haven't been as busy since digital took off as in the film days. Each year we get slower and slower.</p>

[larrydressler]

<p>Then time to separate yourself from the others I say.</p>