Velvia archive longevity before fading?

[DREW WILEY]

Just re-read the previous post from wiltw. He's citing just one among a number of excellent sources of basic information. You should also peruse the websites of outfits that cater archival supplies to photographers, like Archival Methods. This is no more complicated than understanding you need a correct air pressure in your times and need to change engine oil from time to time. Just take it a step at a time and you'll do fine. Then for the question about the risk of freezing: air contains humidity, moisture. If this is not properly removed when you seal up your film, it will first condense, then freeze, on your film. Not a good thing.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Just re-read the previous post from wiltw. He's citing just one among a number of excellent sources of basic information. You should also peruse the websites of outfits that cater archival supplies to photographers, like Archival Methods. This is no more complicated than understanding you need a correct air pressure in your times and need to change engine oil from time to time. Just take it a step at a time and you'll do fine. Then for the question about the risk of freezing: air contains humidity, moisture. If this is not properly removed when you seal up your film, it will first condense, then freeze, on your film. Not a good thing.

At freezing temperatures, regardless of relative humidity, the actual moisture content is very low. And then, chemical reactions just diminish to near zero anyway. Why frozen foods retain their fresh characteristics.

Me, I no longer worry about any of this. See my previous observations.

 

[trendland]

At freezing temperatures, regardless of relative humidity, the actual moisture content is very low. And then, chemical reactions just diminish to near zero anyway. Why frozen foods retain their fresh characteristics.

Me, I no longer worry about any of this. See my previous observations.

Paul let me state : There might be no need to freeze (developed) E6 Films = slides!
From my point there are archival recommandations with high tech climate control!
But listen : The general statement from professional archive personal is the following :
Color Films AND Prints are Not archivable!!!
That sounds not so fine to all of us! The difference is to bw films and prints
= more than 200years!
So the point of that professional people with color archiving is the lost of colors
(All colors) in a period < 100 years!

(70 - 90 years from my point)! But if you can't feel fine with color shifting you have to devide this period of massive lost very simple with 2 - 3! = 20 - 30 years!
So we are generally save from (visible shifts) for a guaranteed period of 10 years with Velvia
films (same is with Ektachrome)!
Listen - this 10 years period is in regards of "bad" storage!!!! The rest is dependable from
individual storage conditions and your personal feeling with smal shiftings!
If you (or I am) would feel fine with colors of E6 we both (perhaps) can easily imagine that
PE for example would not be amused about same conditioned colors!
So it is dependable from different "views"!
Let us count in these 10 years of absolute safety (PE would also feel confortable) caused from
NO SHIFTS AT ALL - then you can multiplicate this time with normal and best storage condition
for sure with factor 2 and factor 3 !
That would answer OP's question a bit (because there is no general rule at all)
Kodak gave E6 films > 160 years (with projection intervall) and 200years stored in total darkness!
But this is not our workflow and illusion!
Beside NASA can prove it! (with 100.000,- USD climatic control per years)
From my point you are save for 25years with E6 and I can live with very small shifts after 35years!!!
And let me state : I am such a louser from storage E6 slides!
So I can not remember color shifts with slides from the 80s!

with regards

PS : Don't freeze slides, don't let slides sleep in vacoom = don't sent slides to ISS!

 

[trendland]

I think the biggest factor in colour transparency or colour negative longevity is the way in which the original lab processed , and washed the films.

If the process line was not tightly controlled , it does not matter what film you use, the chances are there is going to be problems with original lab, laziness or cleanliness.
Unfortunately this takes about 30 years before the problems start showing themselves.

No I don't think so Bob!
The "biggest factor" for sure is projection! There is a great difference to mount slides and have a first look via projection - after this you would projet this slides a couple of times within next
Years! Or if you project the slides a couple of times within next weeks!
(Over same period of years)!
I remember an Agfa slides permanent projection for advertising! After 2 month the condition
was "verry ugly" (after 3 month the chief of our company called Agfa for New slides) at last he decided to show the slides not a day longer because of Anti Advertising !

Yes folks that was with Agfa CT18 (no Kodachromes)

with regards

PS : BTW Kodachromes don't love projection!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Sure a bunch of armchair experts around here. Rather, a dose of BS. Color films and prints are archivable. Ask an actual museum archivist. Entire books and professional websites exist on the subject. But not all color films and prints are created equal in terms of permanence, and that fact is itself conditional on storage and display conditions. There has been a vast amount of research on this subject, and it is ongoing. If you want to know about projection, there's an entire career set for that too, especially in the movie industry, understandably. Color dyes for high intensity momentary projection were typically engineered differently from low-intensity long-term wall display. You can go to the works of Wilhelm or Aardenberg to learn some of the basics, though such basics or factors do NOT necessarily allow one to accurately predict the lifetime of a color medium simply from "accelerated aging" tests. It's a lot more complicated than that. I learned that long ago working with industrial pigments. They're way more stable than dyes; yet most of them fade upon UV exposure. If you want pigments that don't, look at the surface of Mars - all reddish or yellowish oxides! - not much of a selection. Michelangelo used ground lapis lazuli blue pigment on the Sistine chapel, and other ground-up semi-precious stones. I can think of only two art stores in the world today where you can buy a high purity hue of that kind of thing, and it would be more expensive per ounce than gold. Modern pthalo blue is fairly stable too, but not as pure in color. Incidentally, I have some old Agfa slides that I took nearly sixty years ago that have gotten quite a bit of projection and are still in fine shape. But as to Paul's comment - bingo! I sure hope he doesn't open a restaurant. Or let him back up his own comment and try freezing his own slides without moisture control. Where do people come up with nonsense statements like that? None of this is a new topic. And none of it should be made devoid of common sense. Do you want to scrape frost off your slides like someone would do with yecchy stale meat?

 

[trendland]

Sure a bunch of armchair experts around here. Rather, a dose of BS. Color films and prints are archivable. Ask an actual museum archivist. Entire books and professional websites exist on the subject. But not all color films and prints are created equal in terms of permanence, and that fact is itself conditional on storage and display conditions. There has been a vast amount of research on this subject, and it is ongoing. If you want to know about projection, there's an entire career set for that too, especially in the movie industry, understandably. Color dyes for high intensity momentary projection were typically engineered differently from low-intensity long-term wall display. You can go to the works of Wilhelm or Aardenberg to learn some of the basics, though such basics or factors do NOT necessarily allow one to accurately predict the lifetime of a color medium simply from "accelerated aging" tests. It's a lot more complicated than that. I learned that long ago working with industrial pigments. They're way more stable than dyes; yet most of them fade upon UV exposure. If you want pigments that don't, look at the surface of Mars - all reddish or yellowish oxides! - not much of a selection. Michelangelo used ground lapis lazuli blue pigment on the Sistine chapel, and other ground-up semi-precious stones. I can think of only two art stores in the world today where you can buy a high purity hue of that kind of thing, and it would be more expensive per ounce than gold. Modern pthalo blue is fairly stable too, but not as pure in color. Incidentally, I have some old Agfa slides that I took nearly sixty years ago that have gotten quite a bit of projection and are still in fine shape. But as to Paul's comment - bingo! I sure hope he doesn't open a restaurant. Or let him back up his own comment and try freezing his own slides without moisture control. Where do people come up with nonsense statements like that? None of this is a new topic. And none of it should be made devoid of common sense. Do you want to scrape frost off your slides like someone would do with yecchy stale meat?

Well Drew Wiley let me state : of course c41 and E6 is archivable! But for experts color film is not
because of different scales! If it goes to prevent important stuff in historic context!
There 300, 400 years is a min. (Luther bible 15...42?) For films it is bw film!
Color film dies not hold true collors min. 150 years (it is bw film at the end of lifetime)
with regards

But feel fine from statements concerning digital media ! From experts view color film
is in comparison with infinite stability then!

 

[DREW WILEY]

All kinds of attics are full of old black and white prints and negatives that are already faded. For one thing, many of them were poorly fixed to begin with. For another, many have been subjected to deleterious conditions like acidic wood or cardboard, chemical fumes, and excess heat or humidity, and mildew. What amazes me is how well some of our old family albumen and cyanotype prints survived under the same hot conditions, and actually prefer a slightly acidic backing; but they due horrible in high humidity due to attracting mold. What I found fascinating is the wonderful color effects that would happen with poorly fixed silver gelatin prints, with differential yellowing and fading in just certain areas. Ever since I was a child I wanted to replicate that beautiful look, but permanently or archivally of course, and now routinely do it through split toning.
Comparing modern color digital prints to traditional chemical color prints on this thread would be unrealistically involved. All I can state is they're seldom what they seem to be. Either they're laser-printed on exactly the same selection of RA4 papers that I'm going to use in the darkroom under an enlarger this afternoon, or else they are, far more frequently, inkjet prints deceptively marketed as "pigment prints". Well, if you understand the subject and read the patents, those inks are complex blends of not only finely-ground pigments (chosen for their ability to pass through very fine nozzles rather than optimal permanence), but also of many relatively ordinary photographic dyes, and also "lakes" (dyed inert pigment particles). And since any given print might differ in composition, according to its own specific coloration, it's impossible to make generalizations about the permanence of such media as a class. Furthermore, I've worked enough with accelerated aging tests myself to know that, while they are distinctly helpful, it can be very misleading to extrapolate the results into real world conditions, predicting so many decades or centuries and so forth. Digital media don't even have a significant real-world track record yet. Then you have all kinds of complications concerning the integrity of the substrate, with all those potential variables. So in all of this, regardless, we need to differentiate reasonable evidence from the ubiquitous presence of marketing BS. I happen to work with a variety of color media; and for example, I can pull out Cibachrome prints made back when the process first became available, and they look like they were made yesterday. But this presumes intelligent storage or display. If you put these same prints under intense UV light like some galleries use, they wouldn't last a year. And I've seen "indelible" old true pigment prints - tricolor carbon or carbro - where the pigments might still be fine, but the layers of coating were slowly blistering off the substrate due to unanticipated bonding issues; so there goes another myth. I'm fading and flaking too. But I also do a lot of black and white printing. So, when I've passed away, some bum will be scrounging in a dumpster around here and run into a stack of prints on museum board with a bottle of ketchup dripping all over the stack, and discover a crust more tasty than the leftover scraps the local pizza parlor threw in there. Nothing is permanent.

 

[trendland]

A simple rule should make it clear : The more modern the media - the less archival stability it has!
From rosetta stone ----> 256gb micro sd! That mentioned would pretty explain the issues of
stability with Michelangelo colors -----> and ink jet colors from Canon!
And it would tell a bit about your concern with albumin colors!

with regards

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, the art patron of Michelangelo, good ole Pope Leo, looted much of Europe and then even put himself deeply into debt to pay for those kinds of pigments and related decorations. I don't have that kind of budget! In a museum show of some of Louis XIV's furniture I noticed how a particular end table of his had varnish almost a quarter inch thick that has never cracked.
No modern varnish hold up that well. Then I learned that it was made of hundreds of wiped on and polished layers of select ground amber dispersed in poppyseed oil. Modern "French polishing" uses shellac flakes in alcohol worth about ten bucks a quart. But I calculated that the amber investment on just that one small table would amount to around a hundred thousand dollars in today's currency. But just being obscenely rich doesn't necessarily mean you get something more permanent. I look at these conspicuous consumption types who will go out and acquire some enormous Gursky print or whatever, that is
simply too darn big to ideally display, and will thus inevitably be subject to either sunlight or artificial lighting high in UV, and
probably won't last as long as the sofa or drapes in the vicinity. But if they're able to waste a million bucks on a fugitive print just to pretend they've made a shrewd investment, why should I feel sorry for them? Same types that spend fifty thousand on a pair of shoes or dress that gets worn only once to a party.