DIN 15549:2016-04

This document has been prepared at DIN Standards Committee Entertainment Technology, Photography and Cinematography (NVBF) by the responsible Working Committee NA 149-00-01 AA "Fotografische Medien" ("Photographic Media"). ISO 18902:2013 has been partially adopted into this document. There is a good reason why, after many years of adopting international standards into the German body of standards, a formally independent German standard is now being published on the composition of storage materials for traditional photographs. Whereas adoption of the latest ISO 18902 as a DIN proved to be quite successful in earlier years, this is unfortunately no longer the case with ISO 18902:2013 in the opinion of the responsible national Working Committee NA 149-00-01 AA. In ISO 18902:2013 extensive changes and, above all, abridgements have been carried out, which have not always contributed to improving the standard. On the contrary, the requirements for numerous materials and products with or in which photographic material can be stored have been omitted without replacement, although they are - at least in Central Europe - still in use and in some cases available for purchase. The quite appropriate distinction between use and archive items (see informative Annex A) has also been dropped, although it has contributed not least of all to cost savings in photo archiving. Thus, ISO 18902:2013 ignores the reality of the photographic heritage already present in archives and libraries. Therefore, the decision was mad to prepare a German standard based primarily on the previous DIN ISO 18902:2010, which is primarily able to do justice to the large stock of traditional photographs in the photo archives and, in any case, also to the new additions. In terms of content, therefore, this is not a completely new standard, but rather a partial adoption of earlier standards. Should later editions of ISO 18902 again be more closely oriented to the reality in photo archives, for which unfortunately no indications can be seen at present, consideration would have to be given to replacing the present standard and adopting the ISO standard again. This document specifies requirements for materials used for storage materials and containers for photographic media and, in some cases, requirements for their construction. In a significant addition ISO 18916 specifies the test method for evaluating photographic reactivity for the materials covered by this standard. The specifications according to DIN ISO 11798 apply for the aging resistance of typefaces, prints and copies on paper. This standard is expressly not to be applied to documents that have been added to photographs as context and stored together with them, such as records, captions or ephemera. The specifications of DIN EN ISO 9706 apply to the permanence and durability of paper. This standard also does not cover storage material for photographs that are to be regarded as works of art (fine art photographs).