I see you are no trademark lawyer.
>just photographic) can be accomplished in alternative ways. Though I believe
>what the Fresson family has accomplished should be admired for it's
>beauty, I also think that their secrecy has been counter productive. In
Lemme see, excellent standard of living for 3 to 4 families at a time,
multiplied by 4 generations... now put a dollar figure on that and you
suddenly realize why the process ain't available for $19.95;-) If they had
tried to protect their invention by a patent -like some people we know- the
"protection" would have been for a maximum of 17 years and chemical patents
ca. turn of the century, were a farce anyway. I think they were pretty darn
smart.
If they had gone the public route they would have gone out of business like
19 out of the 20 or so manufacturers that did exactly that by the 1920s and
1930s. All those manufacturers btw were extremely secretive.
>short, I believe we will see the creative capability expanded beyond our
>current vision as the process is made available for general use.
About one percent of the people on this list can "master" carbon transfer,
a process that is about 20 times easier than the Fresson process. Carbon
transfer materials can be made in anybody's kitchen requiring little more
than a fine toothed comb to coat the emulsion. Fine toothed combs are
considerably cheaper than mechanical contraptions based on a swiss movement
clock that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to be made by machinists
and engineers nowadays. If I were to publish all blueprints and formulas
for the process there would not be more than one tenth of one percent of
the people on this list who could get it going within two years. It's
elusive.
>> . . . With the original formulas and the original
>> equipment, it took me about a year @ 25 hours a week to make it work. I
>> came awfully close to throwing in the towel many times. It was like trying
>> to become a juggler starting with 24 balls at a time. Another way of
>
>No offense, but if you still drove a car made in France in the early part of
>this Century you might have a few problems keeping up with the rest of us on
>the road. I think modern mechanical and control technology just might be
>a bit helpful.
Never drove a car in France. Much prefer their TGVs (350km/h trains). BTW I
wouldn't swap a TGV for a steam-powered Amtrack "train" ever;-)
There are certainly modern coaters designed for high speed "cascade"
coatings where you can apply 18 extremely thin coats in one pass, etc., but
they cost millions.
>> the results, in *monochrome*, can be absolutely stunning as seen in some,
>> though certainly not all, of Ortiz Echague's work. I wonder if any of those
>> were shown at the recent Bath meeting?
>
>RPS shared some of Echague's work during the introduction on Friday. I've
>also seen some of his work in private collections. In my opinion, Bill Foster
>had two prints with him that I thought better than the Echague prints shown.
As I mentioned above, "some, though certainly not all of Ortiz Echague's
work..." (was stunning). Bill Foster just told me that the paper that
Echague made was not as good as the real McCoy and to be honest, I was
amazed that Echague made anything decent at all as the eyesight requirement
for some of the adjustments is extremely critical. When I first met him, a
few years after he bought the process he was practically blind. He must
have rejected an awful lot of paper and prints. Also, Ortiz, like most of
us, tended to give away less than perfect prints. One he sent me is so so
and he or one of his staff, put the print *through a typewriter* to type
the title on the back! If this is not sacrilegeous, what is?
...
>Are any of your prints in public collections(Eastman House, RPS, etc.)?
Ask them. I know that some of the private buyers later sold their prints to
institutions for tax purposes (I presume). I can't name private collectors
but one "public" name would be Reed Callanan director of the Santa Fe Photo
Workshops http://www.nets.com/sfworkshop/ who might have something nice to
show out of his private collection.
Americans should be warned that the work may not be politically correct by
their standards.
>> carbon processes that rely on abrasion would need a device that can provide
>> the same amount of abrasion over a large surface, automatically. Since it
>
>In your books you indicate that you've seen the Fresson facilities, how have
>they managed to print color for over 50 years?
Some say "not very well" for technical reasons I previously described, and
for *less* than 50 years.
Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada