Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark" 
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> Peter Nelson wrote:
> 
> >Two years ago a friend made some beautiful neutral BW prints for 
me 
> >on his 1280...   I kept them in a drawer.  Today they are a nice 
> >rich shade of green...
> 
> And I'll bet they were dye prints, not pigments.

Of course, but the 870 prints on the same paper that I mentioned 
sitting out under fluorescent lights for same the period of timne 
look fine.   The 870 and 1280 use very similar inks.   What this 
shows is that there are variables at work here that we don't have any 
idea about.

And anyway, even dye prints are usually expected to last more than 
two years, especially in a dark drawer.



> Say what?  You think you know the proprietary 
> ingredients of the photo paper from the large manufacturers?  

The basic chemistry of silver halide photography has been well 
understood by everyone for a century.  The differences between the 
standard papers by Ilford, Kodak, etc, haven't changed enough to 
matter for decades.   All the same developers and papers that I was 
using in the 1960's are still around today. 

 
> There is a very good chance that a carbon-pigment inkjet 
> print on buffered cotton paper will outlast the typical
> silver print in family albums.

The problem with that statement is that we don't even know what the 
so-called "carbon pigment" *IS* that used in the black inks, much 
less the "light black" used in multitone systems.   I agree that if 
the basic black is pyrolytic carbon black and the VEHICLE is stable, 
then the color should be stable for a long time.  But that's pure 
speculation.   That's why any statements ANYONE here makes about 
stability of inkjet prints is like trying to predict what the Dow 30 
Industrials will be on December 31 2006.    It's a crap shoot.