It Isnt That Images Fade, Its That They Can Vanish

Robert Hall · Jun 6, 2007

From the nyt, Canadians freeze their negatives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/technology/circuits/05print.html?_r=1&ref=circuits&oref=slogin

Krockmitaine · Jun 6, 2007

This article has been slashdotted this morning.
I always suspected that something like this would crop up eventually.
Bad news for those promoting the medium. Not only the pictures are fragile as a digital format (uncertain new format in the future, vulnerability to virus and failure of hardware) the print can't be trusted to last in printed form.

Marc

vet173 · Jun 6, 2007

Why should anyone care how long a print last. Make another one. Payed big bucks and didn't get a clause that provides a replacement? No sympathy here. Every medium in that field will someday be a 5 1/4 floppy. Look in the mirror and say to yourself "Got film".

htmlguru4242 · Jun 6, 2007

Excellent article that highlights a real problem. People don't realize how inferior the permanance of injet prints is in comparison to that of real photographic prints.

I have a few inkjet-printed images that have been sitting, framed, at home on shelves or bookcases, in sunlight, for about 4 or 5 years. They're almost completely devoid of color by now.

There are regular color prints sitting next to them, from the mid-1980s on up, and only the oldest ones show any signs of fading. It's still nothing near that of the inkjet prints.

Compare this to one of my grandparents' wedding pictures from 1932, which has hung directly across from a window for 30+ years. It has not faded in the slightest, and looks exactly as [I'd think] it would have looked over 70 years ago. Do THAT with an inkjet.

Whenever I discuss this with people, they say, "yes, the prints may fade, but my image FILES will survive forever".

Ok, in theory, sure. BUT, will the media they are on survive? Will someone accidentally delete them? Will you be able to read the filesystem on the media? Will you be able to read the image format? In a time 100 or 200 years from now, I'd venture to guess that the answer will be "no" on all counts. How many people do you know who can read disks or tapes made on a Commodore 64? I bet its very few (if any). And that was only 25 years ago. Give somebody a CD-ROM or an SD card 100 years from now, and you'd be lucky if they knew what it was, much less be able to read it!

However, you will ALWAYS be able to build an arrangement of lenses, mirrors and lights to display or print negatives or slides.

That was long winded. But it's my two cents!

AgX · Jun 6, 2007

A lecture script from the head of research of Ilford Imaging on the permanence of ink jet prints.
(In German)

http://www.dgph.de/pressedownload/dgph_060928/Hofmann_output.pdf

Krockmitaine · Jun 6, 2007

AgX said:
A lecture script from the head of research of Ilford Imaging on the permanence of ink jet prints.
(In German)

http://www.dgph.de/pressedownload/dgph_060928/Hofmann_output.pdf

Would really be useful translated in English

Marc

copake_ham · Jun 6, 2007

With digital pixelography and inkjet prints, one possibility is that the future will have no past.

Sportera · Jun 7, 2007

Interesting article and lots of info on the WIR website.

The technology is changing too fast, and what worse is the lack of testing on the products being released. Pigment prints are a step forward and I have made a few myself, but I do not trust them as of yet for fine art prints.

fotch · Jun 7, 2007

copake_ham said:
With digital pixelography and inkjet prints, one possibility is that the future will have no past.

Kind of fitting, the present "Throw away society" will discard its past.

eddie gunks · Jun 7, 2007

copake_ham said:
With digital pixelography and inkjet prints, one possibility is that the future will have no past.

well said!!!!!

bdial · Jun 7, 2007

copake_ham said:
With digital pixelography and inkjet prints, one possibility is that the future will have no past.

True enough for the prints, but the bits of the image *can be* much more long-lived, assuming adequate back ups, and availability of equipment and sw to read them.
A big assumption to be sure, but not insurmountable.

But would one want to buy an ink-jet print with the goal of passing it to your heirs?

bd

dynachrome · Jun 7, 2007

I don't know how much reliance can be put on the Wilhelm research. If it turns out that a certain ink/paper combination doesn't realy last 75 years, Wilhelm will not be around to talk about it. In scientific terms I would say that his work is precise. I just don't know whether it's accurate.

I have color prints which were made by Kodak in the mid 1980s and which already show signs of fading. The first color to go is the blue in the sky. It starts to turn a near yellow. These are photos which are in albums with polypropylene pages. As far as I can tell the negatives which go with these prints are still good. My earliest b&w prints from 1971, made on fiber based paper, show no signs of aging. Even the rc prints I made on the first version of Kodabrome look good. Some have a faint yellow tinge on the edges. I have read that some people have trimmed this off. From what I can see even my oldest b&w negatives look good. If I want something to last I still shoot it on film. If I have to make digital photos I try to get them printed on RA4 paper so I have at least as much print permanence as I would if I had shot with film. My concern is that permanence with digital media is a long way off. Between now and when it is achieved a lot of the photos taken and printed digitally will not survive.

bjorke · Jun 7, 2007

copake_ham said:
With digital pixelography and inkjet prints, one possibility is that the future will have no past.

This is the internet, damnit. If Google can't find it it never existed. Stop yer whinin'

ZorkiKat · Jun 7, 2007

htmlguru4242 said:
I have a few inkjet-printed images that have been sitting, framed, at home on shelves or bookcases, in sunlight, for about 4 or 5 years. They're almost completely devoid of color by now.

The same was said of the early chromogenic colour prints. I still have old Agfacolor and Ektacolor prints from the 1960s and they've mostly discoloured. The Agfacolor prints look mostly purple (but tonal differences of the highlights and shadows are still there), unlike the Ektacolor prints which have faded 'uniformly' but also lost tonal densities.

Today's chromogenic prints are indeed very durable.

Ink technologies change too. I find it hard to see why ink manufacturers don't use more stable inks - they're free to choose from several and are unhampered by issues like the sort of hue which will form as a result when silver halides oxidise colour developing agents. Fugitive dyes are still used.

I've found that inks from as recent as 5 years ago tend to fade quicker. My inkjet prints from that time have largely lost their colour. However inkjet prints made from later times, using a different set of inks, seem to be more stable. The older inks were so fugitive that even flourescent lighting proved harsh enough to fade them.

One little experiment I did was to paste two identical prints- one on RA4 paper and the other an inkjet version- on my shop window which received an average of 4-5 hours of sunlight daily. The fading times were not the same, but both faded. The ink print faded a bit quicker, but it did not disappear altogether. Two years later, both prints are now largely cyan.

Jay

ZorkiKat · Jun 7, 2007

Not just pictures but movies too!

We've also lost a lot of movies printed on nitrate bases too. The base goes, almost spontaneously, and takes the all the information it carries with it. These were from the first half of the 20th century. These were records of life and culture and art of that time.

Now we have everything stored on digital media whose permanences remains questionable- whether though material longevity or obsolescence of the format they were written with. The time that starts from about the turn or start of the 21st century until the time an alternative to CDrom, flash devices, or hard drives is devised may turn out as a 'dark age' in the future because nothing would be left as a record of how we were at that time.

As it goes, it would seem that only that which is struck on stone will remain long enough

Jay

Robert Hall · Jun 7, 2007

bdial said:
snippy...

But would one want to buy an ink-jet print with the goal of passing it to your heirs?

bd

I have yet to sell any print with that being a thought in the customers head at the time of sale, but I would really like that to be a consideration at some point.

Most of the digital prints I sell (all marked as reproductions as I feel it dilutes the value of my silver an platinum prints) are to students who can't, at present, afford higher priced work at present. I hope to develop the market so that they may come back later and buy (what I call) the real thing.

pentaxuser · Jun 7, 2007

dynachrome said:
I have color prints which were made by Kodak in the mid 1980s and which already show signs of fading. The first color to go is the blue in the sky. It starts to turn a near yellow. These are photos which are in albums with polypropylene pages. As far as I can tell the negatives which go with these prints are still good.

Either you have been very unlucky or I have been very lucky. I have Kodak prints from the mid 70s in albums and was flipping throught them again a couple of days ago. I suspect that I wouldn't have flipped through them if they'd been computer files but that's another thread.

Anyway I cannot detect any fading and these were the equivalent of mail order "quick print" lab processed where, as I understand it the more dubious( archivally speaking) stabilising rather than washing was probably used. The colour isn't as vibrant as modern day prints but as I inspect them every few years since new, I cannot recall them being very different from the day I first got them back from the processor.

Like you, my negs look OK although different to my current Fuji colour negs. This may simply be due to the changes in colour neg film rather than deterioration in the old Kodak negs.

I haven't attempted to reprint colour from them but did do B&W prints from them and they were excellent.

pentaxuser

Sean · Jun 7, 2007

There is the argument that the digital file can be transferred to new media and transferred to new file formats forever and ever.. I still see this as a problem because it seems not even 1% will actually do this. Judging by what I've seen most people do not know they need to do it, don't know how to do it (if they do it's usually not done properly) or they have so much data they would never have time or motivation to go through a TB of images and videos to back them up, convert them, etc. My in laws just lost a hard drive that was about 5yrs old. They made some low quality inkjets on regular paper from their digital photo library but only a handful, the rest of the family album is gone. They didn't back up the data in spite of me giving several warnings, multiply that mindset by millions of people. My neighbors also lost their hard drive and entire family album, only a few prints were made. I took many digital imaging classes in college and we stored our data & notes made on old power pc's onto small magneto optical disks. I threw the disks out a few weeks ago when having a cleanup because I figured there isn't anything in NZ that would read them and if there was I couldn't be bothered paying for an extraction of the data (if it was even in tact). Anyway, my point is that saying you can retain data forever is easier said than done!

copake_ham · Jun 7, 2007

Sean said:
There is the argument that the digital file can be transferred to new media and transferred to new file formats forever and ever.. I still see this as a problem because it seems not even 1% will actually do this. Judging by what I've seen most people do not know they need to do it, don't know how to do it (if they do it's usually not done properly) or they have so much data they would never have time or motivation to go through a TB of images and videos to back them up, convert them, etc. My in laws just lost a hard drive that was about 5yrs old. They made some low quality inkjets on regular paper from their digital photo library but only a handful, the rest of the family album is gone. They didn't back up the data in spite of me giving several warnings, multiply that mindset by millions of people. My neighbors also lost their hard drive and entire family album, only a few prints were made. I took many digital imaging classes in college and we stored our data & notes made on old power pc's onto small magneto optical disks. I threw the disks out a few weeks ago when having a cleanup because I figured there isn't anything in NZ that would read them and if there was I couldn't be bothered paying for an extraction of the data (if it was even in tact). Anyway, my point is that saying you can retain data forever is easier said than done!

Yes and it multiplies faster than rabbits too! Each year such an enormous amount of new data is added to the pile that trying to back it all up - over and over again - makes the task of Sisyphus look simple!

Sirius Glass · Jun 7, 2007

copake_ham said:
Yes and it multiplies faster than rabbits too! Each year such an enormous amount of new data is added to the pile that trying to back it all up - over and over again - makes the task of Sisyphus look simple!

Not to fear! Windows based systems protect against this. The system periodically crashes and all the photo files will be lost. Thank you, Bill Gates!

Steve

roteague · Jun 7, 2007

dynachrome said:
I don't know how much reliance can be put on the Wilhelm research.

The problem I have with Wilhelm is that I haven't found that anyone has done a peer review of their methods. Perhaps, PE knows for sure.

Jadedoto · Jun 12, 2007

Stever said:
Not to fear! Windows based systems protect against this. The system periodically crashes and all the photo files will be lost. Thank you, Bill Gates!

Steve

Really now? Then I'll have to quit using that kubuntu system... Sounds like a lot less hassle!

It Isnt That Images Fade, Its That They Can Vanish

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It Isnt That Images Fade, Its That They Can Vanish