Our friends down under at Giclee Media drafted a rather poignant newsletter today that we'd like to share with the rest of the Moab community:
Many of us began by dipping silver halide papers into foul smelling chemicals under deep orange safe lights and became forever hooked on the photographic process.
Today the 5th January 2012, it was reported in The Wall Street Journal that Kodak may file for bankruptcy.
The name Kodak, coined by George Eastman, its founder, almost defined photography for 130 years. Australians such as myself, who grew up in the Northern Melbourne suburbs knew many fathers who worked at the giant Kodak factory in Coburg making Kodacolour, film and printing papers.
This rather sad omen for the possible ultimate death of silver based processing should have been expected after the collapse of Agfa. This is a message to all photographers that the only viable printed image is that from a pigment inkjet printer.
Our Moab Lasal Exhibition Luster 300, typifies the outright quality that inkjet can produce being much heavier and with a wider colour gamut than common silver halide papers. Colour Silver based papers are typically around the 230-250 gsm mark, much lighter than high end inkjet papers and therefore there can still be a cost advantage in printing by the old methods - if their manufactures remain viable.
So 2012 will become a pivotal year for digital printing. Not because of any fundamentally new inventions but because it may define the time period by which the majority of professional printing is done on a wide format or desktop inkjet device.