On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 08:37:53PM -0500, Robert J. Hansen wrote: > For long-term photographic storage, make a print from photographic film > on archival-quality print stock. Also, I'm given to understand that > black and white photographs survive the aging process much better than > color.
Silver chemistry is (or, at least, it used to be) much more resistant to decay than color dyes. You still have to be sure that the print has been archivally processed (mainly to wash out all traces of hypo, which otherwise will continue doing the job it has in the process and eat away at the silver grains). You still need to keep it away from atmospheric contaminants when not in use. You can plate the grains using a bath of gold chloride to protect them a little longer. You can use vesicular film rather than silver, if you can still find it, for even longer storage. (Huh, *silver* chemistry is getting harder to find.) Used to be that color photos which had to be preserved for a long time were stored as separation sets: three silver images were made to capture the three primary colors from the image, to be reassembled later and reconstitute the color image using the ordinary dye process. Dunno if it's still done. I'd put my trust in a well-maintained redundant set of digital scans, these days. Most photos won't really need all this fancy treatment; you enjoy 'em while they last, and keep making new ones. The problem is, often we don't understand which ones *should* have special preservation, until it's too late. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mw...@iupui.edu Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!
pgpF5FRmVobj4.pgp
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
