Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "john" <deanwork2003@...> wrote:
>
> I see. I didn't realize you had such a background with the museum community. I also see why you are casting a wide net for end users. There are a lot of them out there.
> 

I just have to find them or they me. But I do believe there are thousands of photographers and printmakers who would subscribe to AaI&A if they haven't already had their minds made up about print longevity from the usual marketing soundbites.

>  It just amazes me how museum curators and gallery owners, and art collectors who are actively selling and buying photographs are so ignorant of what is going on. I mean totally ignorant.  I think part of the reason is that they have never seen a website like yours that actually displays the patches and data as it changes in time, and under varied amounts of light.

Truth be told, very few people, including imaging industry experts, have seen light fastness tests in this new light (bad pun, I know). It took me several years to bring together all the technical components to provide comprehensive light fastness information in this way. The methodology is extensible to other aging mechanisms as well such as gas fade, humidity resistance, thermal degradation. All it takes is more money to expand into those testing protocols. 

The technical part of my job is therefore well under control. However, the "marketing" part is a process of re-educating the public and this task may be the bigger challenge!  The public has been mentally conditioned by years of marketing hype to expect print longevity ratings expressed as a single "years of life" rating when the obvious truth is that any specific print can last seconds or it can last centuries depending on the storage, handling, and display circumstances.  We need to better understand each print type's chemical and physical weaknesses and then match that knowledge up with rational estimates of its likely storage and display environment in order to estimate projected lifetimes. Dumbing it down to a single longevity number take the real world environmental variability out of the equation. That's regrettable because real world variability is huge. For indoor light levels, it typically varies by two to three orders of magnitude, even for the display locations used in a single home. 
> 
> I still have people telling me, today actually,  that Lightjets on Fuji Chrystal Archive is some great product that will last 120 years ( yea maybe in 50 megalux "museum" lighting but I wouldn't  bet on it.)

I think John meant to say 50 lux, so to get to 50 megalux hours with a 50 lux museum lighting intensity, one requires 1 million illuminated hours on display (i.e., about  228 years if lit 12/hours per day at 50 lux).  Now look at the 50 megalux hour test results in the AaI&A test reports for the Crystal archive paper. There are five tested samples (indicative of both processing variability and light fade test unit variability), and these reports have free public access. The results show what kind of fading is induced in Crystal Archive paper by that exposure dose.  How long it takes to  accumulate that dose is up to you.  Pretty informative, if I do say so myself!  

Traditional color photos have been the subject of much research.  Museum specialists know how to care for conventional chromogenic prints like Crystal Archive very well, and it's no lie to say that they can last for centuries when cared for properly. They can also be faded beyond recognition in tougher real world conditions in just a matter of months (e.g., direct florida sunlight streaming through a window onto the Crystal archive print can pile up that 50 megalux hour dose in about 3-6 months rather than the museum's 228 year time frame).  Perhaps people reading these comments can now understand why one predicted display life number is so silly and why AaI&A rates product light fastness with light exposure dose rather than predicted years of display life. 

Simply put, with wisely chosen policies for rotation on and off display (at museum light levels of about 50-100 lux) combined with cool/cold storage, just about any print process can last century after century in near perfect condition.  So, would you like the really easy marketing soundbite?  Well, just use any inkjet printer/ink/media combination, display and store wisely...Eureka, it will last a century or more, no problem!  

Unfortunately, the typical collector (and some museum curators) may not be as aware of the issues as the museum specialist and thus subject his/her prints to high light, temperature, and/or humidity levels that change this whole longevity equation and render any manufacturer's claimed "lifetime" meaningless.  I hope this exposure dose concept makes sense. It's actually analogous to photography's reciprocity law where the photographer can expose an image for longer/shorter times (i.e., vary the shutter speed) at different higher/lower intensities (i.e., vary the f-stop) to achieve the same exposure dose under many different real world lighting conditions. 


cheers,

Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com