I have been poking away at resuming cyanotype production using the new setup and the old transparency negatives. In order to go forward successfully, I need to be able to print on transparent film up to 2 feet wide by six long. I have encountered a lot of trouble here, which has baffled me. No print shops within a hundred miles seem to be able to do that. I put in an order to buy a roll of the film myself to keep at one of the local shops to print off on as needed… and was informed today that the roll will be delivered no sooner than late *February.* The manufacturers don’t have the raw materials for it.
What’s baffling is that when last I worked with this, circa 2017 or so, getting these sort of prints was no trouble whatsoever. I’d send the files to a local print shop in Utah and within a few days the job would be done at reasonable cost, no sweat. Now, though… it’s just not done. And it turns out there is a reason: up until about 5 years ago, it seems people were still regularly using diazo-type blueprinting for architectural and other industrial diagrams, which required this sort of film. But around five years ago, digital printing finally drove the last nail in diazotypes coffin. Without the market, there’s no supply.
So, hopefully the film will still arrive. But I have a customer who kinda wants his custom job, and that’s an unreasonable wait. So something new is being done. The customers line diagram is being printed not on thin transparent film, but on thin *plexiglas.* I can see this resulting in superior cyanotypes; the plexiglass will be vastly less prone to being anything other than dead flat, so the prints should be sharper. But plexi is *far* more expensive (two full size prints will cost as much as the entire roll of film that’s hopefully coming)… and when not in use, I can’t just roll it up and stick it in the corner. If I get 24 inch by 72 inch prints on these, not only is storing them going to be a problem, I can’t even fit them in my car. Grrr. These are problems that will be solved, but, grrr. Everything is always harder not only than it needs to be, but than it used to be.
