Safety film breaking down
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Retro-Grouch
Veteran
And of course those negatives suffering from Vinegar Syndrome are being digitized for "archival" storage. Isn't that a whole 'nother can of worms? The bottom line: Entropy wins, always. Sorry.
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
Interesting article, thanks.
You can never have too many backups.
You can never have too many backups.
besk
Well-known
I only purchase polyester based films these days if at all possible. Have been doing this for 10 or so years.
I plan on copying the more important acetate negatives that I have onto a polyester based film.
I plan on copying the more important acetate negatives that I have onto a polyester based film.
jsrockit
Moderator
That's true. I mean, at least it's been many, many years for the film. With digital, they say hard drives last for 3-5 years (obviously some last a lot longer). So, what does someone do about long term storage there? It is crazy.
Retro-Grouch
Veteran
Best bet: print your negs on archivally processed fiber-based paper. Then tone (gold or selenium). Store in a cool, dry place. Then pray. Of course, in a few billion years the sun will nova, so I don't know what to do about that...
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
A EE friend of mine says that actual hard disks are much better than USB sticks because (paraphrasing) with the hard disk the magnetic orientation of bits in the disk coating will last for a long time, whereas with the USB stick, you are at the mercy of how long over time an electric charge can be maintained above a certain threshold (to differentiate 1's, 0's).
I'm doing multiple things: scanning negs to hard disk, saving on USB sticks and CD's, printing, and saving negatives in a bank safety deposit box.
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
The ancient Egyptians had the right idea. This cat photo has lasted thousands of years and looks as good as the day it was made:
Retro-Grouch
Veteran
Same here; my important digital stuff, and the scans of important film stuff, go onto archival (gold) DVDs. But, ever the pessimist, I'm sure that those DVDs will be the equivalent of 8-track tapes in fifty years. And then there's the psychological angle. There's this weird voodoo thing that we have about discarding or destroying a photograph of someone. It carries a certain weight. Tossing a DVD, when you can't see the "image" on it? Probably not so much, if at all. After I'm gone, who knows?
In the final analysis, I like to share my pictures now, with folks who understand them and care about them (and me). If, by some chance, I make an image that's good enough to create a tiny blip in the Collective Unconscious, I'd be glad to have it live on, invisibly, in that way. The raindrop is not lost when it falls upon the ocean.
Out to Lunch
Veteran
I may have commented on this issue before: what makes people double, or triple save their photos? During the pre-internet times, photos would end up in sock drawers, and, eventually in a landfill. Why do people believe that it will be different any time soon? Cheers, OtL
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
The double and triple saving I think is because (1) the perceived unreliability or easy loss of digital media and (2) it costs so little to get that redundancy. In the past, photos would be kept in an album or shoebox for decades and that was good enough because all you needed to do to know what they were was to open the box up and look.
So why make any extended effort at all? 99.9% will get dumped eventually.
Well, as a sort of historian/archivist, I'd like the photos I made even 20 years ago of my neighborhood, city, state, and long distance travels to not disappear soon. I like to look at them and I'd like to make photo books.
But eventually nobody will care about 99.9% of them. Of our family photos, I got about half and my cousins and their grandchildren dumped the rest. Their kids don't care about anything more than a few weeks old. They might save a photo of Taylor Swift.
bcostin
Well-known
True, but a huge number of photos did not end up in the landfill. Lots of them survived, on purpose or by accident, and we have benefited from that.
I don't have much control over what happens to my photos after I'm dead, but I feel like I'm obligated to give them a fighting chance to be seen by someone after I'm gone. Maybe they'll be useful, entertaining, or cautionary. I don't delude myself into thinking it's much of a legacy, but it's what I've got.
bcostin
Well-known
Hard disks have turned out to be a lot more durable than most people expected at the time.
What most often fails are the drive electronics or mechanisms and not the media itself. Most of the time that hardly matters, since people assume a nonresponsive drive is useless and toss it. But with proper care computer history archivists and collectors can recover data from dead drives that have sat unused for decades. Of course those were simpler and physically less complex than current drives, so our mileage may vary.
jsrockit
Moderator
The problem with DVDs is that they are 4.7gb. That's not going to work for me. Right now I'm on my 4th set of HDs of 5TB or more. Maybe it's time to make TIFFs of my most important work and back that up too. As far as why I would bother to do so, I guess I value my work and hope somewhere along the line someone else will too. I know it is a long shot, but that's Art in general. I will make books as well.
zane0777
Established
Agreed. I've gone to Blu-ray disks (25 or 50 GB capacity in its basic forms, up to 128 GB in multilayer formats). Still not ideal, but I fugure an optical disk is a better long-term bet than any hard disk. Quality external Blu-ray drives are under $200 now. I'll probably do some photo books of my favorite photos as an additional hedge.
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