Bleak Outlook for Film? Yet Another Prognostication

[Pioneer]

No. we're talking about what ANYONE will see of ANYONE'S photographs in 300 years -- other than the ones that are 'migrated across media', either by obsessives or (more worryingly) by those with agendas.

Most things from the past are lost. That's why we often prize the survivors. But if nothing can survive by chance...?

As others have said, though: worry about it when it happens.

Cheers,

R.

My point is that for anything to survive that long, someone has to decide it is worth keeping. Very, very few things, even buildings, survive 300 years unless someone takes an active part in maintaining it.

Buildings must be maintained, re-roofed, etc. Those few books that still survive from 300 years ago cannot even be handled anymore and have to be carefully stored.

'Robinson Crusoe', which was originally printed a little less then 300 years ago, is still read today by many people, not because we still share the original books, but because several someones over the years thought it was worth preserving and reprinted it time and time again.

The same will be required of photographs. And it won't matter whether they are digital or analogue photographs. Unless you are supremely lucky (ie; your print, inkjet or otherwise, lies wrapped and undisturbed in a dark, dry, cool location), it will have to be re-printed by many people, many times, over the next 300 years in order for it to survive in any meaningful way.

In my humble opinion, there is very little difference between saving/renewing, or reprinting, a digital image several times over the next 300 years to preserve it, than there is in resaving/renewing, or reprinting an analogue image several times over the next 300 years in order to preserve it. Either way actions must be taken to preserve it.

Let's get real folks, 300 years ago Englishmen were running around in little wooden boats with sails trying to steal gold from the Spanish. God only knows what will be happening 300 years in the future. 😉

 

[DougFord]

Let's get real folks, 300 years ago Englishmen were running around in little wooden boats with sails trying to steal gold from the Spanish. God only knows what will be happening 300 years in the future. 😉

Well I know what I'll be doing.
I'll be looking at photo's of "Aunt Martha" whilst choking to death on a "piece of 300 year old meatloaf"...

 

[lam]

 

[lynnb]

Perhaps the best chance of longevity is to make archival prints and store them properly.

Whether your photos get thrown out when you die is probably the biggest survival factor. Who of your surviving family would be interested in preserving them? My dad collected soundtracks of old Broadway musicals on reel to reel tape. Some real classics. But when he died, the effort of going through dozens of long audio tapes was not worth the effort. His tape player was broken, which made the decision to throw it all out easier.

For family pictures, I'd produce a high quality album of prints for each of my immediate family. I'm guessing that would be less likely to be discarded than hard drives or neg files.

In future I doubt that many people will have the equipment or interest to scan or contact print thousands of old negs, or view thousands of trannies (how, without a projector? How many of us have sifted through our parents' old slide and neg boxes and printed the ones we think significant? Or is that in the 'one day I'll get around to that' basket?). How many negs are you leaving behind? The bigger the archives the bigger the future task of sifting through it, and the less likely that will actually be done.

Maybe stuff saved to the cloud, properly tagged, might have a chance at survival amongst the gazillions of other images saved there. Somehow I doubt it. What commercial reason is there to indefinitely store petabytes of old cat photos?

I think I'll print a box of my best work on archival paper. I'll put a big notice on the front that says "Lynn's valuable prints - these might pay off your grandkids' mortgage one day if you keep them". Notice the appeal to greed, and the use of the weasel word 'might' 🙂

 

[thegman]

It is doom and gloom. Film may go away, it may not, but the same is true for just about anything technical. I am very much enjoying shooting film at the moment, I don't use digital at all any more. Film is now the domain of hobbyists and artists as Chris says, and I do wonder sometimes if digital cameras will go the same way, sales are down 50% on last year, and smartphone cameras are only getting better.

 

[Harry Lime]

Did I miss the 300 year archival negative? Ilford? Kodak? Agfa?

Pretty much anything that survives 300 years does so nearly as much by luck as archival protection.

Kodak claims a 300 year lifespan for Estar based negatives. It's polyester based, so that's pretty believable.

Traditional black and white negatives should last a very, very long time. I don't think that 300 years is so far fetched.

Color negative is more unstable. The different layers shrink at different rates and the dyes are unstable. Some color slides won't last more than 20 years.

Kodachrome was the most stable of color films. Kodak predicted at least 100 years stability, if stored in the dark.

The most stable color process probably was 3 strip Technicolor, as it was captured on three strips of black and white film (filtered for red, green, blue), which is a lot more stable than color negative. The projected print is actually the result of a printing process utilizing the three matrix, not chemical voodoo.


Worldwide national archives use microfilm stored in stainless steel containers in climate controlled environments (salt mines etc). to ensure the long term preservation of their most important documents (hundreds of years).

Digital media (the best of which is DLT tape and maybe the new M-DISC), is dependent on constant migration.

 

[Photo_Smith]

What a terrible article. No content, just a couple of links one to another poor article and one to a Wikipedia link do not make or constitute anything of interest.
To make matters worse he then backs up his 'information' by linking again to the badly thought out original article (yes he actually linked it twice).

If I want to read a blog I want some content not a half arsed bunch of links all pointing to the same source–its just a plain lazy article with nothing to add, just like warmed up 3 week old burgers, or someones old meatloaf...

 

[Photo_Smith]

Did I miss the 300 year archival negative? Ilford? Kodak? Agfa?

Pretty much anything that survives 300 years does so nearly as much by luck as archival protection.

We have images in our archive that are over 100 years old, some are colour too.
Archivist's don't work using 'luck' they use tested materials, like Harry mentioned above some of the Kodak B&W are estimated to last over 300 years, some of the materials in our archive are supposed to be rated at 1000 years (obviously estimated) like FICA:

So I'd say pretty much the opposite of what you say is true, no medium is going to survive by luck, planning and proper archival treatment can and will ensure valuable images will outlive us and last many more years.

 

[Harry Lime]

I see the point of economies of scale and the effect on quality control.

But...

- Even by industry standards the quality control at Kodak was legendary. They were and still are run by a bunch of idiots, but the people actually making the sausage are brilliant.

- Ilford is much smaller than Kodak or Fuji and their QC is top notch.

- Adox was even smaller than Ilford and while their QC was not as good, it wasn't a total disaster either. My guess is that the QC at a firm like Adox was no worse than the average company in the 1930's - 1950's (Kodak excluded).

- The commercial film market is as dead as a doorknob and has has been for a while. With a few rare exceptions all advertising etc is shot digital these days.

- Movies were the last major toehold and that will be history in the next 2-3 years, as the whole pipeline switches to digital. The Arri Alexa killed film acquisition, because it was the first digital cinema camera to deliver 14 stops of exposure range; the same as Kodak Vision 3 film. That was only three years ago. Projection has been inching towards digital for the past 10 years and prints are nearly extinct.

- Film consumption has shifted to artists, hobbyists and some professional use.
The black and white shooters have always been outside of the mainstream and although many have switched to digital there still are a lot of them who have not strayed and probably won't.

- The film market has probably bottomed out and stabilized to a certain extend.

- Kodak will probably fold, leaving us with Ilford and maybe Fuji. Hopefully someone will take over the film division from Kodak. Tri-X still is a huge seller. Tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year may be peanuts to the bean counters at Kodak, but it's a lot of money for someone looking to own a decent sized business.


The future probably holds:

Kodak probably gone, due to decades of mismanagement. Hopefully someone will buy their film division.
Ilford will be around, as long as it's profitable.
Fuji may downsize and continue, as long as it's profitable.

Overall a smaller selection of films.
Black and white will survive in one form or another.
Color negative will probably disappear.
Color slides will probably disappear.

Prices will go up significantly.



Three factors playing a large role in the survival of film:

- Availability of dedicated film scanners at a reasonable cost. Your negatives need to interact with the digital world.

- Availability of functional and reliable cameras. 10 years from now Leica and Hasselbald may be the only companies left servicing film bodies. Everyone else will have to rely on independent technicians of varying quality and a shrinking pool of spare parts.

- Keep shooting. If you buy it, they will make it.

 

[Pablito]

First world problems, my friends. .

Indeed - film is long gone in the 3rd world, which is ALL digital now.

 

[KM-25]

+1

This truly sums it up in one post, well said..

I see the point of economies of scale and the effect on quality control.

But...

- Even by industry standards the quality control at Kodak was legendary. They were and still are run by a bunch of idiots, but the people actually making the sausage are brilliant.

- Ilford is much smaller than Kodak or Fuji and their QC is top notch.

- Adox was even smaller than Ilford and while their QC was not as good, it wasn't a total disaster either. My guess is that the QC at a firm like Adox was no worse than the average company in the 1930's - 1950's (Kodak excluded).

- The commercial film market is as dead as a doorknob and has has been for a while. With a few rare exceptions all advertising etc is shot digital these days.

- Movies were the last major toehold and that will be history in the next 2-3 years, as the whole pipeline switches to digital. The Arri Alexa killed film acquisition, because it was the first digital cinema camera to deliver 14 stops of exposure range; the same as Kodak Vision 3 film. That was only three years ago. Projection has been inching towards digital for the past 10 years and prints are nearly extinct.

- Film consumption has shifted to artists, hobbyists and some professional use.
The black and white shooters have always been outside of the mainstream and although many have switched to digital there still are a lot of them who have not strayed and probably won't.

- The film market has probably bottomed out and stabilized to a certain extend.

- Kodak will probably fold, leaving us with Ilford and maybe Fuji. Hopefully someone will take over the film division from Kodak. Tri-X still is a huge seller. Tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year may be peanuts to the bean counters at Kodak, but it's a lot of money for someone looking to own a decent sized business.


The future probably holds:

Kodak probably gone. Hopefully someone will buy their film division.
Ilford will be around, as long as it's profitable.
Fuji may downsize and continue, as long as it's profitable.

Overall a smaller selection of films.
Black and white will survive in one form or another.
Color negative will probably disappear.
Color slides will probably disappear.

Prices will go up significantly.



Three factors playing a large role in the survival of film:

- Availability of dedicated film scanners at a reasonable cost. Your negatives need to interact with the digital world.

- Availability of functional and reliable cameras. 10 years from now Leica and Hasselbald may be the only companies left servicing film bodies. Everyone else will have to rely on independent technicians of varying quality and a shrinking pool of spare parts.

- Keep shooting. If you buy it, they will make it.

 

[Roger Hicks]

My point is that for anything to survive that long, someone has to decide it is worth keeping. Very, very few things, even buildings, survive 300 years unless someone takes an active part in maintaining it. . . .

And my point is the exact opposite. Some things can survive decades or centuries of neglect, and then be found by chance. Archival silver halide prints and negs are among these things.

My executor has instructions to stick my negs and prints in a tin trunk in a difficult-to-reach attic in my house. The trunk may or may not be found in 50 years, 100 years or 200 years. But imagine finding a tin trunk full of even 100-year-old images in your house...

The oldest parts of the house are already 300 years old at least (maybe 500+ for some parts), so this is not an unreasonable fantasy.

Cheers,

R.

 

[DtheG]

My point is that for anything to survive that long, someone has to decide it is worth keeping. Very, very few things, even buildings, survive 300 years unless someone takes an active part in maintaining it.

[...]

In my humble opinion, there is very little difference between saving/renewing, or reprinting, a digital image several times over the next 300 years to preserve it, than there is in resaving/renewing, or reprinting an analogue image several times over the next 300 years in order to preserve it. Either way actions must be taken to preserve it.

Before printing, survival of a document was dependent on copying. Printing changed that a little, spawn enough copies and the chance of a single survival is greater. A lot of manucrips were probably destroyed by printing, send that mouldy old copy to the typesetter/printer, then throw it away now you have the nice new printed copy. At least with digital technology we have better control of transcription errors.
So I would suggest the prospects for survival of content rather than media is rather better for digital, we can make perfect copies and lots of them. On the other hand, with such abundance we may be more careless. But that has always been true, we value the survivors precisely because survival is rare.

 

[Mackinaw]

.......My executor has instructions to stick my negs and prints in a tin trunk in a difficult-to-reach attic in my house. The trunk may or may not be found in 50 years, 100 years or 200 years. But imagine finding a tin trunk full of even 100-year-old images in your house...

The oldest parts of the house are already 300 years old at least (maybe 500+ for some parts), so this is not an unreasonable fantasy.

Cheers,

R.

Very interesting idea.

Somebody in my family has always been taking pictures. Several years back, while cleaning out my parent's basement, I found about twenty 4X5 glass-plate negatives stored in a box that somebody on my dad's side of the family took back around 1910 - 1920. Besides showing my family when they were kids (I recognized several great aunts and uncles) the shots of Detroit around 1915 are incredible.

To find these old glass-plate negatives after so many years of storage was an incredible gift to my family. Hopefully, when somebody finds your negatives, they'll have the same thrill that I had when discovering my family's 4X5 negatives.

Jim B.

 

[Exdsc]

The end of a lot of things are either near or already happening.

A.O. Scott of NY recently had an article about how there are just too many movies being made these days due to digital revolution and this will in turn kill the art of movie making by sheer volume.

Music as an art has already died with the only way to make money for musicians is large scale concerts, good for Lady Gaga but not for many other types of music.

TV has died already, its living off the internet where people actually these days go to watch their favorite TV programs.

Newspapers: dead and dying.

Paper books: dying

Even shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy are out-dated because their version of comedy has been overdone on youtube.


It is in that famous phrase, the best of times and the worst of times.

 

[Exdsc]

I should also add that many of the digital camera makers will die long before film is no longer available.

Revolution and progress devours its own children; this digital revolution is going to devour a lot of people and companies before there is some semblance of equilibrium.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Dedicated Digital cameras are already heading over the cliff. Articles I've read say 44 percent of photos shot last year were shot on smart phones. That's going to kill off the compact digital cameras. Mirrorless cameras are going to nuke low-end DSLR's. Premium mirrorless options and high end DSLR's will survive a few more years, I suspect.

 

[bwcolor]

B&W film will survive longer than I will, so that is good enough for me. Maybe we will be left with cell phones that take video and photos are culled from the video stream and some old film cameras.

 

[Exdsc]

Boundless ambition leads to tragedy, this is the basic structure for tragedy since ancient Greece to Shakespeare and in different forms in many other cultures.

The force of ambition behind digital in all forms of life to make things better is so strong that its hard not to feel apprehensive. Two simple examples: Translation software will soon make all translators obsolete, and I can assure you that there are a lot of people who make a living in the field of translation. Self-driven cars are not that far in the future, which means from taxi drivers to truck drivers might be out of job by the end of this decade.

Edit: computers and software will be so user friendly that the same IT people who created them will be jobless because there will no longer be a need for expert technicians on a consumer level.


The world is changing so fast that its no longer possible for us to analyze and reflect on it in an informed way.

 

[sevo]

Two simple examples: Translation software will soon make all translators obsolete,

Not until storytelling software has made all authors obsolete. There is far more to a translation than the correct words and grammar - and current software does not even make a very good job at that very basic level.

Nobody wants his foreign novels and film scripts (or even technical/scientific lierature) translated to the same quality as a Chinese MP3 player manual...

But what translation software already has done is kill the jobs of all the assistant staff in translators offices - in the past, there would be something like two or three research assistants and typists per translator, now it is the latter by himself, with a software-enabled word processor...