Mark - ... Is it possible for you to select existing media types with a proven record of longevity to test the new inks on? I also have a feeling that media types with rougher or coarser finishes are less susceptible to degradation vs extreme glossy types?
Yes, of course, but our ink and media campaign for 2017 is still only about 20% funded, so I'm probably not going to be able to get any more samples into test anytime soon even though Aardenburg Imaging & Archives does have the equipment capacity to run many more samples. More testing is definitely needed to eventually rank order the major aqueous pigmented ink sets on the market today in terms of good, better, best overall lightfastness. One thing for certain is that media choice really does add a lot of variability, so choosing media wisely has become increasingly more important as the overall stability of modern ink sets improve. It also means more specific tests of a wider range of media are sorely needed to give printmakers a more informed choice about what papers are best suited to their chosen ink set.
The heightened concern about the Canon Pro-11 ink set, as evidenced in this discussion, is that Canon for whatever reason to date has not yet commissioned and/or published any independents test results, let alone enough test results to answer a very basic question for endusers looking to replace older iPF x300 and x400 series printers with a newer model: namely, "Is the new Lucia Pro-11 ink set equal to, better, or worse in overall lightfastness compared to the earlier Lucia EX set used in Canon's older iPF x300 and x400 series of WF printers?" It's clear from the three samples I have in test now, that a larger paired comparison type of test methodology using both ink sets is going to be required to definitively answer that question. If Canon, for example, only tested Pro luster and Pro Platinum papers using both older and newer Lucia formulations, the results might indeed lean one way or the other, but it really doesn't answer the question for printmakers using many other popular fine art media choices commonly in use today.
To broaden the question further to include competitive ink sets means even more extensive testing. I do believe that Aardenburg will eventually answer these questions over time, but it's going to be a slow process, slow enough that who knows, by that time, there may be yet more new ink sets on the market
As such, I'm concentrating my efforts more on identifying the "bad media apples", i.e., those that seriously impair good performance of any high stability ink set as well as the "good media" which generally allow all ink sets to turn in their best performance.
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
