There are some out there who still believe gelatin silver bw prints are superior in tonality, longevity and tonal range but my opinion is that is ancient history.
There was some of those drawbacks years ago but I haven’t had those issues with black and white printing for at least 12 years or more and with Piezography longer than that.
I use mostly the HP Z printers for black and white, and with good profiling and good media they are the best, most controllable monochrome prints I’ve ever done, especially with these extended patch sets. With the gloss enhancer channel they are free of any bronzing and gloss differential. Most importantly it isn’t difficult or expensive. The color pigments also fade at the same rate which is unique to them. I also use the Premiere Art uv spray to protect them even more. That works on all the pigment ink brands.
The Canon gray inks I use are a little cooler requiring more color “dots” for total neutrality, but they are so minimal and not visible to the eye with my software unless you go too warm.
I’ve found Epson monochrome with rips like QTR and Studio Print can also be excellent with very neutral and great warm neutral results. Split toning capability with Lightroom for instance is infinitely more subtle than the techniques we used to do in the darkroom.
Cones Piezography in various hues inksets have never had color shift issues and their gloss enhancer coat on gloss fiber media look just like silver prints. But except for the warm carbon set, not nearly as permanent. I choose to use the carbon very warm set on matte papers that is more like palladium with better resolution and better dmax, especially with the new matte black. The permanence for that one is off the charts great.
Now for me the one thing that was interesting with silver prints is how they can look printed really dark. That’s their sweet spot where metallic silver has its own subtle beauty when clumped together. But the high values and high midtones lacked the control of inkjet digital by a big margin. I mean what we can do with a midtone contrast curve adjustment is so much more subtle than even the most difficult chemical neg and print developer formulas or masking and darkroom manipulation . Of course most of that silver metallic beauty is invisible framed behind glass and they curl in portfolios.
Gelatin silver papers today are not the same as the silver rich papers we used in the 70s and 80s. And it’s basically just Ilford left for the very large sizes.
As far as longevity, once again look at the Aardenburg data. The standard Ilfobrome is loaded with optical brighteners mixed with titanium white which is a bad combination if you want your highlights to stay highlights without yellowing over time. That’s the dirty little secret, along with the fact that silver tarnishes over time. A number of my prints from the 70s have that metallic tarnishing around the edges, and many have yellowed borders. Stored in a museum context with temperature and humidity control they probably would have fared better. If I did silver prints today I would tone them with gold chloride like Gowin and Linda Conor did and use the warm Ilford paper. Gold won’t tarnish. The Ilford warm tone Ilfobrome has very little oba content if any and I think could last a long time. I don’t know if anyone has tested.
Where you get into trouble with monochrome inkjet is adding too much color ink for very warm or very cool prints. That is when metameric failure kicks in - different under tungsten compared to daylight, but those kind of prints were never possible with gelatin silver anyway unless you used chemical toners, which were fairly crude in many ways but could be very nice for some work. The other weak link is the papers. Inkjet receptor coatings absorb contaminants like a magnet. They need to be behind glass or stored away from contaminants. This is a pretty big deal. The best inks in the world won’t help you if you hang your prints naked or store them poorly.
I think now is the golden age of monochrome and it’s only going to get a lot better, IF the big companies want it to and if the economy supports it.
Hp has removed even their light gray with that dual drop tech and the results are amazing even with only 400 patch profiling targets. That kind of woke me up to the potential. I wish I had a new Epson with their new denser black to play with in qtr. I can’t comment on the new Canon bw because I haven’t seen it. I don’t know the current software options with those Lucia Pro inks. You don’t hear too many people talking about Canon bw these days.
What about the chemically toned b&w prints you can do with these? I thought those offered higher longevity along with no bronzing or metamerism.
