[Leica] The death of the silver gelatin prints

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

I would think they'd be quite archival and close to fade free but we just
don't know. We'll know when we can look back at prints we've made decades
past. Right now we do have a bunch of smart people with the best intentions
doing their upmost to fix something into the future.
I started printing in the mid 60's and what seemed logical and right about
what to do in the darkroom for a proper amount of permanence changed and
evolved throughout the 70's and 80's. We were using one fixing bath not two
and not using all that much selenium in the 70's. Those vertical Plexiglas
washers were maybe just coming out. We knew we couldn't let our wash water
go below 60 and we all went out and got regulators. The whole dryer screen
thing and avoidance of heat during drying. Not dry mounting. All this stuff
was figured out in my printing lifetime. And darkroom printing had been
going on for a long time before 1965.
Today's Collectors will be breathing much easier and shelling out bucks for
modern inkjet prints much faster when we can look back at it at least a
decade or two or three and see that their investments in photographic art
had held up. That pigment really is a big plus over dyes. That Carbon makes
for an edge over just any black pigment.
We learned a lot about how to get it right in silver gelatin printing. We're
going into inkjet printing much smarter and wiser people - Scientists,
craftsman, artists. A little hindsight goes a long way.

- - from my iRabs.
Mark Rabiner
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/springdays/


> From: Paul Roark <roark.paul at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:45:05 -0700
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] The death of the silver gelatin prints
> 
> I tried and used all sorts of inter-negative approaches to silver
> prints for several years before inkjets were any good.  Some were OK,
> most were not, and all added a few steps of frustration, cost, and
> compromise.  Having now gone through the various stages of inkjet
> development, and having studied the alternatives to death, I must say
> I have no desire to do silver printing any more.  Aside from the fact
> that some collectors may prefer them, they are inferior to what we can
> now make with the best inkjet technology.
> 
> The inkjets can not only look better, but they can also be more
> "archival."  I've concentrated on the longevity factor because that
> was the assumed (correctly) weakness of the early inkjet products.  My
> hope is that all of the testing and work to get the longevity of the
> best inkjet prints up to and beyond the silver print level will
> ultimately lead to their being more accepted by the collectors, but
> it'll take a while.
> 
> Note that what I'm talking about here is beyond what most need for
> their B&W work.  The OEM approaches and third party B&W inksets are
> fine for most uses.
> 
> At an rate, for the highest end fine are and museum work, the 100%
> carbon pigment inkjet alternatives available today are close to being
> fade free.  In http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/ testing, a 100%
> carbon pigment print on Premier Art Smooth 205 (aka Epson Scrapbook
> paper) at 100 megalux-hours of exposure (51 Wilhelm years) had a 50%
> density test patch delta-e of 0.1.  That is, virtually no change at
> all.  The natural, non-OBA paper delta-e was 0.5.  The 100% carbon
> pigment test prints are achieving results that are many times better
> than the best OEM approaches, and in the real world of unknown fade
> factors, all of the approaches that use blends of carbon plus color
> are at risk of differential fade of the color pigments.  This causes
> the print colors to go in directions we might not like -- e.g.,
> turning green.
> 
> The limiting factor in longevity when 100% carbon is used is probably
> the paper.  Buffered cotton paper has a huge advantage over our old
> wet darkroom paper.  The silver print paper cannot be buffered due to
> the acidic processing chemicals.  Airborne acids are attacking them.
> I have prints that have been in a metal cabinet since the 1980's where
> I can see the yellow on the paper backs.  it's greatest at the edges.
> It is totally consistent with airborne acids diffusing in from the
> edges of these stacked silver prints.
> 
> Beyond that, in my digital restoration work, I find the vast majority
> of very old prints are having microcracking of the emulsions.  Some
> conservators believe that all laminated or coated media will
> deteriorate due to cracking or separation of the layers.  The
> differential expansions/contractions due to humidity and temperature
> changes are inevitable.  This, of course, also affects coated inkjet
> papers.  That is why I increasingly think that 100% carbon pigments on
> Arches watercolor paper is our ultimate medium from an archival
> perspective.  The 100% carbon pigment on Arches prints I have on my
> walls are among the very best prints I've ever made.  True, up close a
> coated inkjet paper can be smoother, and the best coated inkjet papers
> can get a better dmax, but in display size prints in real world
> display conditions, these make very beautiful B&W prints.
> 
> Note that on the wall in normal lighting, the depth of the matte black
> is usually deeper than the depth of a glossy black due to reflections.
>   For example, in my home environment, where I have 2 spot lights on
> the prints, but also have normal room lights and light walls and
> ceiling, when I put 100% black matte and glossy test prints under
> glass at the place where the prints would usually hang, and I use a
> spot meter to measure the depth of black from the normal viewing
> positing, the matte blacks win.  The "superior" glossy blacks are only
> better with very good lighting -- as used in the spectros we use to
> measure the test strips.  In the real world, reflections make all the
> difference.  That, I believe, is the main thing that attracted people
> to platinum prints.  Even their very modest dmax looked good when
> there were not reflections off the surface.  Once I see a surface
> reflection, the illusion of depth in the print disappears.  Suddenly
> I'm just looking at a piece of paper.
> 
> Nonetheless, I've lately been trying to develop the best neutral
> glossy inkjet approach -- using the most carbon possible as well as
> the best and least amount of color pigments.  The glossy carbon
> pigments are very warm, so it takes a lot of color to cool them to
> neutral.  The OEM "gray" inks are all blends of carbon + color.  So,
> for example, your QTR ink loads of the color needed to cool down the
> OEM gray inks do not tell you how much total color is in the mix.
> While the Epson M and C pigs appear to quite good, they ultimately
> will fade and probably at different rates, causing the image to change
> colors.  (The third party color pigments are terrible, including those
> blended into the third party neutral B&W inksets, the ones I designed
> and sold by MIS Associates/inksupply.com included.)  While we can look
> at the Aardenburg Imaging tests to find the best matched M and C
> pigments, that is under ideal environmental conditions and that
> particular light source.  We simply don't know what gas attacks and
> other factors might affect real world differential fade, which is the
> major risk with these types of B&W prints.  From what I've seen in my
> development of what should be the best possible neutral glossy inkset,
> I doubt current technology can make a good glossy print that I'd
> consider museum quality.  The OEM colors are good enough for most
> purposes, but if museum quality is the goal, I'd stick to 100% carbon
> on matte paper, with Arches probably being the ultimate photographic
> medium.
> 
> Note that I was able to make a 100% carbon neutral glossy print, but
> it takes using un-diluted MK in a 1.5 picoliter printer, which is
> still not very smooth.  It also takes a lot of acrylic spray to nail
> down the MK pigments.  It's not worth the effort.
> 
> My B&W printing views are summarized at http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
> 
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