Are you ready for 2062?

<p><strong>Are you ready for 2062? The Jurassic Twins are ready!</strong><br>

In 2062, your current Photoshop files will be unusable even if you could recover them from a 50 year old computer or SD card. They’ll be like dinosaur eggs.<br>

In contrast, your 35mm film from the Jurassic Twins ---F4 and F5—will be beastly and ready to print.<br>

That’s my prediction. Dude, I have 50 year old 35mm negatives that I printed this morning. That’s why real photographers under 30 years of age should run out and buy the Jurassic Twins. Then go to Freestyle and buy 100 rolls of Arista Premium—aka Tri-X. $2.25 per roll. You’ll be set for 2062.</p>

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<p><em>"Dude, I have 50 year old 35mm negatives that I printed this morning."</em></p>

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<p>If you are going to be a forum troll, at least try to be original. Yawn. :-)</p>

<p>What <strong>guarantees</strong> do you have that in 2062 you will be able to do either of the following:</p>

<ol>

<li>Have compatible hardware available to digitally scan and print your 35mm negatives, or ...</li>

<li>Have the chemicals and other raw materials available to optically wet print your 35mm negatives.</li>

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<p>I love film too, and in particular using the F4, but these kind of arguments (a.k.a. "predictions") are pointless and tiresome. There are no absolute certainties in life other than death ... for <strong>all</strong> things. And on that note I will bow out and let the fun begin.</p>

<p>Michael has it in one.<br>

If we are not living in caves by 2062 ACE, and Photo.net and the archivers don't fail, then perhaps the only thing that will be usable is the stuff on the once and future internet equivalent of the time. </p>

<p>Otherwise this is pretty much <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk">steampunk</a>.</p>

<p>As I just said on another of these "predict the future" threads, I think I'll go out and get in my flying car and go to the restaurant for a pill for lunch.</p>

<p>The one infallible prediction for the future is that we have no idea of what will happen.</p>

 

<p>i was born in 1935, so in 2062, I wiull either be NOT or too old to care.,.<br>

A few years ago I saw a photo of lincoln's funeral, and we all know about ? Brady's photos of the us civil war.<br>

I am sure those in the UK have seen photos of Queen Victoria and other photos of that era.<br>

we saw photos in color of Russia taken 100 years ago.</p>

<p>I agree a cd will fade as the dye wants to revert to it's original "pre recorded" form.</p>

<p>A big step backwards was the dis contimnuing of Kodachrome.<br>

we have no proof that the now discontimued Ektachome or the current C-41 negatives will really las a long time.</p>

<p>we even see facts and deatils of recent history being lost.<br>

there is a tendency for last week to be a long time ago.<br>

it is a matter of profit, not the actual worth of something.<br>

in a histical view</p>

<p>In 2062 I won't exist. The F4 and F5 will have rotted away electronically. The batteries may no longer be produced. And film may or may not be available. If anyone still exists who knows how to service a camera they will be "experts" working in museums. Chemistry will always be available so processing can always be "mix the basic elements yourself".</p>

<p>Aside from that, and in current times, I am already culling out the cameras that can or cannot survive in a post apocalyptic world. Basically, am keeping the simpler cameras like the Yashica A which has an exposed shutter that is easy to access and no slow speeds to gum up. Lots of "good" box cameras and cameras with better lenses that are easy to disassemble with exposed shutters (like the Kodak Signet 35). That is not to say there are not a few AF wonder cameras in my ensemble but they are "use them until you lose them" category.</p>

<p>In 2062 my 100 year life inkjet prints might be around. Born in 1948, I won't know or care.</p>

<p>In 2062 your F4 and F5 will be dead from bad capacitors and tin whiskers.</p>

<p> Of course film will still be available in 2062. </p>

<p>Yikes! You guys are no fun!</p>

<p>I'll be 110 years old, and probably won't give a rat's bum. I'll be dirt-napping...</p>

Well in 2061 Halley's Comet returns. Fun for anyone still around.

<p>Forgot to add, love the F4s. Waiting to find one at my price. But, you made me curious to wonder why you didn't include the F6?</p>

<p>In 1976, I attended a university with an IBM 370 mainframe. One computer for the entire campus. Two years later, they added one (one!) IBM inkjet printer. One for the entire campus - 18,000 students! [strictly reserved for a master's or doctoral thesis.] Word processing was Waterloo Script. You would submit a batch job to format your text. The 3270 full screen editor was the latest and greatest. Twenty years ago, I puchased a 33 mhz 486 PC with 8 <em>megabytes</em> of ram and a 120 <em>megabyte</em><strong> </strong>hard drive and the OS/2 operating system. In fifty years time, computer processing will have advanced to the point where a computer will be able to read any and all of your image files. The computer will simply attempt to decode the file using all possible image formats. And that will happen in the wink of an eye. Also, you won't have to physically connect the card - it will be scanned like your toll tag is read today.</p>

<p>P.S. Walter- You do realize that nearly all of Brady's glass plate negatives are lost? After the war they were used a greenhouse glass. Perfect for filtering light! But twenty years later they had faded to nothing.</p>

<p>I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that current Photoshop files will <em>never</em> be unreadable unless we abandon imaging on computers for some reason.</p>

<p>You're all wrong! We need to get those brushes and easels back into commission and buy up canvas before Kodacanvas goes into liquidation (need a damn big fridge, though). Everything else will be fried.</p>

<p>I'm not sure any digital format will ever be unreadable, as long as you can get it off the storage media its on. As long as you know the format, anyone can write a program to read and convert it.</p>

<p>I still have both kinds of 5,25 floppies and mfm controllers and cables.,<br>

But as said I am 76 mow and do not expect to see 2062, let alone 2035..<br>

however I just set up my old 2004 pc with windows 98 se.<br>

remebered how to make a video card work<br>

keep puttimng different cards in until one is recognized.</p>

<p>but even my son will be very old in 2062.<br>

does he know how?</p>

<p>I would also be over 100 by 2062 but I have tried to keep mechanical cameras in each mount as well as electronic ones. I enjoy using Minolta X-700 cameras and they can still be repaired even though they were introduced in 1981. I also have SRT cameras, which should be repairable after X-700s have stopped working. It is more likely that a slide or negative can be copied or scanned in some way in 2062 than a CD or hard drive can still be readable then. I have a Canon A-1, which I seldon use. I have many mechanical Canon manual focus cameras which should be repairable and usable a lot longer. My Konica FT-1 cameras are very nice to use but they will never outlive an Autoreflex T2. Whether there will still be people who know how to work on the old cameras in 2062 is another question. What about the F4 and F5? I don't have either of them. I have a number of F2s and a very good supply of mechanical Nikkormats. I expect these to remain usable longer than any of the electronic models. </p>

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<p>Waterloo Script</p>

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<p>Dang, that brings back memories. Not necessarily pleasant ones, but memories all the same.</p>

<p>Although there may not be film when 2062 gets here, I'll bet most of the old manual cameras will still work. The digitals will all be dead by then. And I would be 111. </p>

<p>One of the interesting things about digital technolgy seems to be the paradoxical split between the theoretical and the practical. On the practical end, files are lost quickly, standards change and media change, and equipment breaks, and we lose our images. But in theory, it should be eternal. If an image were important enough, you could print its digital sequence in a book along with the key to the code, and a million years from now someone could design a machine to turn it into a picture, or a scribe with a fine pen could generate the dots on a piece of vellum. In practice, most of the images made will just disappear as computers are discarded and digital media deteriorate, while the stuff taken on film will lie on the bottom of some closet for generations, awaiting a new discovery.</p>

<p>My guess is that the most important images that are known to be important will always be preserved somehow. After all, to combat the problem of changing media one need only re-record the images onto the latest media every once in a while. And at worst, anything that survives in print can be rescanned. What's going to be lost, and is being lost already, is the serendipitous history we get with snapshots. We look at old pictures taken without much skill or artistry a few decades ago and often overlook their subject, finding in them clues to lost pieces of culture never really considered by their creator - obsolete cars, landmarks changed, cities lost to war. For that kind of history, old negatives in a shoebox still rule. </p>

<p>I'll be 108 and still wondering what camera I should keep.</p>

<p>I will be dead before that year but I would say that you can print either a negative or a digital file of a today's file format and storage medium. It would be difficult to do either but it will be possible. For the negative one thing I am quite sure that in 2062 one can only print the negative via the technique scan then digitally print. I don't think it's possible to make optical print then. </p>

<p>Don't know about '62, but there's a strange pleasure in making old things work... the camera, I think, is a unique invention in the long line of "heftable" inventions starting from the stone-age axe heads, that sums up and incorporates all the longings for a personal instrument in us, and that immediately speaks to something innate in humans. Mechanical cameras, with their precision and fine movements, likewise speak to us in a way the black-box digital wonders do not. I had better go buy a couple of FM2's and FM3's to while away the golden years of retirement...</p>