On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Tom Rittenhouse wrote:
> I can show you 150 year old photographs. Can you show me 150 year old
> prints from that Epson? I have read that those inks are not as archival
> as Epson said they were. Many are already fading.
While I agree that a good chemical print will probably outlast a good
digital print (at this point in time, anyway), the opposite is true of the
"original." First of all, I assume that you're talking about ideal
storage conditions and the best quality of printing, since the majority of
minilab prints are *not* going to last 150 years. If we're talking about
ideals, you'll be hard pressed to find negatives that are printable after
150 years. If not 150 years, then 200, 300, etc. Because a negative is a
relatively fragile physical object it has a limited life span. A digital
file, however, can be transferred from one storage media to another *and
copied* with no loss in quality. Because digital files are not limited to
the one potential storage medium (like a negative), they can in theory
last for centuries, as long as they are transferred to whatever medium is
current at the time.
Now, you can say that most people are not going to transfer their images
to new media or make duplicate copies to safeguard the original, and
you're probably right. However, most people don't have their negatives
stored in a temperature-controlled vault, either. My point is simply that
if a digital print fades, you can make another one. Ditto with chemical
prints, which will shift colours over the years. The only difference is
that digital prints will fade faster than chemcial prints, but a digital
file can last a lot longer than a negative can. And I think it's pretty
much a given that the quality of digital prints will improve immensely in
the next 50 years, maybe as dye-sub becomes more affordable.
My personal preference? Have both. While I can see that digital files
can outlast negatives, I don't really like having all my eggs in one
basket. That's why for now, until digital print quality improves, I like
having chemical prints. Who knows how it'll be in the future?
chris
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