The Devil's Work, Part II

pluton said:
I found, over 30 years or so, that "film photography - the process - including bulk rolling, home developing, and darkroom printing," to be tedious, repetitive, difficult or impossible to fully technically control in a home setting, and highly polluting in the waste water system. And color?...forget about it. Oh, and I forgot expensive, on a per shot basis.
The only serious flaw...for me... with "digital" is the still unresolved issue of archival storage. And it is a very serious issue.
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How we store digital images keeps changing. In due time we’ll probably be storing images on something that is the big equivalent of the memory cards that we now use in the camera.

At this point the hard disc has pretty much supplanted the CD and the DVD for long term storage. I’ll not waste everybody’s time with a long explanation of why hard discs are better, but they are much better if you take a few precautions.

Hard discs will eventually fail - maybe 6 weeks after you buy them, maybe 6 decades. Protect yourself by duplicating your files. You can do this with multiple hard discs, but it’s easier to use a “RAID” system set up to automatically make duplicate files on separate hard discs. Most of the folks I know use the Wiebetech gear. When one disc fails, use the remaining good disc to create a fresh duplicate.

Since a copy of a digital image is an exact duplicate with no loss of quality, if you make a third copy of your work and store it somewhere else, your files will be in good shape even if a fire, volcano or thief destroys or pillages the primary place where you store your images. That’s the big advantage that digital storage has over film storage.

One last precaution, you now have 3 sets of archived images. Make sure you give those discs a spin every once in a while, even the third set that you have is stored at the in-law’s house. Whirling discs don’t like dead storage.
 
Bill Pierce said:
Hard discs will eventually fail - maybe 6 weeks after you buy them, maybe 6 decades. Protect yourself by duplicating your files.
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SSD are already on the market for a while, not cheap but it is, how Bill is saying, big version of flash memory. Developed years ago for military laptops, finally are available for all people.
 
timor said:
Yeah... Existence of cults is often based on brainwashing.
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Sure.... :rolleyes:

"Cult, a pejorative term for a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre."

I don't think film users or digital users fit that definition. That said, I am the first member of the Cult of Digital! :eek:
 
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