Digital BW, The Print

> > Absolutely! My mother-in-law has professional portraits of each of her
> > children (5 daughters) along the main hallway in her house, both baby,
> > toddler, and wedding pictures. The prints are between 10 and 45 years
> > old, and they don't receive any direct sunlight. Most are fine, but a
> > couple show extreme fading, including some of the most recent. Clearly
> > the prints are made with different materials, with some being much more
> > long lasting than others.
>
> You're probably talking about color prints because very few
> photographers delivered B&W in the mid/late 20th century.
>

Both actually.  Some of the earliest ones are hand-colored bw.  They 
look great.

> Most of the decay in color prints, assuming Kodak or Fuji or other
> good Japanese paper, has to do with processing variables rather than
> paper variables. Many labs did weird processing with Ektacolor paper,
> just as they did/do with C41. Those were the dominant materials in
> that 10-45 year period you cite. Minilab prints (1hr labs) are
> particularly suspect because they have almost always used abbreviated
> chemistries. If you think their prints have faded, you should try
> printing their C41 negatives after a decade or three.
These were professional portraits. I doubt very much that they were made 
at 1 hour labs.  In fact, in my area there weren't any one-hour labs 
until a few years ago when Walmart moved in.

>
> I've got hundreds of color photos on various materials, made in the
> same period by good professional labs (which means labs that almost
> exclusively serve professionals)
>
> , that show little or no fading.
>
Well, that was my point, right?  Some people/labs/companies cared more 
about longevity than others, and this had a serious impact on the life 
of important prints.  Thus it makes sense for us to care about how long 
our prints will last.