On 8/27/06, Bob <w8imo@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
PhotoRoy6@xxxxxxx wrote: > Film is better. You store them in a box (or in chronically ordered > albums of slides like me) and scan only the good ones. Why clutter up > your hard drives with digital stuff you might or might not want to > look at in future years. > Properly stored film can outlast digitally stored images unless you are constantly maintaining the digital media. I don't clutter up my hard drive but write them out to CDs or DVDs. But then every so often, not sure how often I will transfer them to what ever media is current......
Yes, properly stored film will outlast improperly stored digital media. Color me shocked, shocked! On the other hand, even properly stored film degrades noticeably within a human lifetime. Or by "properly stored" for film did you mean controlled humidity controlled temperature storage below 0C? In which case I have to ask which of you maintain your film archive in those conditions? I've had to do color restoration work on slides I shot myself, and even more drastic work on color prints from within my lifetime (family snapshots). These were stored in the dark in the house (not attic or garage), but not otherwise controlled temp or humidity.
As someone said a long time ago, " I am having trouble finding someone to help me get images off of a 5.25" floppy disk..... By the way, last night I printed a sixty year old negative....."
When they got rid of their 5.25" drives, they should have copied the data over. Even so, that data is recoverable easily enough (unless the diskette itself is too degraded), it just costs some money for them now because of the screw-up when they left 5.25" behind. The issues of digital archiving are in many ways quite different from archiving film or paper or other "conventional media", and you can make more wide-ranging mistakes more easily. On the other hand, it works *so* much better when it does work.
Speaking of CDs and DVDs, has anyone had any experience with the new GOLD CDs/DVDs that are being advirtised as archival quality?
I'm still working through the spindles of Kodak Gold Ultima CD-Rs I got when they discontinued them; and my earliest digital scans were Kodak Photo CDs on that medium. I've also got a spindle of the MAM gold archival DVDs I'm using. While the DVDs are relatively new, the CDs have been around for many years. I think MAM makes a gold archival CD now, but haven't used any of those. What can my single person's experience over a few years usefully tell you about them? "I haven't had any trouble so far". You should feel reassured now :-). Being conservative, I try to write the two offline copies of photo stuff on different batches of CDs or DVDs. Plus I keep it all on the hard drive (and back up the hard drive to an external hard drive). So I have 4 copies of most of the photo stuff, one of them offsite. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
