Re: RC permanence


Michael Keller (keller@wvinter.net)
Sun, 18 Apr 1999 20:28:25 -0400


I've wondered about the permanence of color negas as well. I know they used to
be very impermanent (like 5 years or so), but the comparison to color RC is
questionable now, as Wilhelm has Fuji Crystal Archive at something like 60+
years under careful display conditions. Ilfochrome is 29+ years. The Kodak
material is much worse. But wouldn't color negs be better now?

Richard Knoppow wrote:

> Yup, T-Max CN400 is a chromogenic film. The image is made of dye rather
> than silver despite being monochrome. It has the same problems with
> permanence that color films of all types have, namely that dyes are
> fugitive to varying extents. Some dye materials reportedly have long lives
> but, in general, silver or silver is going to be longer lasting.
> Silver images on negatives are generally less vulnerable to degradation
> than prints since film is much coarser grained than printing paper.
> Degradation of the image on a chromogenic B&W film is less serious than
> that of a color image as far as being able to recover the image by
> printing. Nonetheless, chromogenic film is not the best choice for image
> permanence.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 21:39:31