[gmikol]

Acetate

What about acetate bases? Denise has posted a about this at the Light Farm (here). The link to Dick Blick is dead, but I believe it was to Grafix's Acetate film. This requires a subbing procedure which she has shown to work well.

So, I take it that this means there isn't an "off the shelf" product that will accept gelatin coatings? They mention a prepared (gel coated) substrate on their website. Can anyone say if this will hold emulsions well? I believe that gmikol uses these for carbon tissues and the answer to that question might be "not exactly".

The Grafix Acetate is biodegradable, which doesn't sound too appealing for long-term, archival storage either. How will this stuff hold up in the long run?

The material I use is Grafix' Dura-Lar (http://www.grafixplastics.com/mylar_duralar.asp), not the one that holmburgers' refers to. It's not biodegradable, AFAIK, and claims to be non-yellowing, which would suggest that it is relatively stable. It's definitely a polyester film, according to the MSDS, not CDA or CTA. But the (non-hardened) gelatin can be peeled off the surface relatively easily. I don't have any formalin or other hardening agents to test whether a hardened layer would do the same. There's also "Dura-Lar Wet Media" film, which has some sort of surface treatment, which I think is the other thing Chris refers to, but I don't know anything more about it than that.

Hope that helps to clear things up...

--Greg