Another great reason for using film!

[Koolzakukumba]

Let's see if memory cards are still working 100 years from now…

http://www.theonlinedarkroom.com/2013/12/century-old-antarctic-negs-developed.html



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[sevad]

That is a great story and makes one realise just what might be lost if film goes the way of the dodo. The conservator had a difficult job trying to separate those frozen negatives and the fact that he managed to save so many deserves a round of applause. Memory cards? How many of them will be OK in 10 yrs never mind 100?

I liked the other post on your blog about photographing family members and events on film if you want the memories to last. It is good to see someone supporting film like this. Keep up the great work.

 

[btgc]

Memory cards aren't supposed to be long term storage or I miss something?

 

[tsiklonaut]

Analog definitely has a distinct advantage for archival - i.e. high quality baryta based photopaper enlarged (wet-print), double fixed and with final selenium toning is guaratneed "fresh" and usable even after more than 500 years (some claim it's 1000 years when kept dry and in dark - a millenia guaranteed)! I know some people do similar toning to their negative films for better archval longetivity as well. But digital does fairly good as well if you take "busily" care of it in the long term (re-copy to new media). It's just different set of problems, risks and challanges. Memory cards weren't ment to be long term storage anyway, it's the final media, such as optical or HD. Optical media is relatively bad performer in longetivity - i.e. DVDs have high failure rate even when they're stored unused (I've had many of my photo-DVDs fail with read-errors in just few years while never used between), Blue Ray's are even more untrustworthy. High quality CD media seems to perform relatively well since their density isn't as big, but you need a lot of them!

When only written once the modern (mechanical/non-SSD-) HDs should hold data well for 20-60 years provided they're well sealed out of magnetic fields and heat. I think that's among the best way to do it for us mere mortals.

But GUESS what's the ultimate way to store the digital data for a long run...........




































...microfilm! 😀



The most important digital info such as top secrets, 'cultural legacy' stuff etc is written into microfilm anyways - goverments, museums, etc being their main clients.

Long live analog,
Margus

 

[Andrea Taurisano]

This reminds me of a problem I encountered while using a M9 in Russia in -25 celsius a year ago. I got an image saving error, the camera froze but after seconds came back to life and I kept shooting without thinking more about it. Few days later, once back home, none of the ca. 1000 images on that SD card could be retrieved the normal ways. By using a special software for recoverying corrupted files a friend managed to get out most the images, but 75 were lost forever..

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Memory cards aren't supposed to be long term storage or I miss something?

That's right but the point is that if it had been a digital photographer who had perished in Antarctica then he would have left behind memory cards.







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[Andrea Taurisano]

That's right but the point is that if it had been a digital photographer who had perished in Antarctica then he would have left behind memory cards.
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But with no consequences: Before dying he'd have already shared most of his shots on FB, Flickr and his own blog (I've been long enough in Antarctica and can guarantee that is simple even from there nowadays)

 

[Koolzakukumba]

But with no consequences: Before dying he'd have already shared most of his shots on FB, Flickr and his own blog (I've been long enough in Antarctica and can guarantee that is simple even from there nowadays)

Haha! Good point. But what if he'd died before uploading? Or if the satellite link had been down at the time. Or if a vicious penguin had got to him first? Stranger things have happened. 😀






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[Koolzakukumba]

That is a great story and makes one realise just what might be lost if film goes the way of the dodo. The conservator had a difficult job trying to separate those frozen negatives and the fact that he managed to save so many deserves a round of applause. Memory cards? How many of them will be OK in 10 yrs never mind 100?

I liked the other post on your blog about photographing family members and events on film if you want the memories to last. It is good to see someone supporting film like this. Keep up the great work.

Thanks, Sevad. I recently picked up a half plate Kodak Specialist 2 camera at a local auction and I'm thinking of using it for family portraits on 5x7 film. Not only will the film last but there's not much chance I'll ever lose the negs!






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[Photo_Smith]

Interesting article, memory cards mmm I wonder if they work at -50°C? film gets brittle at those temps I wonder if the cards can function at all.

Still moot point really Kudos to the conservator for getting such great results.

 

[hepcat]

The grain is awful. 😉 🙂

 

[swifty63]

Film's archival properties became very clear to me when I started printing my father's 120 film from the 60's, taken with his Perkeo 2. Wonderful stuff! I also have the Perkeo 😎

 

[chikubi]

A couple things to point out about this - first, the story's garnered the attentiion it has because it's remarkable, meaning that it's not typical to be able to recover images from film in these kind of circumstances, and indeed it sounds like a number were lost, but many still recoverable. That's wonderful, truly, but not necessarily a reasonable demonstration of the archival qualities of film; it's somewhat of a fluke.

Second, it's should be noted that a major part of the conservator's process of recovery involved digital processes, both in the creation of the positive images and their subsequent archiving. That tells me that experts seem to feel that digital archiving is indeed secure, viable, and reliable, assuming proper maintenance and care which would be required by any archival method analog or digital.

FWIW, there have been a number of ocurrances over the past years where digital cameras that were lost hiking, etc. were found later on in dire condition and yet images were recovered from them just fine, so it very well may be posssible that a similar fluke could happen in a hundred years from now from digital files. If one did happen and files were rescued uncorrupted then it's certain that the photos would be as clear as the day they were taken and not subject to the physical degradation that analog photos like in the story would suffer. That is a major benefit of digital imaging, and a potential victory for it in extreme situations over film. Still, either way it's somewhat of a crapshoot in the end.

For myself, I shoot both and archive accordingly, because, frankly, it's all good to me.

 

[Koolzakukumba]

A couple things to point out about this - first, the story's garnered the attentiion it has because it's remarkable, meaning that it's not typical to be able to recover images from film in these kind of circumstances, and indeed it sounds like a number were lost, but many still recoverable. That's wonderful, truly, but not necessarily a reasonable demonstration of the archival qualities of film; it's somewhat of a fluke.

Second, it's should be noted that a major part of the conservator's process of recovery involved digital processes, both in the creation of the positive images and their subsequent archiving. That tells me that experts seem to feel that digital archiving is indeed secure, viable, and reliable, assuming proper maintenance and care which would be required by any archival method analog or digital.

FWIW, there have been a number of ocurrances over the past years where digital cameras that were lost hiking, etc. were found later on in dire condition and yet images were recovered from them just fine, so it very well may be posssible that a similar fluke could happen in a hundred years from now from digital files. If one did happen and files were rescued uncorrupted then it's certain that the photos would be as clear as the day they were taken and not subject to the physical degradation that analog photos like in the story would suffer. That is a major benefit of digital imaging, and a potential victory for it in extreme situations over film. Still, either way it's somewhat of a crapshoot in the end.

For myself, I shoot both and archive accordingly, because, frankly, it's all good to me.

I don't agree with your first premise. The story gained attention not because it was a fluke that the conservator was able save some negatives but because discoveries like this are so few and far between. If bundles of negatives like this were found in Antartica every other week then I'd expect that around the same proportion would be recoverable. So I don't see it as a fluke in any way.

On your second point, in a digital world it's only natural that digital processes should be used to store and publicise these photographs. Had he wanted, the conservator could still have made darkroom prints from the negs instead of scanning them but then the prints would have had to be scanned for distribution. Digital is far more convenient and secure storage is certainly possible, if, as you say, one is willing to take the trouble and go to the expense of regularly updating systems, etc.

As for digital cameras being found within past years with readable memory cards, I'm sure plenty of film cameras have turned up under similar circumstances and with equally successful results. Would digital cameras left frozen in Antarctica for 100 years still be readable? You and I will never know. Any theorising about digital withstanding a century of freezing temperatures is pure conjecture but we KNOW that film can survive these harsh conditions. I suppose the only way of finding out about digital would be to conduct an experiment. I know where my money would be going. 😀

 

[Fernando2]

And to add to what Kool said:

after a century in Antarctica, even if the memory card survived:

- would computers/tablets with appropriate SD/CF/whatever card readers still exist one century from now?

- would the partition type / filesystem / image file format still be recognizeable by then-current OSes?

- would appropriate software (think raw conversion) still be available?

Just think about this: 40 years ago (not a century), perforated cards were the common way to insert data into a computer. There were many different formats.
If you happen to find an anonymous perforated card now, would you be able to read it and extract data from it?
What about an anonymous magnetic tape?
And again, this is only 40 years old technology. Double that. Triple that.

A negative glass of 150 years ago is not a problem at all, today, even for a newbie, even if you know nothing about it.

I shoot digital and film, but sometimes the rapid obsolescence of digital scares me.

Fernando

 

[chikubi]

I don't agree with your first premise. The story gained attention not because it was a fluke that the conservator was able save some negatives but because discoveries like this are so few and far between. If bundles of negatives like this were found in Antartica every other week then I'd expect that around the same proportion would be recoverable. So I don't see it as a fluke in any way.

I see where you're coming from, but the thing is, if the conservator hadn't been able to save any of the photos you never would have heard anything about the discovery. No one would care about a discovery of old photos if none of them were viewable. If anything, we can say the discovery is remarkable for both the rarity of the find itself and the recovery of the photos, but ultimately if the photos hadn't been recoverable the find would have been worthless. For all we know, there may have been similar finds in the past that bore no fruit and thus never saw the light of day, though that's just speculation, albeit plausible speculation.

On your second point, in a digital world it's only natural that digital processes should be used to store and publicise these photographs. Had he wanted, the conservator could still have made darkroom prints from the negs instead of scanning them but then the prints would have had to be scanned for distribution. Digital is far more convenient and secure storage is certainly possible, if, as you say, one is willing to take the trouble and go to the expense of regularly updating systems, etc.

Seems we see more or less eye to eye on this. My point was more addressed to those that tend to be more hardcore with the notion that digital is somehow more ephemeral than analog, thus less archival, which is misguided. You are correct in that the conservator could have made an optical print, and my point was that it's significant to note that he didn't, likely for the very reasons you and I both mentioned, which in turn reinforces the point that digital is indeed valuable and sufficiently reliable enough to warrant endorsement from experts.

As for digital cameras being found within past years with readable memory cards, I'm sure plenty of film cameras have turned up under similar circumstances and with equally successful results. Would digital cameras left frozen in Antarctica for 100 years still be readable? You and I will never know. Any theorising about digital withstanding a century of freezing temperatures is pure conjecture but we KNOW that film can survive these harsh conditions. I suppose the only way of finding out about digital would be to conduct an experiment. I know where my money would be going. 😀

Actually, the only thing we can say for certain is that this particular film survived under those conditions and nothing more. Whether it's repeatable or not will be borne out if there are additional finds in similar conditions, but barring that, anything more is also conjecture. And sure, there most certainly have been film cameras that survived equally dismal mishaps. Like I said though, it really is a crapshoot that either would be recoverable in the end with these extreme cases, so to assert that either medium is more likely to be viable in such situations is somewhat irresponsible, and equally so to say that they wouldn't be viable as well.

Anyway, all in the name of interesting discussion.

 

[chikubi]

And to add to what Kool said:

after a century in Antarctica, even if the memory card survived:

- would computers/tablets with appropriate SD/CF/whatever card readers still exist one century from now?

I see this argument a lot and my reply is that perhaps not, but the documentaion of that hardware and such would very likely exist based on current observations. Look at a non-photographic example like the arcade emulator scene which is thriving currently. There are a number of projects, like MAME, that were created from scratch based on available documentation and also good old back-engineering. MAME supports thousands of games, the majority of which were produced for proprietary hardware. Even so, because there was enough of an interest in preserving the games, people set their minds to the task and thus we can play these games again nowadays on multiple platforms. That tells me that if there were enough interest in the future to find out what's on some obsolete digital media, then we'd find a way to do so.

- would the partition type / filesystem / image file format still be recognizeable by then-current OSes?

Certainly, as like I mentioned above the documentation of such standards would likely exist far into the future. As it is now, most software supports all kinds of obsolete formats and I imagine it would do so in the future as well considering the way we tend to make things backwards compatible. Here's the list of supported formats for ACDSee alone: http://www.acdsee.com/en/support/file-formats Now ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a Kodak photo CD? Exactly. Yet, if you had one ACDSee could open it.

- would appropriate software (think raw conversion) still be available?

Sure, see above.

Just think about this: 40 years ago (not a century), perforated cards were the common way to insert data into a computer. There were many different formats.
If you happen to find an anonymous perforated card now, would you be able to read it and extract data from it?
What about an anonymous magnetic tape?
And again, this is only 40 years old technology. Double that. Triple that.

Here's an article on punch cards I found with a quick Google search, I'm sure I could find more: http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/index.html Technology is a lot more tenacious than people give it credit for.

A negative glass of 150 years ago is not a problem at all, today, even for a newbie, even if you know nothing about it.

I shoot digital and film, but sometimes the rapid obsolescence of digital scares me.

However, drop that negative and you're SOL. Forever. So even though it may be easier to work with, there is a very real chance that it could cease to exist in a blink of an eye. Digital files are equally easy to delete in the blink of an eye for any number of reasons, but were you able to recover one complete from a historical find, you could also copy it in equally quick fashion and thus give it a significantly higher chance of survival that any physical medium that exists as a singularity.

 

[Photo_Smith]

I see this argument a lot and my reply is that perhaps not, but the documentaion of that hardware and such would very likely exist based on current observations.

Based on my current observations we see many cases where digital info from just a few years ago is lost.
In one case I know about although the tape survived and mechanism for playing that tape exists the people that wrote the boot loader are all dead, no one know the code, apparently it was a series of switches that needed to be toggled in the right order.

I think we're living in dangerous times given the massive amount of data on many different formats it will be very hard.

It's almost impossible to get info from a Mac Jazz SCSCI drive from the late 1990's unless you have software emulators and the correct drives, give it another 50 years...

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Not to mention the potential dangers from an EMP strike or massive solar event. Should something like that happen it's a sobering thought that the future would probably be documented on film cameras. I'm pretty sure my OM1 and Durst enlarger would survive. My D700 might well be fried - unless I build a Faraday Cage for it. 😉

 

[Godfrey]

Let me understand your thesis. An unusual find of exposed and unprocessed film from a hundred years ago was handed to a specialist in recovery and restoration. Through a complex process of physical handling and digital image manipulation, some images from this find have been retrieved. Because of this, all film is far superior to digital capture.

My response: Utter nonsense, and not worth the hot air to argue about. Believe what you want to believe. Belief does not constitute fact.

G