AG, thanks for providing an empirical basis for my sneaking suspicions.
While I admire Wilhelm's work and realize somebody's gotta do it, I
don't take it as gospel. That said, the article on 3rd party inks is
certainly worth a read as results are already in on some of them.
ScottGee1
On 9/18/06, AG Schnozz <agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I've done some mean testing of prints over the past five years.
> As my printer is a dye based printer (Canon S9000), fading is a
> major concern. Also, I wanted to test the differences between
> various types of B&W papers with and without selenium toning.
>
> My tests involved taping the prints to the outside wall (south
> facing) of my house, just up under the eave enough to keep rain
> off of them. Interstate 80 runs right past the house, so there
> is plenty of polutants in the air too. I also placed prints
> done with a archival chemical process on the wall too. If just
> one print was available of a type, I'd cut it in two and place
> one half in controlled dark-storage in archival sheets along
> with all the other control copies.
>
> As I have stated previously about these tests, I've found one
> particular paper for the inkjet that provides more archival
> quality than any chemical print. Ilford Galerie Classic along
> with a high-quality ink (MIS Bulk Inks or Canon OEM) is
> essentially fade-proof. There is a very slight loss of density,
> but not enough to worry about. One test print (color charts,
> etc) is actually placed inside a florescent light fixture and
> has been there for over two years now. The density has
> decreased by about one step on the test target. Really not bad,
> considering.
>
> I have an archival chemical print that is about 15 years old
> which gets about an hour of direct sunlight every day (and the
> rest of the day it's getting a ton of indirect sunlight. It
> held up very fine until about a year ago when it seemed to start
> fading with a vengence. It seems that there was a point where
> it just gave out.
>
> B&W? Well, Selenium toning didn't make one hoot of a
> difference. After spending a lot of time and effort verifying
> the longevity of my prints, I stopped toning them. Making sure
> that the fixer is cleared out is more important than anything.
> I even took test strips and secured them to the TOP of my deck
> railing. The rain, sun, sleet, dirt, dust and snow just was
> left there to soak in, etc. The fiber prints would swell and
> then get really brittle. Eventually the prints just fell apart.
> The RC papers would start to pit and eventually the coating just
> wore away. In reality, they held up better than the fiber
> prints. It would take about 20 inches of rain, but the inks in
> the Ilford prints would eventually wash out and the surface
> would wear away like the RC prints did.
>
> What about the chemical archival prints? My test samples didn't
> hold up very well. FCA, wouldn't wash out, but the RC surface
> would erode like the RC papers. The densities would change on
> the FCA, but not in a linear manner.
>
> Frankly, I have a feeling, based on what I've seen with other
> print technologies, that most "archival" technologies will
> resist image degradation UP TO A POINT. I've got dozens of
> multi-year old Canon Dye Prints around the office here, totally
> unprotected and exposed to non-stop florescent light that show
> absolutely no fading. And some of these are on just Canon
> paper. But what happens to a print in year-10? Just because a
> print holds up for the first nine years doesn't mean that the
> archival characteristic will hold out the tenth year. Just like
> using high quality CDRs for data storage, they might be better
> for a period of time, but at some point all brands/models will
> fail. There is nothing about pigment-based prints that make me
> believe any differently. We don't have time on our side yet.
> Wilheim tests are decent, but still accellerated--not taking
> into account the intangibles that come with laps around the sun.
>
> Obviously Pigment based inks are better than most other
> technologies--as far as we know today. However, it is apparant
> that it isn't good enough since Epson has been reformulating
> their inks to "improve" longevity along with fixing other
> aspects.
>
> AG
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