So you think your inkjet prints will last?...

FrankS said:
Still not as silly as wasting time posting on a topic you think is a waste of time. ;)
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I said I found it rather amusing. I'm being amused.

Give it a few more responses, when it turns into the usual ugly darkroom-versus-digital print diatribe, and it will become boring, tedious, and banal. I'm also an expert in those arts, but I'm trying to branch out.
 
oscroft said:
Nah, Bitumen of Judea and Lavender oil - there's no substitute.
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That was for preparing polished pewter plates for daguerreotype photography.

Still, it was rather archival.

Point made.
 
Now that we are all so jolly over this fine topic I assume we will no longer be concerned over the value of the discussion.
 
Umm...When I mention to people that my inkjet prints may not last very long, they don't seem overly concerned....:(

Gary
 
That´s actually what got me back into analog photo again - the fear of losing our history, local or global, due to digital "flaws" or shortsightedness of merchants and profiteers.

One digit/bit lost=picture lost. Bad ink= print faded in less than one year.


Nuff said./R
 
Indepth research into pigments, testing and analysis of printing, go to http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ for the lastest upto date tests. Wilhem Research "conducts research on the stability and preservation of traditional and digital color photographs and motion pictures. The company publishes brand name-specific permanence data for desktop and large-format inkjet printers and other digital printing devices. Wilhelm Imaging Research also provides consulting services to museums, archives, and commercial collections on sub-zero cold storage for the very long term preservation of still photographs and motion pictures."

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/index.html

Read to your hearts content! :D


Cheers
MArk
Quito, EC
 
I am not sure that the longevity of inkjet prints is really what concerns me. I feel that the storage of the files that produce the prints is what is most important. When I was wet printing, my best results were not printed direct but benefitted from a degree of burning, dodging etc. It normally took several attempts to get it right and although I could reproduce similar prints, they were all slightly different. Thus the print was important. With inkjet, any manipulation is on the PC and the file saved. Multiple backups can be made of that file and they are, or should be indentical. At anytime in the furure I can send that file to the printer and providing I am using the same inks and paper, the result is going to be very close.

I may be wrong but I rather suspect that the files on the PC will last longer than some of my old chromes and colour negs.

Kim
 
gns said:
Umm...When I mention to people that my inkjet prints may not last very long, they don't seem overly concerned....:(

Gary
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I have this feeling a better printer with better inks will come along in a year and I'll reprint them again anyway. Especially for b/w the drive to mimic wet room printing will be quite a journey.
 
i'm very interested in this thread. i agree, having gone back almost exclusively to film for critical work (currently photographing artwork for a museum book on an RB) i am still, as will be many, drawn to inkjet printing. having just bought a new Epson R2400 K3 Chrome ink process printer (A3 size) i am finding that out of the 8 or 9 cartridges in the thing the printer or photoshop cs3 or the horse in the next paddock seems to make the printer default to using primarily the "light" colours and therefore giving me almost pastel prints of what should be very saturated scans and digital inputs. both reveal the same phenomenon, soft colours.

my point is, given the obvious need for calibration and ICCs, etc, to solve this little problem, the variables in the default settings of so many printers means there is a very significant lack of consistency in digital inkjet printing. with good ol' colour paper and tradition wet printing techniques there was/IS predictability. but wet printing is (here in australia) getting more and more expensive and at least inkjet means less (immediate, but long term?) cost and immediate "dry" results.

a conundrum, for sure.

dj
 
My brother lost about 1500 photos when his PC suddenly died. He's not a photographer but all the photos of his kids, which were not backed up, are now lost.

So back them up. And keep moving them to the latest format.

Or lose them forever.
 
A few weeks ago I bought several boxes of slides in a second hand shop. All very well preserved kodak slides from the seventies/eighties. They showed a middle aged - elderly couple on their holidays in Austria/Spain/Tenerife and celebrating with their family. No 'art', just ordinary family snapshots. I saved about 10 slides with my collection and threw the rest out. I could use some quality slide boxes.

Who knows what will happen with my precious photos in 20 - 30 - 40 years? The material on which they are created/printed/preserved is only part of the story.

Wim
 
david b said:
My brother lost about 1500 photos when his PC suddenly died. He's not a photographer but all the photos of his kids, which were not backed up, are now lost.

So back them up. And keep moving them to the latest format.

Or lose them forever.
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I think this kind of thing happens to hundreds if not thousands of people per year. I can't help but think that a whole generation will lose their (digital) family pics. You have to remember that most users are not too computer savy and won't do the necessary backing up and updating. Long live film!
 
FrankS said:
I think this kind of thing happens to hundreds if not thousands of people per year. I can't help but think that a whole generation will lose their (digital) family pics.
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And every time there is a flood, or a hurricane, or a tornado, or a house fire, guess what happens to the family photo album?

And every time some old guy keels over during his shuffleboard tournament down in Florida and they clean out his assisted care apartment, guess what happens?

If all photos lasted forever, we'd be up to our armpits in lousy photos of kids we don't know on hobby horses under Christmas trees. Better they're gone.

You have to remember that most users are not too computer savy and won't do the necessary backing up and updating. Long live film!
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Good thing all the banks keep your money in form of actual paper. Oh, wait, they don't. Digital records. Well, too bad then, I guess.
 
I don't doubt that lots of pictures will get lost. We're pretty religious about keeping the digital ones safe, but it's a bit of a hassle. Have a network attached HD that's the primary storage, backed up to a removable HD once a week or so (this one is kept 'off the grid' the rest of the time), then we burn DVDs with the pictures as the library builds and send off to family (that way we have 'off site storage' of sorts).

Then again, with negs it only takes a house fire to wipe out everything, and you can't quite as easily make copies. Still, I suspect that everything taken into account, the negatives are far more likely to be around in a few decades than the digital files.
 
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