Chris Telesca - TelephotoNC wrote:
I think this is a big issue.
I haven't bought into digital because it's not cost-effective for me
to spend 8 grand on a camera body that can shoot the same resolution
imagery that I can shoot with a 20 year old Nikon. And to have two of
them (one for backup) makes even less sense when they will be obsolete
in 3 years.
Measuring resolution is an interesting process. I can make bigger
prints from 6MP DSLR raw files than I ever managed chemically from 35mm
film (I mean that look satisfactory to me, of course). But I can also
make bigger prints from scanned film than I ever could in the darkroom,
too. For me, grain always limited enlargement, and that's no longer the
problem for landscape and scenic pictures (sometimes noise does play the
same limiting role in available light photos).
And I have never spent much over 1/4 of $8000 on a digital camera
body. If you're going for the *top* end -- then shouldn't you be
talking about more like $50,000?
"Obsolete" is an interesting concept. Seems to me that if they're good
now, they're good in three years. Possibly something *better* will be
available, and some people will deride your gear as obsolete -- but if
the way the new gear is better doesn't matter to you, you should just
ignore them! And remember that my $2300 Fuji S2 (late 2002) came with a
"lifetime supply" of free film and processing. I think the money I
saved on film and lab fees alone paid for that camera before I sold it
off. And I've made and exhibited a lot more prints since going digital
than I did when I had a darkroom.
I have every negative I have ever shot going back to when I was 14
years old. Granted some of that stuff isn't worth printing, but I
also have negatives that are over 60 years old that I can do
everything from print to scan. Try doing that with digital imagery
that is stored on a medium that might not work in a year or more, or
when it craps out you have nothing to fall back on.
I have slides that I shot myself that have faded significantly, though
using digital technology I can recover much of the color. I have color
prints other people gave the family long ago that are faded past the
point that I can restore the colors (I can still get a poor B&W image
from them). It would last much better, of course, if I stored it in
controlled-humidity cold storage. But I'll bet you're not storing yours
that way either.
(The oldest of my own negatives I'm sure I can still lay hands on date
to 1962; I have access to considerably older photos in my mother's
collection.)
You're certainly right that a digital archive must be intelligently and
diligently managed to stay safe. If left untended for a long time, it's
likely to disappear, through media degradation or format changes (the
format changes don't really make it quite disappear, they just increase
the cost of getting it back into modern formats).
However, if diligently tended, a digital archive can be *eternal*;
something there was never any hope of for film images (other than by
scanning to digital form).
I think my digital photos are much safer, during my lifetime, than my
film photos are. I can manage an archive of this size myself, and the
timespan isn't that big a challenge to the media.
And if my house burns down, or is flooded, or carried off to Oz by a
tornado, or whatever, I won't lose my digital photos. I'll lose all my
film photos except the ones I have scans of. (I really do have off-site
backups of my digital photos; up through about a month ago currently,
but I'm likely to get that updated this weekend).
Look, if you're happier shooting film, and like the results better, more
power to you. Keep doing it that way! But try to keep your claims
about digital toned down to the actual truth. (Also your claims about
film.) There's plenty of stuff where the exact lines are fuzzy; we can
argue about those to our heart's content :-).
Have you shot with a DSLR yourself? Or seen work by good photographers
using that kind of equipment? It rather sounds like you don't have much
idea of the capabilities of current equipment.
I have pics of my grandparents and great grandparents that I can
reprint if need be, or scan if I want to. If I had to shoot these
pics on digital, I'd have to transfer over from one generation of
storage to another every couple of years - and add to it all the new
stuff I shoot.
I've been shooting a lot of digital since 2000. I have *not once* had
to transfer over storage media during those 8 years. I can buy brand-new
drives in ordinary consumer stores to read all of it that's on removable
media, if necessary.
I started having some of my film scanned in about 1993, I think. I have
*not once* had to transfer over storage media during those 15 years.
The original media are readable (as of a month ago, when I last tried),
plus they're on my file server (mirrored), two backup disk drives,
on-site optical disks, and off-site optical disks. The original media
for these are CDs; they can be read in all current computers, and I can
even write new CDs, it's by no means an obsolete medium yet.
I absolutely agree that a long-term digital archive will need to deal
with this issue; that plus the life-span of the media are the reason
that a digital archive must be diligently managed. It does not do at
all well on benign neglect, and that has consequences for historians and
archivists and future archaeologists; definitely.
But "every couple of years" is a gross exaggeration.
Properly processed and stored silver-based imagery will last longer
than CDs and DVDs.
Are you storing yours properly? Low temperature and controlled
humidity, etc.? How much does it cost to store a significant collection
that way? And by silver-based you mean B&W, right? So, short of RGB
separations, no color photography in the collection?
Even with that -- we don't know which will last longer. But I think
it's very likely that top-grade CD blanks written in a good drive will
out-last chromogenic color materials stored at room temperature. I
wouldn't be certain that they wouldn't out-last silver-gelatine
materials, but over *that* timespan changes in media standards are
nearly certain to be an issue as well. But the lifespan of one copy of
the data on a CD doesn't matter that much; a digital archive isn't
dependent for its integrity on one piece of media.
Of course, in 200 years, say, you may very well not be able to find an
enlarger, or printing paper, or even a film scanner. Presumably
somebody could build or adapt something to do that job for you, since of
course high-resolution imaging of small areas will continue to be
important for science and probably art as well; but there may well not
be any off-the-shelf way to make prints from your B&W negatives in 200
years.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
