rich815 Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 New York Times article on the challenges we'll be facing in preserving digital images and the like.<P><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/technology/10archive.html?oref=login&ex=1100667600">Even Digital Memories Can Fade (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/technology/10archive.html?oref=login&ex=1100667600)</a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikonichiban Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 I'm about to make the switch to digital, and this kind of issue really concerns me. I don't have absolute confidence in digital storage, so I'm inclinded to make back-ups and back-ups of the back-ups... and then I have piles of CDs and external harddrives lying around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbizarro Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Absolutely. Don't go digital just because other people are doing it. If you are a pro, then it makes good business sense, otherwise, it makes no sense at all. Digital is cheaper and more convenient than film, and it delivers better quality images than film (I am talking 35mm here, but medium format digital is already there too). But I still feel safer with slides, stored in proper archival sheets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craig_gillette Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 And duplicate slides in archival sleeves in a separate off-site storage facility that is environmentally controlled and fire-proof? Archiving is a process that is going to take some continuing attention over the years. No matter what the initial media or form of the product. Digital offers some real advantages for some aspects of the process. If you want a file and forget process and hope that someone years from now finds them and can use them? Maybe film offers some advantages. At least this isn't the old nitrate stock that carried so much of early Hollywood into oblivion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl smith Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Digital can degrade in its own way. The media can fail either due to damage or due to obsolescence and being unreadable... however I find obsolescence to be less of a problem since transferring data over to a completely new system every few years is fine for me. Keeping several backups, one in the computer, one on an external HDD and others in DVDs etc is fairly save and provides multiple levels of protection. If you can manage all those nuisances than the fact that the files themselves won't fade, yellow, crack or in any way degrade over time; then you see one major advantage digital has over film, and at the same time its flaw. The data retention is all or nothing, it isn't very common that you only lose part of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl smith Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 My grammar was poor, and I didn't put together very clear sentences (I'm tired) but I hope the point got through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg s Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 "Please enter your Member ID:" No can do. I guess my digi shots are OK then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike_elek Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Truthfully, how many people will be diligent enough to make backups in duplicate and triplicate? And then be willing to repeat the entire process if media standards change? In truth, for most consumers, most of the shots that are being dumped onto computers are no better than the photos they took on film. Most shots will be transfered one time (and one time only) to a CD, where it will be dropped into a drawer and forgotten. And cataloging photos spread across multiple CDs is pure insanity. You really have to be a Type A to keep up with the cataloging program. Until that program is no longer supported. Then at some point, you either repeat the entire process with another program (not likely), keep using the old program until you or the program succumbs or you simply stop entering new data. And if you're taking hundreds of shots per shoot, archiving and cataloging is a full-time job. My guess is that in five years, most people will be so overloaded with stacks and stacks of CDs and DVDs that it will be impossible to locate a single image you took last month. Except for the extreme Type A's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nee_sung Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 An article in Scientific American more than 10 years ago addressed the same issue and had the same dire warnings. And yet none of the disasters it predicted came to pass. One of the things predicted by one of the interviewees was that floppies will be unreadable in 10 years (due to change in format, not deterioration). Well 10 years have come and gone and thank you I am still using my floppies. I even occasionally get to read those 5" ones. So I think there really is no need to worry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Just for an example I will think of the 5mp P&S 'family photographer' type of user. Most of the people who are taking 5mp P&S JPEGs can easily get 300 images onto a CD. They can select only those images they like and have them printed from their CD at any 1 hour Fuji Frontier lab as 7x5 prints on Crystal Archive paper that is good for 75 years or more. Why would they have 'stacks and stacks of CDs and DVDs'? Most people I know, who are casual shooters, take far less than 300 in one year and only keep the good ones on CD. Certainly not 'stacks and stacks'. Dont you guys organise your stuff? How much room would 300 negs and 300 prints (or 300 slides) take up? Far, far more room. People storing RAW DSLR images would be looking at different strategies for archival storage, especially the pro's. But digital storage is getting exponentially cheaper and better and more reliable by the year. Realistically who is going to want to look at ALL of our photos in 100 or 200 years time? Good quality photographic prints from a Frontier system, kept cool and dry, will probably still look OK. There seems to be a disproportionate amount of Archival Panic Syndrome going on here. Really ask yourself... "Who is going to want to see my stuff in 200 years time?" If the answer is.... "everyone of course", than you are either the next Henri Cartier Bresson or you have an ego the size of Jupiter! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vatovec Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 This is a non-issue to me too. Try finding those negs on which You shoot Your friends daughter 20 years ago - where shold they be? CDs are not archival - so what, buy the best You can and make copies in 5 years of those You really care of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitmstr Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 total nonsense: we can theorize that if GOD forbid our storage facility caught on fire our slides would be gone...unless we had made COPIES (which are NEVER exactly like the originals). I have been storing positives and negatives for years and it is a huge, expensive pain, both in terms of the materials and the space allocated to it. With digital I do 2 media backups, an off site backup and I keep zipped and stuffed file on my drives. IT is easier, cheaper and SAFER than analog anyday. It is NOT possible to make copies of your prints, not unless you made more than one copy of that print to begin with. Otherwise, if the paper is different, the chemicals are different, etc... they will never look exactly alike. Or, if you had to do extensive dodging, burning, etc... If you were to make backups of all your positives and negatives you would not only spend double in film and processing but, you will then have to store the copies elsewhere :) Nothing material is FOREVER! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike_elek Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 <i>CDs are not archival - so what, buy the best You can and make copies in 5 years of those You really care of.</I><p> That was my point: How many of us are going to be willing to re-copy all of the images that we have on CD every few years?<P> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_swanson Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 My old negatives and slides sat at my mother's house until my sister found them. Then she remembered that unflattering photo I took of her at the beach a few years ago and they all went in the trash. I currently have negatives and slides all over my house. Every now and again I find the cats gnawing on them. (They prefer eating prints. Real prints. Not inkjet prints. Finnicky animals.) As to my digital images. They went on CDs a couple years ago. They are on single layer DVDs now. They will probably go to double layer DVDs when that media gets cheap. Next time around they'll go on a storage media even bigger. (And the whole time I keep a couple copies on my PCs. Having had to recover my PC once or twice in the past this seems to work pretty well.) I've just started looking into album software. This looks to be the only way to find anything. I think one can also use it to back up in the important images. So you could add a tag called "save" and then archive just those images. When I shot film I liked about 1 in 5 images. Since I went digital I'm likely to have 5 versions of the 1 I like so I really only need to archive 1 in 25 photos. (I really should delete them but I'm a bit of a pack rat. I wait for a computer failure to clear out the junk I don't want.) That would make the task a little easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_chappell Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 <I>My guess is that in five years, most people will be so overloaded with stacks and stacks of CDs and DVDs that it will be impossible to locate a single image you took last month. Except for the extreme Type A's.</i><P> And this is meaningfully different from the problem one faces with stacks and stacks of slide boxes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl smith Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 <i>That was my point: How many of us are going to be willing to re-copy all of the images that we have on CD every few years?</i><br><br>That's why I do not use CDs as my main backup medium. They're a secondary/emergency backup. My main backup is an external hard drive which will last longer than the CDs if not beat on and will remain readable. It's easy to hook up and transfer data to a new computer and the transfer to a new medium and just chuck the CDs. I don't see this as a big issue because I don't rely on CDs unless all my hard drives, many of which are off more often than not, died. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panos_voudouris Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Solution 1: Print film Store prints in shoeboxes, discard film. When print fades in 30 years try to remember why you threw away the film... Solution 2: Film (negatives/slides) Store prints (if any) in shoeboxes. Archive films in sleeves, in box files and keep database of each image. After about the 100th roll of film decide that the database is not in any useful form as it only gives you a rough location and date and re-organise. Trying finding a specific image is impossible unless you make contact prints for negatives and you still have to go through all the indeces and slides. Solution 3: Scanned film/digital files stored in a single CD Store files in a CD and put in cupboard. Trying to find an image after 5 years (or hoping it still exists) is more or less the same as Solution 1. Solution 4: Digital camera or film scanned Store film in sleeves and number/date/whatever. Use iView Media Pro or something similar to catalog scanned images/digital files. Make two backups, one for use, one for storage. Every 5 years consolidate the backup media to the new higher storage one (i.e., 5 CDs into a DVD and so on). You can also convert to the latest and greatest format. You can now have instant access to all your images, find the one you want immediately and if you keep the routine described they will last forever. As you can see, if you don't take care of the images, it hardly matters if you use film or digital. The only difference is how fast you lose them. If you do want to take care of them, a database with computers is obviously a much better solution. Would you rather use solution 2 or 4? I'd much rather use solution 4. If you want to start with a digital file or digitize a piece of film it is up to you. Whatever you do, whether the film fades or not is irrelevant. Computers are only as smart as their users. On the other hand, a shoebox is not smart at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert_roaldi1 Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 If you are willing to put the effort in, you can safely store all your images no matter what the format, film, slide or digital. The beauty of negatives is that you don't need to do much except put them in a box. In 30 years, they'll still be there. Of course if someone throws them away they're gone. But you don't have to actively back them up every few years, or at least check that they still can be backed up. With digital, you cannot simply ignore them after burning them onto the media of the day, you have to do something active throughout your life. Nothing wrong with that, simply part of the deal. If you own a car, you have to maintain it, there's no escape. It may very well be that taking digital backups of everything that matters to us will be commonplace in the future. I don't really believe that most humans are that careful, but I am willing to be proved wrong. I suspect that for most people, so long as some prints survive, that's good enough. If the original source material is gone, well I am sure most everyday users can live with that. All I can say from my own personal point of view, from someone who has worked in high-tech all his life, is that having to repair PC's and recover data, pics or otherwise, is one of the biggest nuisances of my current life. It's no fun, and takes up WAY too much time. If I were making a living selling pics, it would simply be the cost of doing business. This is NOT a knock on digital, it is more a knock on the current state of the art in home computer technology. As a consumer device, the home computer leaves a lot to be desired. We do not tolerate this low level of reliability in other consumer devices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean_g Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 I've got about 30years of family photos that I or the rest took before I became "interested" in photography. I couldn't find, or even remember what I'm looking for now. There's a bunch of boxes under the staircase.. if we look through them we find the occasional "nice picture".. but most are just traces of memory, fun to see but quality perse is not an issue. The ones we really charished found their way into "albums". In any discussion like this it is easy to get mixed up in cross purposes. What is important to me now as a "serious amateur" (or seriously amateur as I like to say) is totally different from back in the day when we just wanted "a picture". Nothing is forever, but consider this: when you upload an image to the internet, what happens to it? Sometimes it propagates through someone copying it, and this may happen many times, and there is great potential for an image to take on a life of its own .. in that scenario it is conceivable for a digital image to last nearly "forever". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjaraujo Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Robert, Since 1987 that i am working in computers. Started as a programmer, then as an analyst, currently mostly as a project manager, altought i still perform some of my previous tasks. I do not agree at all with you, when it comes to PC's reliability. I find it to be quite reliable these days, regardless of the OS used ( Windows,Mac, Linux, etc...) But it is a fact that some cautions must be taken, and backing up your data is critical, kind of a golden rule in this area, wheter is a home device or an ultra-sophisticated NASA mainframe. If one wants to get into digital, and do not intent to backup data, then it's best to stick with film. How much is the cost these days of an external hard drive, say with 40 or 60 GB, wich you can easily connect to your PC using an USB cable ? A lot of the members of this site, wich i believe to be professionals, have prime quality digital gear, so don't go cheap when it comes to buy security to the product of your work. Second rule wich can help a lot with your PC's integrity: Do not open every e-mail you receive, even if they promise a Digital Back for 500 USD, or a Canon EOS20D for 150 USD. I know this is basic, but it's amazing the amount of informed people that still open every mail they get, not to mention opening attached files. This was my 2 cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniel_smith6 Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 "An article in Scientific American more than 10 years ago addressed the same issue and had the same dire warnings. And yet none of the disasters it predicted came to pass." Tell that to the numerous newspapers that have "archived" their files on CD's & discoverd what the purchased wasn't what they thought they were getting & couldn't open them 6 months later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad_ Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 <I> Tell that to the numerous newspapers that have "archived" their files on CD's & discoverd what the purchased wasn't what they thought they were getting & couldn't open them 6 months later.</I><P> Numerous? How many and who? www.citysnaps.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilkka Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 The benefit of digital is that you can make exact duplicates of all the images you want, and as many copies as you want, and it only costs time and a little money in terms of storage. This is not possible with film. The only way is to scan all the images and then your are back in the same digital workflow. The disadvantage of digital is that if you are not careful, your image is gone. With film it goes gradually and you have a long time to still salvage the image. It might need some retouching, the colours may be a bit off, but the image is still there. When a digital file does not open it does not open, it is gone, and just about nothing can be done to bring it back. So one has to be systematic and archive properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 <i> Tell that to the numerous newspapers that have "archived" their files on CD's & discoverd what the purchased wasn't what they thought they were getting & couldn't open them 6 months later.</i><p> Citation? <p> Otherwise... Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew robertson Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 MAM gold discs are guaranteed for 100 years, and used by the medical community. Most other media aren't nearly as durable. They are selling their new silver-based DVD+/-R discs now too. I can fit approximately 1000 RAW pictures on a DVD (give or take), put it in a Ziploc with a dessicant pack, and then drop it off at the safety deposit box. I'd spend a lot more renting the box if I had to cram negatives or slides in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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