See first document at this link:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controll...0&modelid=14005

--John

Keep in mind these numbers are for prints framed under glass. They dont mention if it was uv glass or not, I assume not. About on par with Epson then.

Exactly. On par/slightly better than Epson results on several papers. Nowhere near the HP results, which are often > 230 years in the Wilhelm ratings.

--John

Then of course you can dig though the fine print and find out that this represents a 30% fade level - I'm not sure what politics were involved with the original testing that set this standard but even Wilhelm would prefer %5 fade as a standard. Near as I can tell the fades are mostly linear so on a 100 year ink if you stopped at about 5% fade you'd be at about 18 years. Oh joy.

That plus reciprocity failure in the testing (which Joseph Holmes told me is guessed to be around a factor of 2.5 worse than "Wilhelm years") means that the bigger the numbers, the better. While you may not need 230 years, if this works out in reality to 50 years with very little fading you may need that.

--John

The 30% endpoint only applies to Canon's in-house testing. The Wilhelm results on the second page are using the standard WIR 3.0 endpoints, same as Epson and HP.

The Wilhelm results also either meet or exceed Canon's own estimates. It's not as if they've wildly fudged the numbers to claim 400 years' permanence they'll never attain.

My only real complaint with the test data is that the selection of media tested is pretty slim. Here's hoping for more in the near future.

Comparing Wilhelms Epson to Canon numbers, one has to be careful to compare similar classes of papers to the extent possible.

For some fine art / matte papers, Wilhelm gives much more than 100 years for the Epson K3 inks framed under normal glass. (for example, Ultra Smooth Fine Art on 3800 > 200 years).

Keep in mind Canon seems to be supplying only the color ratings right now (whether that means B&W and color are the same or not remains to be seen). While UltraSmooth Fine Art is indeed rated at >205 years for black-and-white prints, it's "only" rated at 108 for color. The color K3 print still edges out the comparable color Lucia print by a few years, mind you, just not to the same extent as the 200 figure.

Curiously, Canon provides a separate B&W rating for the fine art paper in their own testing, but only provides a single rating in the Wilhelm tests. I'm not sure what to make of that. I really wish we had an official Wilhelm report as the HPs and Epsons do; It would make an apples-to-apples comparison much easier.