[pure-silver] Re: silver in b&w films

Janet Cull wrote:

Hello,

At our Thursday night film group, a man came from the close-by camera
club which is mostly digital shooters.  He came to talk to the
newbies about elements of a good pic; composition, lighting,
exposure, etc.  When he was asked about archivalness (is that a
word??) of his prints he said that b&w prints from today's films are
not really archival. He said that eventually, in light, b&w film prints will also fade. 

He said today's b&w films don't really have silver in them.  It
seems I've heard that about the t-grain films (is that what you call
TMax?) or that maybe the silver is reduced.  Is that so across the
board with the new b&w films?

He said when "pan" was removed from the
names, at that time the silver was either removed or reduced.

Is this so?  Thanks.


Let's take this one part at a time.  First of all,
conventional B&W film - the stuff you process in B&W
developer - still forms the image from silver like it
always did.  Silver content varies between films, and
T-grain films are reputed to have less total silver
content, but the film is generally as archival as
ever (note that archival qualities for B&W film are
dominated by how the film is processed and stored).

Now, *prints* are potentially a different story.

Conventional B&W papers - the kind you develop in
B&W paper developer - still forms the image from
silver like it always did.  Again, conventional
B&W papers are just as archival as ever (again,
dominated by how the print is processed and stored).

It's also true that many labs don't make prints on
B&W paper; they make monochrome prints on color paper.
Color paper forms the image from dyes, with varying archival
quality.

The archival qualities of the paper and film are completely
independent.

As far as I know, dropping the word "Pan" from
film names had nothing to do with removal of
silver or reduced archival qualities of film.

Sounds to me like this "expert" is mistaken.

Dana
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