Article on image storage

[stnolan]

This was something I read today regarding a war photographer lamenting the future of image storage:

The size and quality of digital photographs has exploded over the last 10 years. So, we asked our friend and war photographer, Teru Kuwayama, how his storage and backup system has changed to accommodate the data boom.
Here's what he said:

"My system for storing digital files hasn't changed. Just more hard drives, and more dead ones. This is the most recorded era of human history, but I wonder how many of the records will survive."

One answer......SHOOT FILM🙂

ps I know it's not practical for pro pj's to shoot only film but it really brings home the fear of photographic cataloging in the digital age

 

[Chuck Albertson]

See also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?scp=1&sq=digital decay&st=cse

"They're only 1's and 0's---what could happen?"

 

[Steve Bellayr]

For written material the computer storage system is excellent so long as you print out a finalized hard copy. How important are corrections to the original? To researchers there is some value in the minutia but to the vast majority probably not. Is it really important what type of computer Salman Rushdie used or what pen Mark Twain wrote with? I did listen to a program on radio about a museum that digitized all its old newspapers and then auctioned them off. After time the scans deteriorated and were no longer readable. It is quite common for people to spill liguid on laptops. Therefore, before investing in a digital camera one should have sufficient knowledge of working with computers and prepare a proper storage system. People, who work primarily with computers (documents) update each week and have separate storage systems.
The computer has become, for me, a valuable tool even with analog images. Besides scans from negatives it is extremely easy to catalogue and update negatives and prints.
But, all said the computer is not the end game but a process.

 

[thegman]

In all honesty, while I shoot film and prefer it to digital, I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it's better for archiving than digital. With digital you can duplicate the file verbatim as many times as you like and keep as many backups as you like. You could argue that most people don't keep backups, but you could also argue that it only takes a house fire and all your negs are gone.

You could duplicate negatives, but this is an order of magnitude more complicated than digital backups. You could also backup scans of negs, but then you're in the same situation as digital except that you don't have backups of the original, but a scan of it.

Much as I enjoy film, I really don't believe that longevity is a strong point over digital. Even if you believe that JPEGs or RAW files will eventually become unreadable, save out a backup as a raw bitmap, in a format that any experienced computer programmer could make a viewer for without knowing the file format specification in any depth. i.e. the file format is so simple to be self explanatory.