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Yes, Tri-X lives on, available for 55 yrs+ in 135 format. and for color reversal prints (direct positive process), Ilford CibaChrome continues under the name Ilfochrome Classic. You can still make ArT and it is still pricey.

Just for the record, a lab print isn't ink-based, at least at the shop I go to - they use one of these suckers (maybe not that exact brand/model, but you get the point) to "paint" the image onto genuine light-sensitive color photo paper that's processed the old-fashioned way with chemicals. $1.99 for an 8x10, $2.99 for an 11x14. They look a hell of a lot better than any photo print I've ever seen, including dyesubs, and they last and last. When I do a print for my small photography side business, I do it this way...the client is almost always amazed with the result, and asks me what kind of printer I use, they just have to get one for themselves. I tell them "trade secret" :)

If you just have to use your printer, I'd suggest Ilford GALERIE Classic paper; it has an encapsulation system that soaks up the ink and mostly protects it from fading, It's pricey (enough so that there's NO economic advantage over a lab print) and takes a full day to dry out, but it is as close to perfect as you're gonna get from an inkjet. When I do prints for my own consumption, I ususally go this route for the convenience.

FUD. It got out of receivership in Feb 2005.

Not anymore.

Looks like we haven't killed that pesky B&W just yet! Ah well, keep the faith, and keep fighting!

Screw Kodak, I'll take Illford Delta 400 Professional. IMO, Illford has higher quality and shorter developing times than Kodak.

For color, if Ciba is still producing Cibachrome, it is supposed to have a very long life, being based upon much more stable dies.

The Cibachrome process was bought by Illford years ago and is now called Ilfochrome. It's easy to use and produces beautiful results (I speak from personal experience), but is obscenely expensive to use. Apparently the dyes are ultra-stable, but it will take a while to verify this...

...laura

Only mankind would be self-centered enough to think of creating something so valuable with the intent to throw it away.

In the camera world, some people call 'em "disposable" and some people call 'em "single use". The former people are wrong; you don't throw it away, you use it once then return it to the manufacturer (I use Ilford) who break it down into its component parts, sends the film back to you and reuses as much of the rest of it as it can. Single use cameras are great; if I'm going out with friends, I don't want to have to lug an SLR around or worry about getting it lost/stolen/broken - all I need to risk is one evening's snaps. In this case, being single-use is a positive advantage over being built to last. So it is with these - now computing power can be deployed in situations where the risk/reward calculation simply didn't permit it before. And it's built by Swedes not Americans, so it'll be environmentally friendly to manufacture and recycleable.

I'm not so sure that technique would be very effective against red light/ toll cams. Here is the spec. sheet for Ilfords special purpose traffic surveilance film; it doesn't seem to be particularly sensitive to infrared. Most IR film is sensitive in the 800-900 nanometer range; this film gives up at about 775.

The other thing to think about would be that these surveillance cameras (to photograph red light runners and whatnot) operate with flash and a pretty fast shutter speed. (1/500 or 1/1000th of a second is quick for night use; it must be powerful flash.) There is the chance that since your MIRT is flashing at say, 14Hz, and typical flash tube duration is only 1/1000th of a second or so (which means there is only IR coming out of your MIRT for 14/1000's of any given second), that the surveillance camera has a fair enough change of snapping the picture when the MIRT is not emanating light.

What would probably be effective would be to rig a bright source of visible light near the license plate facing outwards (towards a potential camera) so that it would oversaturate the film in the vicinity of your license plate. Ideally, this could be a slave flash that would be triggered by the surveillance camera's flash, so that it would definitely be firing when the picture was taken.

Either way, we have no red light runner cams or any surveillance cams (other than DOT video, which typically doesn't have the resolution to read plate numbers) in this area. All of this type of surveillance is done by concealed police. So, I have no incentive to test this around here.

So, I decided to go back to basics. I had an old bulk film loader around that I'd never used, so I dusted it off, got myself a 100ft reel of Ilford FP4+ black and white film (AUD $60), and a bunch of reloadable film cannisters (AUD $1.50 each). That gives me enough film for about twenty 36-exposure rolls, which would cost me over AUD $10 each at retail prices. Plus I if I only need a few shots, I can load less film into the cannisters without needing to waste half a roll, or wait till I used it up.

I picked up a darkroom starter kit for AUD$100 which included all the basic hardware to get me started, except for an enlarger (which I scrounged off a friend), safelight (bought, about AUD$13 for a magic light bulb), and some extra chemical mixing bits (jugs, etc). I built myself (with some assistance from the father-in-law-to-be) a collapsable bench which allows me to turn our poky little bathroom/laundry into a darkroom (it fits quite nicely over the washing machine and toilet), and bought some chemicals and paper (again, Ilford).

I can now load my own film, develop it in my own house in about 10 minutes, monkey with the developing (push/pull) if I want, make my own prints up to 8*10", cropped how I want, with the contrast how I want it, dodged and burned how I want (yes, dodging and burning did exist before Adobe Photoshop). It's not always fun. Acutally, the fun factor wore off after 24 hours, but its starting to creep back in. Its long, tiring, painstaking work. There's no undo button - if you screw it up, bin it and try again. It teaches you to be methodical, precise, but also lets you experiment to "see what happens".

It's also taught me that I'm not as good a photographer as I thought I was. Looking back at my previous photographic efforts I've realised that the majority of them were more about the colour than the composition, and without the colour, they just looked crappy... But now that I know this, I'm getting better. Playing with black and white in the darkroom can be a very sadisfying experience, you get to create something with your own two hands from start to end. No computer-assisted magic, just light, glass, and silver. If this posting sounds interesting to you, you should probably try it. If you get hooked, you can also do color processing in a home darkroom, but its a lot more involved.