Kodachrome Away

<p>Karim I disagree. Having worked at a photo lab for years, I saw many times people would bring in old prints in shoeboxes or slide trays which had been forgotten for decades. Such treasures were found in the backs of closets, and in the homes of recently deceased relatives. The people would ask for scans and/or copies which were easily accomplished because of their archival stability. Conversely, we also got plenty of people who would ask us to try to pull files off of corrupted cards, or discs which could no longer be read. </p>

<p>Digitizing images requires a regular maintenance throughout the years that the vast majority of people just wouldn't do--backups of backups. Most would tend to forget such things, just as they forgot about those old prints. Imagine if those people brought in a shoebox of 5 inch floppies to copy. The advice in the article may not be the best to preserve an image with the highest quality, but based on my experience, it is more likely that the image will at least survive (and has he says, in an easily retrievable form) by printing it out.</p>

<p>And I like that he used his last Kodachrome to shoot stereo slides of his granddaughter. I used my last rolls to shoot stereos of my family, too!</p>

 

<p>I agree with Hillary (and regular readers of this forum know this is one of my hot button issues). The experts at the Geroge Eastman House tell museum archivists to:</p>

<ol>

<li>digitize everything</li>

<li>backup everything</li>

<li>endow the IT department in perpetuity</li>

</ol>

<p>They went on to say that if you can't do all three, don't bother with the other two. For most of us, that means that to preserve things like family pictures for future generations, the best method is to use human readable and stable media. Quality prints in an acid free album will preserve images for grandchildren. Current Ektachrome materials will last for 220 years according to Henry Wilhelm (a bit longer than Kodachrome). </p>

<p>Most of my grandfather's Kodachrome slides sat undisturbed in the yellow boxes from Kodak from 1973 until 1992. I have B&W portraits of my great great grandparents taken in 1855. Albert Stone was a newspaper photographer in Rochester 100 years ago. His glass plate negatives sat in two different attics for decades at a time. They are with us today because glass plate negatives are one of the most stable image media possible. </p>

<p>If you want to pay $2 per disk for the good ones, you can get CD's that will last this long, but the chances of a family member searching to find a CD drive and software capable of interpreting images is very small compared to images in a human readable form.</p>

As per a conversation with Grant Steinle this morning, in consideration of the weather delays, all film received by

today, January 3rd will be put in the queue for processing. It is is not yet known the full quantity of film that has been

received in lab to date so there is a possibility that chemistry will run out, namely the magenta so film will be processed

in the order in which it was received.

<p>Okay, Hillary and Ron. I have a challenge for you: compare 220 years to 'indefinite'. Who said anything about optical discs? The internet (e.g. Google, Flickr, archive.org, PN itself etc.) will do a better job, even though it won't "preserve an image with the highest quality". The ball is in your court. :-)</p>

<p>Curious thread. Well Karim, just look up "X Class Solar Flare" and you'll see that anything electromagnetic is bound to disappear. It's not so rare either. I believe there was one so severe in 1850 or 1860 it actually set Telegraph wires on Fire! We won't even consider the EM Pulse from a Thermonuclear detonation, since that would fry anything printed on paper as well.... but there is the possibility of an Airburst or Space Burst nuke to send an EM pulse big enough to kill all computers over a vast area. The U.S. Defense dept. considers this a viable threat....</p>

<p>The duration of images on the internet is truly indefinite. Indefinite does not mean infinite. Some images may last forever and some may be gone tomorrow if the sponsoring organization goes out of business. The Kodak Gallery once promised in TV ads: "Send us your pictures and we will keep them forever." Later that was amended to "while your account is in good standing." Later that was amended to require annual fees if your purchases did not add up to a pre-determined amount. Kodak is looking to unload the gallery. Who knows what will happen then.</p>

<p>I wish I could remember the name of the image sharing site that bit the dust in the late 1990's. Many clients lost their images.</p>

<p>Google looks like it will be around forever, but so did Netscape once upon a time.</p>

<p>To preserve images for future generations on the internet, the service needs to be free (your kids will probably not continue to pay for your membership). It needs to accept high resolution images and allow downloading of the same. One site that meets these criteria is Panoramio.com which is now owned by Google. I've posted a few landscapes on Panoramio that I thought were better than the others available on Google Earth or now on Google Maps. I still post a few shots from out-of-the-way places, but popular landscape destinations are now flooded with contributions on Panoramio.</p>

<p>Here is a return challenge: Is there a way to store images on the internet that can survive unattended (no fees or email confirmations) for decades that does not require publishing the pictures to the entire world? I have a closet full of prints, negatives, and slides. The oldest have survived 5 generations so far. Can you find an image in the internet (even a public one) that has survived more than 16 years?</p>

I suspect that the preservation of today’s digital images will follow a similar trajectory to what we have seen happen with yesteryear’s photographic output. Many digital images taken by casual shooters will undoubtedly be lost, but some will manage to survive just as shoeboxes full of prints have survived in many households for decades despite careless handling. The output of the more serious amateur photographer will be treated with more care and properly backed up, just as hobbyists have always been careful in handling their prints, negatives and slides over the years. I’m not going to worry about cataclysmic solar flares or EMP blasts – frankly, if those events come to pass, we’ll all have much bigger problems to worry about than lost images.

<p>I know this is running off on a tangent here, but it is still connected to Kodachrome. <br>

Several people have said they intend to focus more on B&W photography now. As I was updating the <a href="http://www.randrews4.com/kodachrome.html">K-75 celebration site</a> I looked up several YouTube versions of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome". In the original recording, the lyrics include the line "Everything looks worse in black and white." In two different concert performances, the line was changed to "Everything looks better in black and white." There are links to the two versions at the <a href="http://www.randrews4.com/kodachrome.html">K-75 Celebration site</a>.</p>

<p>Daniel, thanks for the nice update on Dwayne's K14 processing. I'm happy to know my final roll may be processed. It arrived January 3rd at 6:31am, one week after I shipped it by USPS Priority Mail.</p>

<p>Jim, you're probably right.</p>

<p>Is there a way to store images on the internet that can survive unattended (no fees or email confirmations) for decades that does not require publishing the pictures to the entire world?</p>

<p><em>Without</em> publishing? Hm, that could be a tough one. Dropbox gives you 2GB for free - but how long will it last? What we might need is a complement to bittorents. The internet is still young, so we really don't know. Either way, there's a chance that loss of photographs is inevitable, internet or no internet. B&W is a different story, though.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Here is a return challenge: Is there a way to store images on the internet that can survive unattended (no fees or email confirmations) for decades that does not require publishing the pictures to the entire world? I have a closet full of prints, negatives, and slides. The oldest have survived 5 generations so far. Can you find an image in the internet (even a public one) that has survived more than 16 years?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, given the 16 year figure corresponds to the beginning of the explosion of the WWW, I'd have to say no. Prior to that, there were subscriber-based sites, like Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, and others, that probably had locations for image storage. But now these places are history. Compuserve and AOL now just appear to be Internet search portals and Prodigy's page times out before loading. So, I'm afraid there's not much of a way to take you up on your challenge easily.</p>

<p>There is the Wayback Machine, though, aka archive.org. Its expressed purpose is to archive the Internet for posterity and historical reasons. Great idea. I came up with the same idea back in 1995 when I first saw the net beginning to explode. I realized quickly the impermanence of it all and suggested that somebody should begin an archive. It was way beyond my means at the time, or else I would have. Glad to see archive.org has done just that. And it will probably last indefinitely.</p>

<p>There's also Project Gutenberg, whose purpose is to digitize books that are in the public domain. I first learned of it in 1995, so it's got a track record at least. It seems to me that a separate but similar project could be set up for archiving images as well. </p>

 

<p>I have a nearly 14 year old website that is still going strong, with images that have been on it since day one. The site has been archived on archive.org (via the Wayback Machine) as well.</p>

<p>Just got back from the lab, they are still buried. Looks like they will get it done sometime next week. To give you an idea of the overall backlog, they ordered 100 t-shirts, were not sure if those would even sell and got orders for 1,300! Also, everything is looking good on chemistry now..;-) </p>

<p>Thanks for the update.</p>