On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Mike Johnston wrote:
> Chris,
> True, and that's why I find it so fortunate that early digital prints had no
> longevity at all--because print longevity has now become a consumer issue,
> and, once a "feature" of an imaging technology becomes a consumer issue, it
> tends to stay that way until there's some kind of paradigm shift in the
> technology.* So I think it's likely that digital printing technologies are
> going to become reasonably permanent (at least, that's been the trend for a
> few years now). Since it's the prints that have the best chance of surviving
> anyway, this is a useful feature.
Agreed. For some reason, most people seem to lose interest in the
originals (both image files and negatives) once they have prints. In
fact, many seem to think of the prints as the 'original' image. Fair
enough... as you pointed out, it does seem to be foregrounding the issue,
which isn't a bad thing.
> But the idea of digital files being "more permanent" than negatives is
> one I find laughable. Heck, I have digital files" from 1985 that I
> can't even open, because I no longer have the applications I made them
> with and the applications I do have don't recognize the files.
But I had a caveat for my statement. I said that *as long as you transfer
the files when necessary* you'll be fine. This entails moving to a more
standard format (jpg or tiff) when your files start to become outdated,
and definitely requires labour, sometimes a fairly substantial
amount. Had you transferred the images earlier, you'd be fine. Two
points:
(1) It can take a lot of work to transfer images from one format to
another. I freely admit this, but expect this to become much easier in
the future with the development of new software and storage techniques.
(2) If you transfer images when necessary (maybe only a few times in your
life... hard to say exactly), your files will last as long as computers
do. The ability to read them never disappears overnight... there's always
a period of transition where you can act.
> As to your contention that "You do need to invest labour in storing
> [negatives] in as archival a location as possible," I just don't think
> that's true. Again, we need to turn to empiricism. The fact is,
> black-and-white negatives will survive just fine in less than ideal
> conditions--any old notebook, folder, or envelope will pretty much do
> the trick.
Ok, this is something I know little about. What's the average useful life
of a black and white neg? How about a colour one, since that's the
majority of the film shot nowadays?
> (The fact that people don't have snapshot negatives isn't technical
> evidence, it's sociological evidence--it doesn't prove that negatives
> don't last physically, it proves that people habitually threw away
> their negatives or considered them valueless after prints were made
> from them.)
Definitely, and I think you'll find I made the same point. If people only
care about the prints, chemical prints have a definite advantage over
digital at this point in time. If they're concerned with archiving their
originals, then digital still offers better longevity, unless colour
negatives will keep indefinitely. Digital archiving does take more work
at this point in time, but hopefully that will change in the future.
> It's almost axiomatic that no photographer keeps his or her archive in
> very good condition.
Ha, tell me about it. :) My negs are in sleeves in a cardboard box. I
have great plans, though.... <g>
> _Most_ photographers don't put very much effort into storing and
> protecting their negatives. I'm not saying they leave them lying
> exposed on the kitchen floor, but I'd bet your "1 out of 100" figure
> would be applicable as well to those who "store their negatives in as
> archival a location as possible."
Agreed. My "archival" comment was referring to a situation where you had
an image that you wanted to preserve for as long as possible, not to the
situation of most snapshooters, who couldn't care less about archival
storage.
> In any event, if negatives are ephemeral, digital files are certainly
> more so. Raw digital files (the record of a photographer's shooting
> activity, similar to a proof book) almost require _curation_...you
> have to presume that some one is not only storing them, but monitoring
> advancing technology well enough to know when a transfer of media is
> needed, knows how to do it, and invests the labor needed to do it EACH
> TIME IT'S NEEDED.
But it's hard to say how often this will occur. If it's only a few times
a century, that's not too bad. Look at all the different film sizes that
Kodak played around with before they settled on 35mm. Digital is still in
its infancy, and may very well settle down into some standard formats
pretty soon. JPG's and TIFF's, for example, have been around for a
while. I'm not saying that digital storage is the best method at the
present time, as I'm always wary of new technologies, but I think it will
prove to be the best once the confusion stabilizes somewhat. The bottom
line is that it is more work (unless they develop software to transfer
images quickly and easily, which wouldn't surprise me), but if you do the
work then your photos will be preserved for longer with no reduction in
quality. The potential is definitely there, even if we're not seeing it
today. And until they make it easier to, say, transfer multiple images
between different file formats, it's not for everyone.
> In both cases, it's the prints that stand the best chance of surviving
> through time, so I believe it's our responsibility to do two things: 1.
> lobby for, advocate, and (as consumers) demand printing inks, papers, and
> methods that are as archival as possible; and 2. strive to make our own
> digital prints using the most permanent technology available.
Agreed, and well put.
chris
-
This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe,
go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to
visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org.
