Digital BW, The Print

Paul,


There was something I had seen about the Z3100 black being
the one that went wrong on test criteria but I couldn't
recall it immediately. The articles on IE's site may have it
but reading the original article in ColorFoto again I see
the colors are mentioned that fail first in the fade tests,
for the Z3100 12 ink on Photorag it was the Black in the
ozone test and the Blue in the light fading test. As the
ozone test has a shorter life expectancy for the paper/ink
combo the black should fail at 50 years in
unframed/unprotected display conditions. That failing could
just be a warming up of the print, no details given on
that.. Same for the B9180 8 ink Photorag test but the Blue
there can only have been a Cyan + Magenta. With Instant Dry
Gloss RC paper the Black + Cyan fail the ozone test but with
a lifetime of 70 years. The IE test is a bare bulb test so
both the light and the ozone test correspond best with
indoor unframed exposure conditions. Any protection,
lacquer, waxing or framing should reduce ozone fading and
shift the lifetime to the light fading resistance that is
around 120 years in IE's tests for Photorag and with the
Blue as the deciding factor. Wilhelm's ozone testing is less
severe and gives an ozone resistance of >100 years for all
papers but a similar to IE bare bulb lifetime of 118 years.
The Wilhelm B&W results however give a much higher lifetime
on bare bulb testing: >200 years but still >100 years for
ozone. I think Wilhelm's ozone test is only telling
something when there's something utterly wrong with the
paper/ink combo I guess and not all that fails then is
published either.  Or IE's ozone test is too harsh. The
Epson 2400 inks show more problems at least.

http://digitalkamera.image-engineering.de/downloads/Haltbarkeit_Papiere-Cofo.pdf
bottom of the pages.

Given the ultra high ozone resistance of the thermo
sublimation prints a wax protection is still an attractive
solution for matte prints. In the past we have discussed the
First sign material that had a wax or resin in the substrate
integrated and would pass a thermo fixing station to embed
the pigments in the wax.


-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,Ernst


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