Lodima Fine Art Paper ready to take orders

[Michael A. Smith]

March 2009 update
LODIMA FINE ART™ Silver Chloride Contact Printing Paper

The results are in. Lodima Fine Art paper is a success. We are now ready to take orders for the big production run of Lodima Fine Art™ paper.

http://www.michaelandpaula.com

At the moment we are having problems with the shopping cart accepting overseas orders, but we are working on that and expect to have it fixed soon.

Michael A. Smith

[chrisf]

This is great news. I'm down to my last 5 sheets of the first run.

chris

[Sanjay Sen]

Hi,

Is there a deadline or cut-off date for orders to be placed for this production run? I missed the last one and would like to get in on this one, but I just spent a bunch of money replenishing my paper stock.


Regards,
Sanjay

[John D. Romano]

I received the e-mail today as well and I am preparing to place my order for a box each of the 8 X 10. Anyone have any real-world experienced advice on this paper regarding a good starting point on exposure and developer choice ? Things like wattage of bulb, type of reflector, exposure time, distance to printing frame, type of developer to bring out the best tonal range ? My standard developer for enlargements is Dektol. Will this work okay with this paper ?

Thanks

[jgjbowen]

John,

You will find the answer to most of your questions on the Azo Forum. There is a section devoted to Lodima. You will find that most Azo/Lodimia workers use Michael Smith's Amidol, but some folks use and like Ansco 130, Neutol WA and a few other developers. Dektol is not considered ideal for Azo. I have NOT tried Lodima with Dektol, but I found Azo/Dektol to have too green of a print color for my tastes. One of the advantages of Silver Chloride emulsions is the abiliity to shift the print color through developer use or various developer additives. With Michael's Amidol formula, increasing the Kbr will warm the print color.

If you decide to try Amidol make sure you get some of the NON-Chinese amidol. If you order through Artcraft or the Photographer's Formulary, be sure to specify that you do NOT want Chinese Amodol. While the Chinese Amidol will work, it stains the prints yellow and it takes about 10 minutes in the wash to get rid of it. 10 minutes in the wash isn't so bad if you are just doing proof prints, but 10 minutes to "get the yellow out" is a long time if you are trying to evaluate the nuances of a fine print.

John

[Mahler_one]

Mentioning other developers, has anyone used any of the Moersch paper developers with Silver Chloride papers-especially the "eco" which has a very long shelf life?

Ed

[JJV]

This is just to signal that I am currently using Moersch Sepia with the Lodima Paper with very good results. I used to develop Azo using catechol/sepia two baths but I have now switched to Sepia for ease of use and nice contrast. I have used once Meritol with Lodima, which produced a warmer tone but needed a much longer developping time (1+14 dilution in both cases).
I am not taking much care about the exhaustion of the concentrate in the opened bottle but never noticed anything detrimental with the Sepia developer.
Moersch also now has an amidol liquid formula which I may try...but the result have to be dramatically better for me to use a more expensive and "dirty" developer to work with!

Cheers,

JJ

[michael9793]

Just a quick word,
we are at Michael and Paula's workshop and he has printed both new and old paper. the only difference we see at all is the speed and that is faster. He printed some of our negatives and did everything from flash to water bath with it and it is just a time difference. We have a beautiful chloride paper again to print our contact prints. If you think you can get as good a print enlarging, you can't and this new paper will show that.

michael andersen

[EASmithV]

If you think you can get as good a print enlarging, you can't and this new paper will show that.

michael andersen

Wait, so it's worse for making enlargements than Azo?

[Thomas Bertilsson]

I'm sorry Mike, but I'm yawning a bit here.

For us regular hacks that can't afford large format (big enough for contact printing anyway) we're just gonna have to do with the inferior products there are for enlarging.

With all due respect to Michael and Paula for bringing Lodima to fruition, (and considerable respect should be paid to them for that), but that's just a childish sandbox comment that is completely unnecessary. There are many products that are good enough.

Just a quick word,
we are at Michael and Paula's workshop and he has printed both new and old paper. the only difference we see at all is the speed and that is faster. He printed some of our negatives and did everything from flash to water bath with it and it is just a time difference. We have a beautiful chloride paper again to print our contact prints. If you think you can get as good a print enlarging, you can't and this new paper will show that.

michael andersen