> I don't know Wilhelm personally. I do know of his reputation, and he has > been doing testing for quite sometime. I do take exception to some of > his work. In his testing he claims that Cibachrome prints have a life of > 29 years. I have Cibachrome prints hanging on my walls that are over 30 > years old and have shown absolutely no fading. I take some of them out > of the frames now and again to see if there is a difference between the > view able print and the edge under the frame. No difference. > > The other thing that concerns me is that his testing seems to be only on > the big name papers and inks. The small independent paper mills and ink > producers don't seem to get the same fair treatment. > > Rochester Institute of Technology does independent testing, and I would > have no problem with trusting their results. They have been around a lot > longer than Wilhelm. > > Jim Davis > www.visual-artists.com With all respect jim, Cibachrome prints received the 29 year longevity rating at 450LUX 12 hours per day. It is quite unlikely that the ciba in your home would have been exposed to even 30% of that intensity. So you probably have another 60 years to enjoy it! : ) I think that it is important to realize that Wilhelm's tests are based upon an enormous amount of illumination over 12 hours a day. Kodak recommends no more than 100LUX. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC does not allow more than 50LUX in its galleries. Most homes sit at 35 - 250LUX, and they do not receive that illumination for 12 hours! Anyone can have materials tested by Wilhelm for a fee. I think that nothing is perfect. And if we could have it our way, the tests would have been performed in a mixture of daylight, tungsten and incandescent - but - he has performed a huge amount of testing on a large amount of materials and the correlations are relevant. Very. Would the tests have been different if exposed to other than cool white florescent? Probably. But no one else thought to do as much testing as he has over the last two decades. -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- Jon Cone http://www.inkjetmall.com http://www.cone-editions.com/workshops -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- - Please: Stay on topic. Trim quoted messages. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.