Digital archiving - An article of interest?

Go <a

href=http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/07/30/software_archaeology

/index.html>here</a> to view the article if the topic of digital

archiving is of interest to you.

.. - that digital archiving is suspect because in a (not so) distant future no one will be able to read image formats the images are kept in now - pops up periodically and annoyingly. Distributed and discussed by people who do not understand and so are afraid of computers, it belongs to that well-known group of scares:<br>

- Internet is a place where murky child molesters seek their victims in on-line chats.<br>

- SARS will kill everyone unless... (ignoring the fact that the death rate is approximately the same as for ordinary flu) <br>

- killer bees, poisoned food, extraterrestrials, Nostradamus profesies - the heap is big and you can pick stuff according to your tastes and preferences.

<br>

Good luck

Actually, Mike Johnston mentioned in "Black & White Photography" magazine last month the instance of a friend who owns a now discontinued digital SLR whose images are now lost in whatever the format it used to record them. I don't remember the specifics but I do know most news agencies reuse their flash cards and don't archive anything except what is considered important at the time. Unless you have a crystal ball, it's not likely you'll know what will be considered important 50 years from now.

 

Of course it's fair to also mention that negatives and prints require a lot of storage space for agencies and are subject to occasional "housecleanings". The paper where I once worked donated all their negatives from 1947 through 1975 to a local university library to be archived. The library promptly lost them although they say they just misplaced them in their uncatalogued archives.

What Michael fails to realize is that not everyone doing digital photography is a computer whiz, nor wants to be. If you thing 'mom and pop', digitally downloading their kids birthday snaps (or maybe important family history photos) from their $250.00 digi P.S. onto their $300.00 WalMart computer are at all aware that they may have to update and archive...well I'm afraid you're living in digi la-la land. A very real concern for the future.

Free market dynamics haven't ceased to exist, so there will continue to exist software tools that handle JPG for as long as there is financial gain to be had, i.e. for as long as it seems important to a large enough number of people. Let's not confuse the most popular image format on the planet with an obscure vendor-proprietary RAW format from a super-high-end (price-wise) professional camera from years past.

 

As far as Mom and Dad saving the baby pictures, it seems clear to me that the answer here is that image archiving becomes a low-cost service (e.g. you keep all your pictures in your AOL account). It's the job of the service provider to ensure that their survival isn't dependent on a CD not going bad, and ultimately their responsibility to migrate those images into new formats as the old ones become obsolete. People will want this service anyway as a mechanism for sharing their pictures with friends and family.

I have photographs of many relatives, mostly deceased. In every instance, all I have is a print. Negatives disappear, especially for the casual family shooter. Talking about archiving in these cases is just plain ridiculous. Family shooters have always let their originals go.

 

Otherwise, formats are standardized and the software to read the formats is standard. JPEG and TIFF aren't going to become unreadable for a very long time. And if someone wants to back up digital files, it's not that difficult. For the people who think about it (not the casual family shooter), it's pretty easy.

 

My negatives could disappear in one earthquake or one tree falling on my home in a rainstorm. My digital files are in three locations on different types of media. The digital files are far safer than the negatives.

I don't know about that Jeff. I think it's (if I'm not mistaken) the 1955 US census, the first one completely tallied by computer...they still have all the 'software', but there isn't a single computer on the planet that can read it. In my own experience (one of my clients is one of the largest universities in Canada) they too have files on media from the late 60's to mid 80's that are absolutely useless. At a symposium I attended last year, hosted by the PMA (Photo Marketing Association Worldwide...who, if you read there newletters or attend the PMA trade show in Vegas heavily promotes digital as the 'future of imaging'), when pressed on the matter of archival storage concluded that for the utmost archival stability of a digital file...that file be burnt to film with a film recorder.

And please don't rail on about those of us who are ANTIDIGITAL!! Digital has many strong points...it will eventually take over much of what we do in photography. But it doesn't (to some peoples absolute dismay) do everything perfectly. And LONGTERM, easy storage of images is, at this point in time best handled with film.

Standardization of file types didn't really start until the 80s. Since then, the accepted standards have held up well (JPEG is close to 15 years old.) It's different when there is widespread <i>consumer</i> acceptance of technologies, vs the census example. When technologies hit the consumer level, things stick or they don't. And the ones that do stick, stick around forever. DAT died because it was only accepted in the professional world (and it is still used a bit there) but CD formats have stayed the same since they were introduced over 25 years ago.

 

<p>

 

That "files from the 50s" thing is just a red herring.<p>

 

I scan all my film now because the scans are safer than the film. As I said above, one hit and the film is gone. It will take a lot to get rid of the digital copies I keep in multiple locations.<p>

 

And finally, once again, I will point out that negatives are generally not saved anyway, prints are. And a lot of color prints from the drugstore generation are never going to be around in the future.

So Jeff...what's your answer to the SmartMedia card (less than 10 years old, after the mid 80's). 5 or 6 years ago this, along with Compact Flash (CF) card were considered THE standard for media (along with the much vaunted Syquest drive). SmartMedia has been discontinued, CF cards will eventually be replaced...and just try and get your broken Syquest Drive fixed. I on the other hand am happily printing family negs from the '20's.

"DAT died because it was only accepted in the professional world (and it is still used a bit there)..."

 

The way I remember it, the music industry were scared shit over DAT. They enforced a copy protection scheme to prevent people from recording CDs digitally to DAT. That I believe prevented DAT from reaching the mass market and was what eventually killed it. Pity really, because DAT was not that big threat to the music industry anyway, as it is a sequential medium, not a random access medium like the CD.

I recently wrote a will and included instructions that my photographic output goes to my daughter, but I have no illusions that she will wade through tens of thousands of frames and actually do anything with them. And I don't think she'd do anything with tens of thousands of digital image files. She'll hopefully enjoy some albums filled with prints, she'll hang some of the framed prints on her walls, and that'll be that.

 

I guess this is what I'm saying: it doesn't really matter whether my originals last for hundreds of years. My negs are safe unless (God forbid) my house burns down, and I'm not worried about it beyond my lifetime. Whether it's film or digital, I think it'll be fine for me.

<i>She'll hopefully enjoy some albums filled with prints, she'll hang some of the framed prints on her walls, and that'll be that. </i><p>

 

Well that's the point, isn't it? There are almost no negatives from the zillions made (except for Bob Todrick's family and some famous photographers) and people have prints. The stability of prints is what matters since almost no-one (except Bob Todrick and some famous photographers) left negatives.<p>

 

I was at the drug store this morning with the last of my son's disposables (he has a digital camera now) and saw someone throw away the negatives and keep the prints. <p>

 

By the way, I bought a new CF reader last week and it had all these other slots in it. Turns out one of them is for SmartMedia cards. I imagine anyone with at least half a brain dumps the output of the cards somewhere rather than keeps just the cards.

Yep, that's the point. As long as I have my enlarger and they keep making printing paper for another 35 yrs, I'm covered, and I'm not worried about my originals lasting beyond that. And if I start shooting digital, I only need files that can be accessed about that far into the future.

Your right Jeff, of course...that is if you choose not to worry about the pro, gov't, schools and institutions all over the world who do need to archive their originals and are too understaffed as it is to upgrade their digital files every year or two. But then many of your previous posts show you don't see much beyond your own little world. I work with these people...on a daily basis (and have for over 20 years), and if you think it isn't a concern to many of them then maybe you had better get a cleaning cloth for those rose colored glasses you seem to wear. (gee, I can be sarcastic too!!)

Is anybody who is not computer savy using anything but jpeg or tiff format? Probably not. How long have those 2 formats been around? In computer terms, they are ancient. They are also NOT obsolete. This combination is rare.

 

And if we get to the point where one of those formats becomes scarce, I am sure the latest software that will come with the latest digital p&s will have some script that will do some mass file conversion.

 

I am a gen-x'er and have no trouble with file formats. Gen-Y will make me look like my grandmother tech-wise. File format will not be an issue and should NOT be a ligitimate arguement against digital archiving.

 

Anyone who forsees problems with file formats in the future, I will offer my services to convert files to the new format - $25 per file. :)

 

chad

Chad, the issue goes beyond backing up files. It is conceded that CD's and DVD's have a limited lifespan (generally thought of as 5 years). Hard drives crash, and 'mom and pop' (and actually most people) do not have their files backed up on more than one computer. We (where I work) sell a hell of a lot of CF cards, mainly to newspaper shooter, but some wedding and commerical, and I can honestly tell you that we get corrupted (to the point of no return) CF cards at the rate of 2 or 3 a week. We sure as hell don't get that many rolls of film that 'just lost my images'. Again refering to PMA stats, if you are shooting strictly digital, over the course of time you can expect to loose 5-8% of your images to....gremlins. Would you stand for being told that on every roll of 36 2 frames will just 'not be there'. I doubt it. Again, a bunch of you will reply that you have never lost an image, but for every one of you there will be someone who has a failed 1 gig card thats down with a whole days shooting. I'm only quoting PMA stats (they are industry veiwed as being reliable). As the saying goes...'thems the facts ma'm'.

I find it odd that many photographers refuse to print on RC photo paper because it's not considered archival, not only by photographers but by museums, governments and institutions. It's been around longer than the digital file formats mentioned (JPEG and TIFF). RC paper is older than any of the storage medias for digital images. It's not considered archival but unproven digital formats are considered worthy of archiving? It appears too much trust is being put into a technology that is highly dynamic and for the most part unproven. Reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut book in which the artist painted his masterpieces with a type of paint that deteriorated in a few years and fell off the canvas.

While some people here are claiming that it's the technophobes that are scared of data loss, I've been working with computers for twenty odd years and in that time I've seen several generations of file format and storage medium come and go.

 

I was working a little while ago at a very large multi-national (which I shall leave nameless to protect the guilty) which discovered that all its backups from the early eighties were unreadable. Well, that's harsh. Actually, they couldn't find any working tape drives to read the cassettes. They ended up having to pay an outrageous price to have a drive rebuilt from scratch. Then they copied the contents of the tapes onto a current 'industry standard'. As the chap in charge of the project said to me, "We're just hoping we've all moved on before they want to read it again."

Remember, most color prints made prior to the eighties have a life span of about 10-15 years and many have already faded to an unacceptable degree. Very few people have very many photos in B&W on fiber paper.

 

The cellulose acetate base used for most negatives is also not as stable as the emulsion, and decays into cellulose and vinegar. Check out the articles listed on www.wilhelm-research.com for more information. I know, the Wilhelm longevity ratings are overly optimistic, but the book is still informative.

 

If you want to preserve your images, you need to plan like a museum conservator, and the first step is to list your assets. Data that is offloaded to offline backup media is very easy to forget about, hence the problems listed with the Census and so on. If you carelessly dump your negatives in a hot and damp attic, they will also deteriorate quickly.

 

That said, most families are probably better off having prints, as this is more robust in the face of technological cluelessness. Sociologically the mother usually takes on the role of keeper of the archives, and you will often see women ordering hundreds of prints from digital originals at Wal-Mart kiosks or the like.

" I think it's (if I'm not mistaken) the 1955 US census, the first one completely tallied

by computer...they still have all the 'software', but there isn't a single computer on the

planet that can read it."

 

Not quite -- the files are all on microfilm, but tape drives don't exist to read some

stored data on tape:

 

http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/census.html

 

This is a different issue from the claim that data formats (as opposed to storage

devices) will make images unreadable. Also note that 1950s-era tape drives were rare

commercial commodities, as compared to the ubiquitous nature of CDs today.

"I've been working with computers for twenty odd years and in that time I've seen

several generations of file format and storage medium come and go."

 

But Harvey, in that time we've seen the CD-ROM as a storage device -- the first

consumer CD player came out in 1983 -- reach primacy and ubiquity, and the TIFF

format -- invented in 1987 -- gain ground year after year to now be the

acknowledged first choice as lossless interchangeable graphics format.

 

All this in a completely different world in which these types of devices and storage

formats are used as affordable commodities by the mass market, not as expensive

niche products for business and government. Yes, you saw several generations of

products dies in 20 years, but these formats have stood the test of time, and are

highly unlikely to be unreadable decades from now. Even when they become

marginalized, the universality of the formats today almost guarantees that there will

be ways to read the files in the future. No one ever suggested the same for 5-meg

Bernoulli drives, or 8-inch floppies (both of which I once owned).