I did go into my darkroom last week, but only to start a job I’ve been putting off for 18 months, filing the last films that I developed. And while I was there I also tidied up the 50 or so films still waiting to be processed whenever I get round to it. So now I know there are exactly 27 36 exposure cassettes of TCN400, 15 of Fuji colour neg, 2 120 rolls of same and most intriguingly, 2 cassettes of T-Max 100. Much of this was shot alongside digital when I wasn’t too sure I could get what I wanted from the digital – but found I could. But I’ve not the slightest idea what can be on that T-Max, and some day soon my curiosity will force me to dev it to find out.
Of course, any b/w liquid dev I still have lurking will by now be a murky brown, so I’ll either have to find a shop that still stocks such esoteric materials or get out the recipe book and those jars of “raw chemicals” stashed in a corner of my loft next to the antique chemical balance.
All of the rest needs C41 and just one of the things that puts me off processing it is wondering whether those colour chemicals I have are still OK to use – but of course the longer I wait the less likely they are to be usable.
It’s even longer than 18 months since I made a print in the darkroom. I first ordered Piezography inks from Jon Cone in Vermont in 2000 and was immediately hooked on the quality of output I could get on matte papers such as Hahnemuhle’s German Etching. It was platinum without the hassle, though not without some problems, most of which Cone solved for me with the introduction of his “new generation” Piezotone inks in 2002 – and as a beta tester for the icc profiles I made sure they worked perfectly on my Epson 1160 printer. So well that I’ve yet to move on to his even better Neutral K7 inks, and although the inks I’m using are well past their best before dates they still seem fine. And unlike some unlucky Epson owners I’ve never had problems with these inks clogging my print heads.
I’ve also been printing glossy black and white and colour using Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks (in an Epson R2400) and Epson’s ABW (Advanced Black and White printing) using papers such Permajet Fibre Base Gloss, which really does give prints that match darkroom output – and rather better than some modern papers. The increased control from digital printing is such an advantage with ‘difficult’ prints too. But something I read today makes me think I’ll have to change my ideas on this.
What started me thinking about this was a very long post by Jon Cone on the Yahoo Piezography3000 group (you will need to sign on with a Yahoo ID to read it), in which he discusses what is meant by a 100 year print – as based on the lifetimes that inkjet manufacturers such as HP, Epson and Canon quote, using the tests by Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR.)
As Cone makes clear, WIR figures are based on an end point of “nearly 35% fade or discoloration” while much smaller differences of around 5% are actually visible. He suggests the 35% level was set as something achievable with chemical colour prints over reasonable periods when Wilhelm started testing – at a time when we had just realised that they deteriorated greatly. He writes: “I think most b&w photographers would be more than willing to have thrown [the print] away long before” that level is reached. How long before is the real thing we need to know, and frankly we don’t have the information needed to even make a reasonable guess.
The industry standard also prevents manufacturers from releasing detailed test results – they can only state a figure in years and the light level of 450Lux 8 hours per day. Because of the way that the tests are commissioned and can be reported, inks that show a truly acceptable under 5% of fading in a 100 year test end up with the same rating as those that test close to the limit – at which level a print would have long been fit only for the bin.
So the answer to that vital question for a print with a ‘100 Year’ WIR rating could be almost anything. It could be as low as 25 years or as high as 250, and that 25 year possibility worries me (though it should worry younger photographers more.) It would obviously be a help if the actual ‘100 Year’ terminal result – whether it was 2.8 or 28% fading – was published and we could then make up our mind, but I can’t help the conclusion that the way in which WIR results are published is calculated to benefit the manufacturers rather than provide useful information to photographers.
Cone continues to say that WIR has actually now stated that its predictions can no longer be relied on for inksets that produce b/w prints by combining black and colour inks – as in Epson’s ABW and prints made using Canon and HP ink sets. He also discusses the new i*metric proposed by WIR which is in public beta and gives an explanation of why this too fails to give satisfactory predictions.
Cone has published data from many of his own tests on his own inks. In the post (and it is worth reading in full, as well as the discussion that follows) he discusses the fading of the current Piezography inks which he states are designed to fade less than 5% (ie below the visible level) under an illumination test of approximately 150 years at 450Lux 8 hours per day.
A further post by Cone in the thread (the latest as I write, but its a thread I’ll be following with interest) looks at the problems of the archival nature of paper and states that testing by WIR ignores this. He is currently carrying out tests on Epson K3 ABW versus Piezography K7 and PiezoTone which he started using Epson Velvet Fine Art paper. Epson describes this as:
- Acid free base to preserve fine art and photos
- 100% cotton rag for archivability
and they publish a Permanence rating from WIR of 61 years.
This figure is perhaps confirmed by Cone’s test, because he says that it “yellowed so bad after 60 years LUX I had to scrap it.” He is now repeating the test but using Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper.
My Conclusions
1. If you are a photographer selling prints, you need to be very careful in what you say about archival quality or lifetime of your prints. Most current claims are incorrect because the tests they are based on are not related to visual print quality.
2. If you are producing black and white prints you need to use specialist inks (such as Cone’s) and papers to produce prints with lifetimes comparable to traditional ‘archival’ silver prints. If like me you want to use Epson’s Ultrachrome K3 inks for colour and also to make glossy black and white prints on the same printer, then you might be advised to look at printing methods that don’t use the colour inks as well. The K3 set includes black, light black and light light black and it is possible with third party software such as Quad Tone Rip or BowHaus’s IJM/OPC to print using just these.
3. If you are a museum which wants photographs as a long term record you should be concentrating on the archival storage of digital files as the primary record rather than prints on paper. (And of course it goes without saying that you also need to be aware of the problems of long-term digital storage – and their solutions.)
4. I dislike posts with titles that ask a question and then fail to give an answer, but really there isn’t one. If you use most inks and papers that are rated at ‘100 Years’ and keep them under reasonably sensible conditions – avoiding strong sources of UV or materials that give out gases such as rubber etc, then they will probably last without noticeable fading for at least 15 years. If you chose the right inks and paper, probably ten times that.
