: Yes, strangely enough the people who actually know something of the : black art of accelerated testing get paid for their work. usually by epson.. : It's the : random uncontrolled tests by untrained (and hence unpaid) people using : their south-facing windows that *I* distrust. what about your own tests? do you test or trust? What about chemists and people from a chemistry background doing the tests rather than some bloke with vague credentials who is discredited as often as not? What about the controlled tests done by the specialists who didn't realise they were testing POP paper when they were criticising the longevity of RC papers? Or the carefully controlled tests from prints gathered willy nilly (including proofs) to show how bad processing causes this or that? Or the careful tests which failed to notice the sulphiding component in gold toner was missing.. Do I trust the 'develop for 5.5 minutes' instructions, or do I take the time to run my OWN tests, discovering my pH is different, my water hardness different, my aggitation different etc from whatever standard is suggested. Of course I do - I use the reccomendations as a guide and I move on to run my own tests. I don't buy a camera in a magazine cause some bloke who's paid well by some third party says it's good - I trial it myself and see if he's firstly telling the truth, and secondly if it's right for me. Just as sitting a Canon S800 print on Epson Archival beside one produced with pigment inks on an Epson 7600 on the same paper batch told me which produced better 'looking' images, and which lasted longer under these same adverse conditions on the rear deck of my car for a summer. Sure, a bunch of people took my word for the results based on eyeballing the images, just as a similar bunch of people took my word for the RC Vs FB experiments once they'd seen the prints - but my word was nothing - they SAW the prints and evaluated the results themselves.. what they took my word for was the description of the conditions and the duration of the trials. Could I have lied? Could another person have lied? We have scientists of GREAT standing in the world caught falsifying data.. and the bloke I think you're referring too has not a lot of standing outside digital photo circles. : and in fact for : amateur use one of the big expenses is often throwing away chemistry : before it's exhausted because it's time-expired. there's expiry dates on toothpicks here in Oz. stop, fix and blix don't go off, fix can even be easily regenerated! CDr has a strangely long lifespan, developers can be made to last indefinately if folks want to take a few simple steps and seperate the dev agents from the alkalizers.. Someone used to make a monobath developer, later it was discontinued and literature by many credible sources suggest it was a failure. They were parrotting the manufacturers reason for the cessation of manufacture. I've made a few different brews and they are surprisingly effective AND the damned stuff doesn't go off at all! A year later in an open bottle you can top up the volume and simply use it - a one step process! My guess is that it was bad for business.. just as single mix powdered devs are VERY good for business ;-) : As for special, expensive, paper -- compared top-line inkjet paper : against RA-4 photo paper lately? about the same here, though 100 sheets of crystal archive for $70 beats close to $150 for the epson gloss. : I print a LOT fewer prints to get one good one than I ever did in the : darkroom. I get the feeling people are forgetting that -- or else : haven't spent much time in the darkroom and never knew it. I can do a strip straight across the guts of the image, make an adjustment, vary appropriately and get out a print ..if I'm in a hurry. If I want to take my time I might place 2 strips strategically the second time round then I'm away. Black and white wise, 1 strip does me fine unless we have some serious dodging and burning to do. but then, I *did* spend a lot of time in the darkroom making lots of prints :-) k
