Lightjets have been traditionally popular with a lot of the big name art photographers who make gigantic prints.
1. reason one, for very large work you can send a file size over there at as low as 100 ppi or less with good results. A file for the Epson as highest resolution produces quite a large file. But as many of us have seen you can do amazing things with software like Q-Image.
2. they are far cheaper to produce in large sizes, especially for large volumes
3. they mount and face mount very easily to acrylic
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The cons are what everyone here is saying and to me FAR outweigh the advantages for art that is meant to last:
1. Type C gamut - to me it looks like mud compared to any of the best pigment inkjet printers used today
2. Tonal Range - My HP Vivera inks blow away the density on gloss media of a Lamda or Lightjet which look gray in comparison. There are no BLACK dyes or pigments in type C prints, only composite color dyes
3. Toxic - this chemical world is outdated and should be abolished from the face of the earth. Why would anyone want to go back there.
4. The big one for me is permanence. There is so much bull spouted by people who believe in labeling something "archival" (what ever the hell that means), makes is so. Fuji Crystal Archive, though light years ahead of the garbage that Kodak used to market, is neither crystal or permanent in the long term in daylight.
In dark storage it holds up quite well, even in some museum light, but let daylight hit it for any length of time, like in a well lit room or a public space, and it is toast. Wilhelm's 40 year figures are way too generous at 240 "average" lux.
Look at the Aardenburg FCArchive figures, and he has many samples that have been tested and reached total end points a long time ago. They are so bad that even the worst performing pigments on the worst performing papers are way ahead of the type c .
You gotta join this site
www.aardenburgimaging.com and print out this chart and give to your pal. I'll try to upload it here. It's not like Mark hasn't talked about this publicly many time before. The figures at 120 mega lux endpoint are - Conservation rating failed at 30 megalux for the best patches (15 WR years) and 18 meglaux (9 WR years) for the worst patches . If you look at the patches moving toward the end of the test you will see Fuji Crystal Archive dyes actually reversing hue, not fading but actually becoming different hues altogether. In the end the BEST hues are showing an average shift of -10.3 while the worst patches are showing an average of minus 276! And in that regard at 15 Wilhelm Years the 450 lux intensity level the Dmax is not just extremely low and faded but it is also reversing color to a minus 253! The neutral areas are the same and many colors in the spectrum have become completely different hues! Is that Archival by any definition? Yea I know, Aardenburg formulas are strict but this is unacceptable for any gallery or museum work in my humble opinion. It is only archival in that it beat the even worse results of Kodak. This is 1980s photolab technology at best.
Finally many if not most of the big name art photographers have moved from C prints to pigment inkjet prints for all the reasons people have stated. One example of this is Richard Misrach who has always produces huge C prints and in the last decade giant Lightjet prints from scans of 8x10 film. He now has an Epson 11880 in his studio, for all reasons we've stated. And he can certainly do anything he wants for the best results. He's just one of many traditional color photographers that finally woke up.
One again if permanence is not an issue and they will only be displayed in dark museum lighting type c can work for you, but never say it is superior to a well done pigment inkjet print from any of the big three companies. That IS silly.
john