amateriat said:
"Properly processed", of course, sort of upends the comparison.
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Will the minilab-souped negs suffer an appreciably shorter lifespan than the dip/dunk stuff? Maybe.
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And, as for the LoC doing the mad digital conversion dance, I'd love to know what method of digital storage they're using. CD-R? DVD-R? Guess what these optical media have in common with color film? Dyes.
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in the last four months alone, I've gone through Hell attempting to retrieve data from dead or suddenly-dying HDs for at least four clients; a few of these clients' computers (drives included) weren't all that old. I had to have one client send his drive off to one of the El Serioso data-recovery services; he got his data back, but the tab would've bought me a nice, black ZI. One can buy enterprise-class, industrial-strength HDs like those used in mission-critical servers and the like, but, yes, they cost extra.
Barret, at least the C-41 negs I had develeoped in 24 hour labs during the 80s are deter iorating very fast now. Those I left in the original plastic sleves stored in the prverbial shoebox are nearly gone and I'm scanning some at the moment, those in archival "Pergamin" paper sleves are somewhat better.
As for digital storage, at least Verbatim uses AZO dyes in their CD-Rs and DVD+-Rs, the same dye as in Kodachrome lides
🙂
Stored in a dark place with controlled humidity those should be fine for a couple decades just like the slides.
I still have one of the earliest CD-Rs as a reminder, I left it lying on the window sill for some weeks during summer 1994 and the dye was bleached where the light hit the CD.
As to storage, I do document managment systems for customers who are required by law to store documents for a very long time. The documents are stored on external disc arrays, mostly from EMC^2 with IBM catching up. Those disc arrays are usualy mirrored and seldom safed to tape, optical drives are getting out of use since disc arrays get cheaper and what is left of a price difference is made up in conveniance, i.e. file access time.
One of our customers had a HP Jukebox with 144 5GB MO media and four drives from 1996 until last year, it survived when they broke down the adjacent wall and forgot to switch it off or even covered it. The HP technician cleaned out the debris, dust is the wrong word, witch a vacuum cleaner and cleaned the media with a sponge and some water.
One of our customers used a software revisison from 1993 until last year when we converted the data from Gupta SQL Windows on Windows 3.11 and DOS 6 to MS-SQL 2000 on Windows Server 2003. I had to retrieve the database model from a 3.5" floppy written in february 1994 I found in the depth of one of my deskdrawers!
It took us two weeks to convert Autocad 9 drawings and propriatary bitmap and vector data from a GeoInformation System long gone to todays standards.
For me, digital storage is my bread and butter and I just know that it is doable but you get what you pay for. The cheapest PC with the cheapest media written in a hurry on a cheap drive is a sure way to desaster.
If you value your data, be it pictures or texts or whatever, take care in storing them and they will last a realy long time.
Hm, in Madrid was a guy taking pictures with a huge wooden view camera, he copied the neg with that camera and developed inside the camera, then fixed in a tray and washed in a 1.5 gallon bucket. The negative was neither fixed nor washed since it isn't meant to be stored and I washed the print as soon as I came into my hotel
🙂
It took him 7 minutes from the shot to the print, this won't last 100 years!
