I admit a certain negligence about inks and dyes for digital paper, but I do
know it's a harder sell to guarantee any longevity/archival issues right now
- Dave's five-year-old prints seem to serve as one of the most extensive
real studies out there...haha. No really - I mean, accelerated testing is
better than nothing, but if we're splitting hairs with color shifts, etc (as
tends to be in photographers' natures), then why would you trust the
'pinpoint' accuracy of accelerated testing? The only way to know for
certain will be when 25 REAL years have passed and we can pull out those
prints and look at them. Then again, if the reasonable accuracy of
accelerated testing is good enough for you, then the color shifts occuring
in ink, dye, OR silver prints should probably pass your standards too! And
as it's been said - "daylight" viewing conditions vary EXTENSIVELY depending
on time of year, time of day, etc. I mean, anyone who has pulled-out a
color meter on a location shoot knows that the temperature can change
several hundred degrees just with a cloud passing through. And on a last
note - albeit shamefully - when I was first starting out I worked at a
custom lab that did "archival" prints - guess what, any lab using some big
RA-4 processor to crank out prints is NOT giving you "archival" prints -
regardless of what they may claim. The super-heated chemistry used to lower
developing, fixing, bleaching, etc times lowers the longevity of the print.
So, 90% of conventional color prints out there don't meet the TRUE standard
of "archival" anyway. So, unless you're planning on going Ansel Adams and
building underground concrete vaults for your negatives, don't stress too
much about your printing shifting 10 points magenta 15 years down the line.
Hey, it's digital - just spit out another one! :)
~Rob
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