I recently commissioned Digital Silver Imaging (www.digitalsilverimaging.com) to print six "traditional silver gelatin" prints, albeit exposed on a Durst Theta 51 digital printer rather than an optical enlarger, but otherwise processed conventionally. The six copies (all made using the Aardenburg monochrome digital test target) include three prints apiece on:
Ilford Galerie Digital Silver RC
http://ilfordphoto.com/products/prod...Papers+Digital
Ilford Galerie Digital Silver Fiber
http://ilfordphoto.com/products/prod...Papers+Digital
For each media type, one print is untoned, one toned with Sepia toner, one toned with Selenium toner 1:20.
They arrived last week. I hope to put them into test in January, 2011. I'm trying to benchmark a number of "traditional" processes along with modern inkjet using the Aardenburg light fade testing protocol because I think it will help to put into perspective how modern inkjet media fares against processes that dominated 20th century photography. The widely held assumption is that traditional B&W silver gelatin prints have no light sensitivity and thus should be pretty "bulletproof" in my testing. However, the RC type paper does contain OBAs, but embedded in gelatin rather than microporous inkjet layers, so it's anybody's guess how it will do in testing. A good enough reason to actually run some tests.
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
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