Re: OT inkjet neg fading

To answer Judy's question, no, I never thought that inkjet prints were
archival. But what surprised me was how rapidly the print loses
density. In the article I mentioned, they had a graph that showed print
density loss versus time. By 70 days, there was a 0.12 loss of print
density, or almost a third of a stop. I am well aware that this was a
specific result that is applicable to one printer/ink/paper
combination, but it sure gives one pause. My post was really just to
see if anyone has noticed any density loss with their inkjet negs over
time. I suspect that the dye based inkjet negs will show some loss,
whereas the pigment based inks that I'm guessing that Sandy uses on his
2200 will show much less of a loss over time.

Clay
On Dec 31, 2003, at 9:57 AM, Dave S wrote:

> Dye-based prints are indeed not archival. That's why they tried to make
> pigment-based inks, but as predicted, since pigments are not as
> transparent
> as dyes, the color gamut of pigment-based inks is smaller than that of
> dye-based inks. In commercial world, they are leaning toward dye-based
> inks
> for colorful display. For them, bright and colorful display (in
> advertisement, for example) is more important than permanence.
>
> So I don't know how long the research on pigment inks is going to
> continue.
> Hopefully museums and artists make up enough numbers that it will
> continue.
>
> Dave S
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
> To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 3:41 AM
> Subject: Re: OT inkjet neg fading
>
>
>>
>> On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Clay Harmon wrote:
>>> ... In one of the articles was a graph that
>>> authors had done that showed the reflection density loss versus time
>>> for an Epson dye based print. Pretty enlightening! Especially since
>>> right next to it was an article on doing 'digital palladium' prints
>>> that allowed workers to get palladium quality while 'avoiding toxic
>>> chemicals'. I had to chuckle at that...
>>
>> This was supposed to be fading simply from aging, or from drying out,
>> or
>> from UV light exposure ???
>>
>> I found that 2 hours under UV light did not change the (transmission)
>> densitometer reading of the black dye in my 1160 -- (normal exposure
>> is 2
>> to 5 minutes). But that's for a negative where useful life of more
>> than a year or two doesn't matter.
>>
>> So they're saying dye based prints aren't archival? Did we think
>> they were? What was the time period?
>>
>> J.
>>
>>
>
Received on Wed Dec 31 10:36:15 2003