Goodbye, Amberlith. We will miss you.

Posted in Artist's Journal by Jonathan on the April 17th, 2008

I have just been informed, my friends, that Ulano has discontinued Amberlith film production. Given that the first three Google Image Search results for “Amberlith” are daguerreotype-related, I find this statement from Ulano to be very credible; we daguerreotypists are hardly a large organization.

Unfortunately, because of diminishing demand, Ulano stopped making Amberlith at the end of 2007…

Amberlith served us well over the years but as I always say when life gives you scurvy, make lemonade!

Though Amberlith is gone, its brother in spirit, Rubylith, appears to be a perfectly suitable alternative for Becquerel daguerreotype processing. Rubylith, you see, is for orthochromatic films and is therefore perfect for our use.

Rubylith^® is a red masking film, which is suited for use with orthochromatic films. Rubylith^® is “safe” for use with camera speed darkroom films as well as indirect gelatin stencil films and diazo, diazo acrylic, or SBQ sensitized stencil films or emulsions. Rubylith^® is primarily used in the camera and plate making operations for offset lithography, flexography, gravure, and screen processes where orthochromatic films and plates are used. (source)

I found 8.5″ x 11″ and 11″ x 14″ pads here. If you know of alternative resources for Rubylith, please let me know. Many readers of the site are from outside of the USA and would probably appreciate a local resource.

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