----- Original Message ----- From: <wolzphoto@xxxxxxx> To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:44 AM Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Kodak Discontinuing All Black and White Paper > Perhaps I'm sticking my head in the sand, but the > materials for platinum/palladium printing are still > available. I believe that, at least for artists, B&W > materials will be available for the rest of my lifetime, > and probably for that of anyone else on this list. Some > products will becoe scarce until another manufacturer > picks up a patent or such (AZO anyone?), but they will not > go away. > Karl Wolz > If there was ever a patent on Azo it expired before any of was born. Azo is a conventional silver chloride paper, its only unique feature is its very slow speed. Azo is the last of a once mighty group of slow papers meant for contact printing on printing boxes with powerful light sources. At one time Kodak made at least four general purpose contact printing papers, all other major paper manufacturers made at least one and usually two (cold and warm tone). While Azo has become a cult paper it really has no special quality. Good paper emulsions can be made and coated on a reasonably small scale but its impossible to exactly duplicate a particular emulsion because of the number of variables in emulsion making, although its possible to get close. Its likely that the emulsions of all of the long time papers have changed over the years simply because different people were making them and, in some cases, the equipment changed. Also small changes in the emulsion were made constantly by Kodak and others to improve it in some ways. There is no reason that a custom maker like Kentmere could not make a slow contact paper with quality similar to Azo, or even a superior paper. They make printing out paper (sold as Centennial in the US) which must be a very small scale operation so its possible that they could make a good contact paper is there is enough demand for it. BTW, because these papers are very slow the emulsions are likely quite stable. Stability varies all over the place (old Agfa papers are very stable, old Kodak papers much less so) so its likely that stashes of contact paper are still good. --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.