David: : First I've heard of this, too, and I have no reason to take it : seriously. Why do they think daylight is more damaging? And what do : they think testing should be under, incandescent maybe (with no UV)? apparently there are lots of interactions with paper, surface, aerial contaminants, O2, O3, different light wavelengths that are simply not well understood. like speaker design.. We can often predict and then observe the results in an attempt to understand the interactions. I guess it's actually TOO hard to undertake thorough testing on the myriad products that come and go and Wilhelm's results are as valid a guide as any, but they are not definative - heck, there's no ISO standard for this stuff either due to a lack of agreement on what should be tested how. A bit like the whole FB/RC thing - The temporal evidence favours FB, the theoretical evidence sort of favours FB, but two thin sheets of plastic covering essentially the same product seriously reduce failures in chemical processing technique and SHOULD favour RC. destructive testing seriously favours RC, contaminant testing favours RC, 'bug' testing (as I like to call it) favours RC, but on the whole the bulk of the existing documentation favours the FB - no doubt at all. Time will tell us which one stands the test but we wont be here to find out. poo I wonder if the Romans went thru this - 'but IRON is STRONGER!' ..'yea but will it LAST, check this bronze out dude!, my Great Aunt had this made like forever ago!' : Um, did you look at your own reference? Here's what it says about : relative permanence: : : When properly stored, dyebased inkjet and dye diffusion thermal : transfer prints have stability comparable to that of traditional : photographic prints. Pigment-based inkjet and color : electrophotographic prints are even more stable. : : That hardly seems to be saying regular prints are supported over : inkjet to me. I know. bloody net. We could spend all day pulling up info that supports this or that and which contradicts the other. I tend to look for disagreements, contradictory evidence and dissent - I repair things after all, and it's my nature to find stuff thats broken. If I look only for support then my world would be a simpler place, but I'd learn little - doubt leads me to learn. : I tried Rodinal a bit less than 40 years ago, and never could see the : point. well it aint changed at all since it's original formula so suggesting trying it again would be pointless. : Grainiest negs I ever saw, and my whole life has been : something of a fight against grain. yup - it's a HIGH accutance dev with little sulphite present - most other dev's have a high sulphite component. Sulphite in developers acts as a silver solvent, dissolving the edges of the silver grain as it forms which makes the grain structure a lot less harsh and effectively yields a smoother looking image - the drawback is that edge sharpness is sacrificed and that whole adjacent development contrast thing isn't as strong.. with the resulting image looking not just smoother but less sharp as well. Rodinal's grain development doesn't etch the silver at all, so grains come out sharp - great if you have lots of detail which needs sharp rendering, but not so great if you have smooth continuous tones where chunky bits can look a tad incongruous. : Layer masks on adjustment layers. It's just *marvelous*. (Of course : the print can still be made on conventional paper if that's what you : want; or printed as a neg on transparency material to make a platinum : print for that matter.) stop it, you're getting me excited.. I must say we've conducted this dispute on the most polite of terms and I think we should congratulate ourselves. Doesn't really seem very PF like though.. maybe we should hurl some abuse just to get the tone back to normal.. ? k
