ISO Standards update

The ISO Technical committee TC 42, responsible for standards
relating to photography, recently had their plenary meeting here in
Rochester and it included meetings of TC42's working group 5
responsible for physical properties and permanence.

The last update that I did on the state of the standards on this
list was long enough ago, that I don't remember when it was done so
it seemed to be about time for it.

Historically, these standards were initiated by the American
national standards body, the American Standards Association (ASA)
for several reasons. In the beginning, the first standard was aimed
at specifying a property-based definition for safety film and the
Federal government was very interested in this topic especially with
the infamous Cleveland Clinic x-ray fire of 1929 so there were a
number of federal bodies involved in the standards.  ASA standard
Z38-3-1, The ASA Definition of Safety Photographic Film came out of
ASA committee Z38 dealing with standards in the Field of Photography
and Subcommittee 3 on Supports for Sensitive Coatings. The standard
forward noted that "in the past ASA has served as the secretariat
for Photography" for International Standards Association (ISA) 42
and that ASA would turn this standard over to ISA as a proposed
international standard.  ISA was the earlier incarnation of ISO.

At this time Eastman Kodak was the largest manufacturer of
photographic products in the world and had so little competition
that they spent fairly lavishly in areas that weren't directly
related to their bottom line including standards development. They
created a number of tests in-house that were turned over to ASA and
ISA including dry scratch, mushiness (or wet abrasion), the motion
picture film lubrication test, curl, dimensional change, wedge
brittleness, and the now discontinued melting point test. So in the
early days, the American national standards body led the world in
photographic permanence standards.

Eventually, the field of photography got to be very large, covering
everything from image measurement to standards for photographic
chemicals and ASA formed the PH committees (PH for photography)
starting with committee PH1. Let me quote from the Forward of ASA
PH1-25-1956.

It was in 1938 that standardization work in the field of still
photography was first initiated under the procedures of the American
Standards Association. The committee which was organized to carry on
this work was designated as the ASA Sectional Committee on
Standardization in the Field of Photography, Z38. This committee
continued in operation for over ten years under the sponsorship of
the Optical Society of America and was responsible for the
development of well over 100 American Standards in the photographic
field.

In 1950, it became apparent that it was not feasible for one
committee to handle such a large assignment, and on November 30,
1950, ASA Committee Z38 was disbanded and four new committees were
organized to replace it. On June 25, 1953, a fifth committee was
also organized.

The ASA Sectional Committee on Photographic Films, Plates, and
Papers, PH1, which developed this standard, is one of the five
photographic committees. It is sponsored by the Photographic
Standards Board and has the following  scope:

"Standards for the physical and chemical characteristics and the
packaging of photographic films, plates, and papers."

The  standard was actually drafted by a subcommittee of PH1 that
dealt with "Characteristics of Films, Plates, and Papers (Other than
Dimensions), PH1-3. This was the group that I joined in the
mid-1980s, although ASA had become ANSI, American National Standards
Institute by then.

Technically, being an ANSI group, only American members were allowed
to vote, but the chair of PH1-3 was a rather progressive thinker and
he felt that if these standards were going to be turned over to ISO
to become international standards, the process would be much
smoother if the major (photographic) members of other national
standards bodies were invited to participate right from the first
draft stage so we had members from Britain, Germany, Japan, and
Canada included in the process.

So PH1-3 created the stability standards out of a very international
group and passed them up the line to committee PH1 for approval
before they became ANSI standards. ANSI then passed it on to ISO to
be reworded and often updated to be published as ISO standard which
ANSI then adopted as the next version of the ANSI versions thereby
keeping the two standards organizations in agreement as closely as
possible.  As you can easily see, the process rather inefficient and
clumsy, but it worked.

However, ANSI met twice a year while ISO only met once every three
years so ANSI got things done much faster than ISO.  However, given
all or almost all of the representatives who would eventually vote
on the ISO standard were involved in drafting the document that
would handed over to ISO, the ISO approval was usually pretty easy
get.

By the late 1980s, photography was changing to "imaging" so the PH
committees and subcommittees were disbanded and became ANSI IT
committees, IT being short for imaging technology. Subcommittee
PH1-3 became committee IT9 now responsible for the permanence and
physical properties of imaging materials. Standards work for IT9 was
so great that we broke into 5 sub-committees: IT9-1 dealt with
"wet-processed silver"; IT9-2 dealt with photographic paper,
specifically black-and-white RC and fiber base papers; IT9-3 dealt
with color materials; IT9-4 (a later addition) dealt with medical
imaging materials; IT9-5 dealt with magnetic and optical imaging and
was a bit unusual because it was a Joint Technical Commission
between ANSI IT9 and the Audio Engineering Society.

ANSI IT9 produced over 20 standards before ANSI proposed
discontinuing the IT standards in favor of using the ISO versions so
the IT committees voted to turn the work over to their ISO
counterparts, although the IT committees would still need to exist
to determine the American position on drafts of ISO standards. This
proposal made great sense since every ANSI document, other than the
adoption of the ISO version took the two standards out of agreement,
the proposal was more cost effective for everyone (except ISO) and
it would further streamline the standardization process.

Fortunately, the chair of IT9 was also chair of the ISO counterpart,
Technical Committee 42/Working group 5 so we just continued to meet
with more or less the same people twice a year, but under the ISO
name rather than the ANSI name.  In order to avoid confusing the
users of the standards, TC42 WG5 petitioned ISO to set aside a group
of standard numbers exclusively for WG5 use. The usual practice at
ISO is normally to assign numbers sequentially as new standards are
produced so ISO 3993 deals with liquefied petroleum gas,  ISO 3994
deals with thermoplastic hoses for use with aqueous materials, and
ISO 3995 deals with metallic powers (whatever that means), and  ISO
3996 deals with brake hose assembly. So you can see that related
standards don't normally exist as a group.

For WG5, the change was convenient because old ANSI IT9.XX standards
became ISO 189XX standards making it very easy for people familiar
with the old ANSI standards to find the more current ISO version.
ANSI IT9.13 became ISO 18913 and so on.

So much for history. Standards produced by this group come in three
types: specifications, test methods, and recommended practices.
Rarely are cultural institutions interested in specifications,
although the residual hypo limits for microfilm were published in
the specification standard for films having permanent value. (ISO
18901). Test methods are also rarely of interest to cultural
institutions since they usually can't run the tests anyway. So my
updates tend to focus on recommended practices and those deal with
storage and handling. The development process is also useful to be
aware of.  Normally when a working group wants to initiate a new
standard, they apply to ISO for approval of a new work item and ISO
sends a ballot out to the member countries for ballot (with an NP
(New Project)number). Once approved, the clock starts and the
working group has an option of a few different tracks, each with its
own deadline to get the standard out. If a project doesn't result in
a standard by the deadline, the project is automatically terminated
and the committee must start again to request approval for a new
work item. This procedure works with most of the working groups, but
WG5 standards tend to be very complex and are often quite
contentious as well so we may take a decade or more to get a
standard out. As a result, we work at the task group level (not an
officially recognized body by ISO, but tacitly approved of for its
productivity) where working drafts are produced of the standard and
balloting is limited to the task group members.  So we try to get a
substantial part of the work done before petitioning for a new work
item and in this way, we can meet the deadlines and ISO doesn't care
about what work is done on a standard before it officially becomes a
new project. Working drafts are designated WDx or WDxx depending on
how many drafts are written. Some standards have required 20 or 30
working drafts before the next stage.

Once the task group is close to approving a final working draft,
they apply for the standard as a new work item. The final working
draft may only be balloted within the task group, it may be sent to
ISO as a committee draft (CD) to be balloted by country by member
countries of TC 42, or it may be  concurrently balloted both as a WD
and a CD. Once the CD has been approved, then it goes to a DIS
ballot (Draft International Standard) and again, balloting is by
country. At this point, all of the technical issues should have been
dealt with and comments tend to be editorial. If there are enough
editorial comments or one or more technical comments (with no
disapprovals) then it goes to an FDIS (Final Draft International
Standard) and this ballot should be just a formality. It's very poor
form for a country to raise technical objections at this point. If
the DIS was passed with few editorial and no technical comments,
then it may be passed on directly for publication without needing an
FDIS.  The balloting periods are usually 3 to 6 months which will
give you an estimate of how long a standard might take to work its
way through the system. At each balloting stage, there's a formal
process to ensure that all comments, particularly, technical
comments, are addressed to the satisfaction of the
person/company/country that raised the issue. Editorial comments
need to also be addressed and while they aren't considered to be
quite as critical as technical problems, they're still important
since a change in punctuation or wording can completely change the
meaning of a sentence.

Just for completeness I'll list all of the standards, but generally
only comment on standards likely to be of interest. For faster
access, standards of potential interest to the majority of list
members are highlighted with **.

  **ISO18901: 2010 Imaging materials - Processed
    silver-gelatin-type black-and-white films - Specifications for
    stability

        Primarily this standard is a manufacturing specification
        that gives minimum requirements for things like tensile
        strength. Of greater possible interest to this list is the
        image stability test - an incubation test for the heat and
        humidity stability of the silver image and the background
        base/emulsion In addition, this standard contains limits for
        residual silver and hypo after processing.

  **ISO 18902:2007 Imaging materials--Processed imaging materials
    - Albums, framing and storage materials

        This standard is currently being revised to make it more
        user friendly. It has gone through a WD2 and will now be
        submitted as a new work item with a recommendation to also
        ballot the third draft as a CD. ISO 18903:2002  Imaging
        materials - Films and paper - Determination of dimensional
        changes

    ISO 18904: 2000 Imaging materials - Processed films - Method for
    determining lubrication

    ISO 18905: 2002 Imaging materials - Ammonia-processed diazo
    photographic film - Specifications for stability.

    ISO 18906:2000 Imaging materials - Photographic films -
    Specifications for safety film

    ISO 18907:2000 Imaging materials - Photographic films and papers
    - Wedge test for brittleness

    ISO 18908:2000 Imaging materials - Photographic film -
    Determination of folding endurance

    ISO 18909:2006 Photography - Processed photographic color films
    and paper prints - Methods for measuring image stability

        While this test method is probably not of great interest, it
        does bear some explanation.  Back when digital printing was
        in its infancy, it was assumed that standard that we had for
        testing of color photographs could simply be expanded to
        include digitally printed materials.  As it turned out that
        wasn't going to work so in the interest of expediency, a
        slightly modified 18909 was approved, but limited to color
        photographs while time was taken to figure out how to create
        test methods for digitally printed materials. Another oddity
        is that back in old photographic days, black-and-white and
        color photographs were very distinctly different creatures
        with black-and-white being created from silver image
        particles and color mostly created from chromogenic dyes.
        Ilford eventually blurred that line by introducing
        black-and-white chromogenic film that would have to be
        tested by 18909. Since there isn't such a clean cut line
        between monochrome digital prints and color the newer test
        methods need to include both, even though they're being
        produced by the "colour" task group.

    ISO 19010: 2000 Imaging materials - Photographic film and paper
    - Determination of curl

  **ISO 18911: 2000 Imaging materials - Processed safety
    photographic films - Storage practices

        This standard was just updated and published in September.
        This is the standard that gives temperature and RH
        recommendations for storage as well as advice regarding
        storage rooms (light, air quality), shelving and enclosures
        specifically for film.

    ISO 18912: 2002 Imaging materials - Processed vesicular
    photograph film - Specifications for stability

  **ISO 18913:2003 Imaging materials - Permanence - Vocabulary

        This standard is being updated and has been submitted as a
        DIS to ISO for ballot. One little snag that it has run into
        is whether or not it's a vocabulary or a glossary under the
        official ISO terminology, although in theory, this should
        only really affect the title.

    ISO 18914:2002 Imaging materials - Photographic film and papers
    - Method for determining the resistance of photographic
    emulsions to wet abrasion

    ISO 18915:2000 Imaging materials - Methods for the evaluation of
    the effectiveness of chemical conversion of silver images
    against oxidation

    ISO 18916 Imaging materials - Processed imaging materials -
    Photographic activity test for enclosure materials

        It may be worth noting that this test method is required for
        ISO 18902 It's the only test method produced by TC42/WG5
        that includes the pass/fail criteria (normally written in a
        specification document and not in the test method.)

    ISO 18917:1999 Photography - Determination of residual
    thiosulfate and other related chemicals in processed
    photographic materials - Methods using iodine-amylose, methylene
    blue and silver sulfide

  **ISO 18918: 2000 Imaging materials - Processed photographic
    plates - Storage practices.

        This is the storage standard for photographic plates
        including albumen on glass, ambrotypes or wet collodion
        positives on glass, color screen plates, lantern slides and
        tintypes.

    ISO 18919:1999 Imaging materials - Thermally processed silver
    microfilm - Specifications for stability

  **ISO 18920:2000 Imaging materials - Processed photographic
    reflection prints - Storage practices

        This was updated at least in part to bring it in line with
        ISO 18911 regarding temperature and RH recommendations. The
        DIS was approved in April last year and it doesn't require
        an FDIS so it has been submitted for publication. In theory,
        the new edition should be available in the fall.

    ISO18921:2002 Imaging materials - Compact discs (CD-ROM) -
    Method for estimating the life expectancy based on the effects
    of temperature and relative humidity

    ISO 18922 Imaging materials - Processed photograph films -
    Methods for determining scratch resistance

  **ISO 18923:2000 Imaging materials - Polyester-base magnetic
    tape - Storage practices

    ISO 18924:2000 Imaging materials - Test method for
    Arrhenius-type predictions

  **ISO 18925:2008 Imaging materials - Optical disc media -
    Storage practices

    ISO 18926:2006 Imaging materials - Information stored on
    magneto-optical (MO) discs - Method for estimating the life
    expectancy based on the effects of temperature and relative
    humidity

    ISO 18927:2008 Imaging materials - Recordable compact disc
    systems - Methods for estimating the life expectancy based on
    the effects of temperature and relative humidity

  **ISO 18928:2002 Imaging materials - Unprocessed photographic
    films and papers - storage practices

        For institutions that haven't switched to digital or that
        are still microfilming, there is no current activity on this
        standard.

  **ISO 18929:2003 Imaging materials - wet-processed
    silver-gelatin type black-and-white photographic reflection
    prints - specifications for storage

        This standard only applies to prints that are intended for
        storage and will not be displayed. The reason for this
        unusual restriction is the RC base problem. The anecdotal
        evidence that silver-gelatin prints on RC base that are
        displayed in a confined environment, such as a frame, suffer
        from attack by internally generated peroxides is
        overwhelming. Over more than 20 years, starting with
        subcommittee PH1-3, the group has failed to be able to
        create a consistent test method that could reproduce what
        has been found in real life. Having been involved with this,
        I can say that it was very frustrating. The problem is so
        common that creating a test method should be easy. Seal a
        well processed print in a frame under glass using well
        defined materials and including an air space such that the
        interior atmosphere includes oxygen and water (as humidity).
        Expose the glass side to well characterized radiation that
        is similar to daylight or fluorescent light with plenty of
        blue, violet, and ultraviolet light". Each component and
        test target came from a single lab such that all
        participating test labs had, as closely as possible, the
        exact same materials. The test packages were assembled by
        the same person in the same lab to eliminate assembly and
        the interior atmospheres as variables. Even so, six labs
        using the same group of test products would get different
        results. Even the relative stability order of the products
        differed from lab to lab. This is why 18929 only applies to
        prints intended for storage.

    ISO TR18930:2001 Imaging materials - Protocols for outdoor
    weathering experiments

        TR indicates that this document is an informative technical
        report and not really a standard,

    ISO 18932:2009 Imaging materials - Adhesive mounting systems -
    specifications

  **ISO 18933:2006 Imaging materials -Magnetic tape - Care and
    handling practices for extended use

        This is a companion document to 18923, the magnetic tape
        storage standard.

        TC42 accepted a minor word change with regard to the effect
        of the back coat on friction. This word change required a
        ballot as a new work item and a few editorial changes were
        included. Given these minor changes, institutions already
        using the 2006 document may not feel a need to purchase the
        next update.

  **ISO 18934:2006 Imaging materials - Multiple media archives -
    Storage environments

        This standard is not intended to replace the recommendations
        made in the appropriate standard for specific materials such
        as ISO 18911. Where possible the storage recommendations
        made in the storage standards for specific materials should
        be followed. However it was recognized that many
        institutions have no choice but to store a variety of mixed
        media in common spaces and this standard assists collections
        in making the best environmental compromises for these
        materials.

    The DIS ballot for the revision of this standard was returned
    with only one editorial comment so the revision has been
    submitted to ISO for publication.

    ISO 18935: 2005 Imaging materials - Colour images on paper
    prints - Determination of indoor water resistance of printed
    colour images

    ISO 18936 Imaging materials - Processed colour photographs -
    Methods for measuring thermal stability

        This is a new test method so there is no current published
        version and no year following the standard number. The DIS
        ballot was approved and this document has been submitted
        directly for publication.

    ISO 18937 Imaging materials - Photographic reflection prints -
    Methods for measuring indoor light stability

        This has been a very difficult standard and working draft
        (WD) 25 was just reviewed.

    **ISO 18938:2008 Imaging materials - Optical discs - Care and
    handling for extended storage

        This is a companion document to ISO 18925, the optical disc
        storage standard.

    ISO 18939 Imaging materials--Digital hard copy for medical
    imaging--Methods for measuring permanence

        This is a new document that was submitted for publication,
        but got caught in red tape.

    ISO 18940 Specification for indoor stability of reflection
    prints

        This is so new that WD1 and an official title don't exist
        yet. This is not a storage document, but may be of interest
        since it deals with how manufacturers test and report
        stability claims on their products. This general scope is
        enough to predict that this document is highly controversial
        and various individuals and sub-task groups have been
        working on earlier incarnations of this document for about
        ten years.

    ISO 18941 Imaging materials - Colour reflection prints - Test
    method ozone gas fading stability

    ISO 18942 Project dropped. No new document assigned

        **ISO 18943 Storage, care and handling of magnetic hard disc
        drives

    This is new and there is no current published standard.
    Officially there is no action on this document right now, but a
    CD ballot is being prepared by task group 5.

    ISO 18944 Imaging materials - Reflection colour photographic
    prints - Test print construction and measurement

        This is a new document.

    ISO 18945 Project dropped. No new document assigned.

    ISO 18946 Imaging materials - Reflection colour photographic
    prints -Method for testing humidity fastness

        This is a new document.

    ISO 18947 Determination of abrasion, scuff and smudge resistance
    of printed colour images

        Too early in the process for a more  official title yet.

    ISO 18948 Requirements for long-term permanence of photo books

        Too early in the process for an official title yet.

Douglas Nishimura
Image Permanence Institute
Rochester Institute of Technology


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 25:6
                 Distributed: Wednesday, July 13, 2011
                        Message Id: cdl-25-6-003
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