Agreed Lea, but a perfectly working disk with a perfectly working drive might still have to be transfered to another medium at some point to keep the information usable. Even now the image formats likely will change and there could easily come a time with TIFF and JPG become obsolete and would require conversion.
Most of the storage estimates we have today are just estimates. Total SWAGs or educated guesses and that is the best we can do because the medium hasn't been around that long. We know for the most part how long negatives work and we still have some that are still printable made with crude material by todays standards.
Now to the issue of duplication, yes a digital file can be duplicated perfectly, but I would think of that as the print not the negative. That negative can also be used to duplicate as many images as you want.
For the managed archive, digital does have some huge advantages, but they are not as pronounced as one might seem. The biggest one may be to have the images available at your fingertips. By the time you figure in the cost to convert the files and images a few times in its lifetime the cost of digital starts to add up. With film reasonable storage conditions and its pretty much worry free.
--- On Mon, 4/28/08, lea murphy <lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: lea murphy <lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: photo storage question
> To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Monday, April 28, 2008, 6:14 AM
> Both are fragile mediums, really, and neither one without
> compromise.
>
> The best one can do is do one's best to store well so
> as to protect
> the images contained...wether film or digital.
>
> Lea
>
> life is short. photograph it.
> www.leamurphy.com
>
> On Apr 28, 2008, at 12:34 AM, Trevor Cunningham
> <tr_cunningham@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Here in lies a reason to prefer film over digital.
> Magnetic storage
> > is far more unstable than sleeves and notebooks.
> Burned storage has
> > a suprisingly limited shelf life, so we are learning.
> You can still
> > play your cd's from the early 1980's, but the
> commerically produced
> > materials are much higher quality than anything you
> can to make
> > yourself.
> >
> >
> >
> > Indeed, digital is less expensive...but, then again,
> it's cheaper
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "somewhere between zero and one...everything
> else is exaggeration"
> > - Anonymous
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Stephen Ylvisaker <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals -
> Students <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 10:04:12 AM
> > Subject: Re: photo storage question
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >
> > > I've had four DVDs fail. Meaning the data
> didn't write or couldn't
> > be
> > > read. You couldn't pay me to use it as a back
> up medium.
> > >
> > > Lea
> > >
> > > life is short. photograph it.
> > > www.leamurphy.com
> >
> > A local photographer also backs up, today, to hard
> drives. He used
> > to backup to CD's and learned the hard way that he
> needed to always
> > buy the best quality CD's. Then it was DVD's.
> He learned also, in
> > the process, that DVD's and CD's can LOSE the
> data written to them;
> > ie. it can degrade over time. Images he burned a
> couple of years ago
> > are now irretrievable. Now, it is hard drives only,
> and he has many.
> >
> > Stephen
> >
> >
> > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with
> Yahoo! Mobile.
> > Try it now.
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