[pure-silver] Re: Forte Film fiasco

DEAR MIKE,
        No body is perfect.
        A horror story:  I recall around 1988 I was trying to break into
shooting Opera stars for the New York Metropolitan Opera.  I finally
convinced a beautiful and important Diva to come to my studio for a session.
I had top a make up and hair artist, fantastic clothing from a great
stylist, a great painted backdrop, and a 12X12 overhead silk.  It was a
really beautiful set up.  I shot on Pan F 120 in my Blad.  This was going to
be a GREAT shoot.  I remember looking at the Polaroids with the client and
glowing.
        I processed the film and EVERY frame had imprints of numbers on
them.  It appears that, in Ilford's infinite wisdom, they had changed
suppliers of the backing paper who used a different printer with different
inks and solvents.  They didn't let the printed backing paper dry enough and
the effluents from the solvents affected the emulsion and diffusion of
developer into the emulsion hence my ENTIRE shoot was ruined.  Obviously
Ilford had not tested their own product sufficiently.  My reputation with
the Met was still born and this fiasco cost me dearly in many ways.
        Needless to say I skulked back to the great yellow father with my
tail between my legs and stayed where quality control was taken more
seriously.  It isn't that I have never had problems with Kodak film but they
were minor and resolved QUICKLY AND WITHOUT ARGUMENT. 
        Oh, well...we can only hope that those suppliers who DO adjust their
businesses and film supply to the smaller demand of the contracted film
market will take our needs seriously as each of us may, actually, be more
important to their survival.
                CHEERS!
                        BOB  

-----Original Message-----
From: pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Kirwan
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 6:40 PM
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Forte Film fiasco

Richard:

I have been a died-hard Ilford user for the past 40 years, and apart from an
issue with HP4 have never had any quality control issues with Ilford
products, including Cibachrome and their foray into color and E6 films. In
fact one of my worst quality problems was with T-MAX 100 and Kodak admitted
that the batch I had suffered from minus-density issues (pin-holes in the
emulsion)

Mike 

-----Original Message-----
From: pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Knoppow
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 1:59 PM
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Forte Film fiasco


----- Original Message -----
From: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 6:56 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Forte Film fiasco


>I cut and pasted his email below.
>
> I have not seen nor heard of another person experiencing 
> this, and I showed it to one of the faculty that teaches 
> the 12 sections of beginning photo and he had not seen it 
> before. But I will keep my ears open. The one faculty 
> wondered if it was humidity as an issue, but that 
> certainly wouldn't have been in Bozeman, tho he was out of 
> state over the break.
> Chris
>
> Hi Chris,
> I forgot to mention that the batch of film that has water 
> spots is
> FortePan 200, but sold under the Bergger label (200) and I 
> bought it
> at B&H in New York.  The kind that had pinholes was a 
> Forte 400 label
> from Freestyle.  I ordered a couple of rolls of lots of 
> brands to try
> last year and both of the Fortes gave me trouble.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "EJ Neilsen" <ej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 10:34 PM
> Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Forte Film fiasco
>

    It is exactly this kind of problem that worries me in 
case Kodak goes out of the film business. The technology of 
controlling the consistency of emulsions and coating has 
been very highly perfected at Kodak, perhaps also at Ilford, 
but not at the small companies who are making film. Kodak, 
in particular, has been catering to the motion picture 
business from its inception and that application requires 
extremely close control of emulsion and coating quality. The 
knowledge of how to accomplish this may be at least 
partially proprietary and I suspect expensive to do. The 
sort of problems I've seen described for Forte and other 
small brands sound just like the kinds of problems reported 
in the 1920's and before, maybe even worse. We are very used 
to having extremely reliable sensitive materials, I think 
Kodak and probably Fuji are still maintaining this standard, 
but, if these big guys get out of the film business its 
likely to set us back a century.
    Ilford is also a relatively large company but has had 
its share of coating problems over the last couple of 
decades. Ilford is head and shoulders better than makers 
like Forte but not IMO quite up to the Kodak or Fuji 
standards.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

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