Digital History Woes -- GREAT argument for Film

[CameraQuest]

Jonathan Eastland's blog about digital history woes is a great argument for film

http://www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com/


Stephen

 

[jlw]

Well-stated (if well-worn) arguments, but a bit of a straw man. Whether you're a digital or film user, it's easy to construct nightmare scenarios in which the "enemy" medium is destroyed while your preferred medium escapes unscathed. As a counter-example to Eastland's, spill a cup of coffee on a CD-R and you can just wipe it off; do the same with a strip of negatives and they may never be the same again, assuming you can save them at all.

The fact is that nobody can predict the future, and neither can we predict the future risks that our images might face.

 

[ghost]

if you want to preserve your photos, all you really need is money and good technique.

 

[peter_n]

What about the Leica photog from New Orleans (Dennis Couvillion?) who lost all his negs during Katrina?

It can happen to anyone, any media.

 

[Jon Perry]

An interesting article.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my father-in-law a short while ago (last year?). We were discussing the possibility of scanning his rather extensive collection of 35mm transparencies that date from the early 1960's uptil the late 90's. After a short round of calculations we concluded that at a semi-relaxed pace (a few hours each night) it would take about 5 years to succesfully scan all his slides into the computer and that it would either take up about a dozen very high capacity hard drives or a considerable number of recordable DVD's.

This then brought about the topic of reliabilty of hard drives and the life expectancy and technical obsolescence of recordable disc media. Needless to say, his very extensive collection of 35mm transparencies are still sitting on the shelves they were originally archived to.

Out of interest, what solutions do RFF members use for archiving digital capture and scanned negatives?

Jon

 

[ffttklackdedeng]

Out of interest, what solutions do RFF members use for archiving digital capture and scanned negatives?

An external HD is what I use. Once a week I make a backup, also of all the other stuff (I already had 2 hard drives failing, one with 'warning period' which I ignored :bang: ).

In the meantime, the backup takes 2 hours which makes me think whether I really need all those high-res TIFF 16 bit scans of pictures that I will definitely never print.. So I'm thinking about removing most of the scans and instead have only (roughly curves adjusted) JPGs of these frames (or even all). This way it is still easy to digitally browse through the old pics (or catalogize them if I ever find the time).

I think the negatives are the better backup and just in case I discover I really want to print one of those old ones I still can put it through the scanner and spend some minutes with dust spotting. It's not even the most time consuming part and my scanning knowledge also continuously increases..

With digital capture this might be harder since once deleted the RAW file it's gone forever (and also the number of pictures will be bigger for most users), but I don't need to care since my only digi is a non-raw P&S 🙂

 

[visiondr]

All I can say is there is a known and well documented recorded history of the 20th century and even into the 19th century based on silver halide and other emultions on film and glass. We really don't know (and cannot know) for certain whether digital file storage is as robust. That may not matter to you and I, but archivists are quite on the fence about this one, and these are the experts!

Ron

 

[rogue_designer]

What I was doing - and should start doing again. Was scanning the contact sheet and making thumbnails of all the shots - so they can be keyworded, and located quickly using my image management software. That way I can search for images and know what negative sheet they are on when I want to go print, or scan a given image.

High-res scans are keyed to the same contact sheet number, etc. All images are on an external HD - and every 3 to 6 months, I make a double back-up the whole she-bang onto DVD's. One copy kept in a binder for quick recovery, and one copy is put in a fireproof safe offsite.

Seems to work when I keep up with it. I try to make low res scans of everything on film - to make for quick finding, and proof sheets, but only high-res scans of "winners" as needed. Saves space. And Time.

 

[photogdave]

Archiving is one thing, but I like to look at another aspect of the discussion.
I'm sure more than a few of you have come across the story fron a few years ago when a bunch of press photographers were covering a Bill Clinton speech and a then-unknown Lewinsky was seen hugging him.
Once the scandal broke, all the editors wanted some photos of the two together. Most of the photogs had captured that event digitally and the pics that were considered unimportant at the time were deleted. It was one of the photogs still shooting film that had the image filed away with the other negs, and was able to produce the needed shot.
How often have you gone through old negs and seen an image in a new light that you didn't like the first time?
Of course for this reason I don't delete anything I capture digitally either...

 

[jlw]

Out of interest, what solutions do RFF members use for archiving digital capture and scanned negatives?

There are two interesting "White Papers" on this subject on the website of hard drive maker WiebeTech:

The True Cost of Archiving to CDs/DVDs

Storage Enclosure Reliability (PDF)

They do reach slightly different conclusions -- the author of the cost-of-archiving paper recommends RAID drives because of their ability to do self-backup, while the author of the storage-enclosure article points out that RAID automatically copies mistakes and corrupt files, so periodic manual backup is better.

Either way, though, their conclusion is that the safest way to archive digital media is on hard drive mechanisms. (Yeah, you can say it's not surprising that a hard drive manufacturer would recommend this, but they do support it with convincing arguments.)

I found these arguments persuasive, so currently I'm using separate external hard drives for this. Long-term, when I can afford it, I'm going to get one of those external-drive chassis with bays for individual drives in slide-out trays (as recommended in the storage-enclosure white paper) and then buy three drive mechanisms to go in the trays.

With this type of setup, you use one drive for your working files and a second drive for nightly backups. The third drive occasionally gets inserted and the primary drive's contents get copied onto it; then it gets shipped off to a safe offsite location as your disaster-recovery archive.

Yes, hard drives are susceptible to various kinds of failures, but modern ones with built-in S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) hardware checking do give you early warning of hardware failure so you can transfer your data to a new drive before the old one goes completely bad. I maintain a server drive array at work, and this feature has saved the corporate bacon a couple of times.

 

[Nachkebia]

Search no more! film is best! everbody buy M8 and sell leica MP to me 🙂

 

[Marc-A.]

Search no more! film is best! everbody buy M8 and sell leica MP to me 🙂

yeah, to me too ... and if you have a Summircon DR you want to throw away because you need so much the 21, please send it to me, I have a bin for it! 😀
Marc

 

[jaapv]

Search no more! film is best! everbody buy M8 and sell leica MP to me 🙂

How come I have a feeling this offer does not extend to the Digilux2 I will sell as soon as I have the M8 in my hands?😕 😛

 

[irees]

I hope there's never a fire in his house. Or a flood. Or robbery. etc.

 

[Nachkebia]

Digilux 2? xaxa, you can paint it red and through it away 😀

 

[jaapv]

I am a bit surprised at the state he managed to get his CD's into. I have about twenty Kodak Cd's of over ten years old that are as new. Apart from the grotty scans Kodak produced at the time they are perfectly usable today with no corrupted files at all. And he does not really adress the constant protection against moisture and fungus that film needs. And of course, once a photo is on the Internet, it is more or less immortal, stashed in archives, ripped to other sites, all of that.

 

[jaapv]

Digilux 2? xaxa, you can paint it red and through it away 😀

Well, I won't do just that, I think I'll take the decent amount of Euro's they go for...😉

Edit: On the other hand, if I were to send it to Shintaro, well, red, purple rubber, hmmmm...🙄

 

[Macpod]

this is why you load your best shots onto sites such as flickr for archiving. this way you have hard copies(slides), scanned files and internet backups. if you are hardcore you can rent a safety deposite box in a bank for portable HDD.

scanners are getting faster. are they not?

 

[rxmd]

As a counter-example to Eastland's, spill a cup of coffee on a CD-R and you can just wipe it off; do the same with a strip of negatives and they may never be the same again, assuming you can save them at all.

I think it wouldn't be too hard to get coffee off negatives. The nice data-preserving thing about CDs is that you can make extra backup copies of your data with next to no effort.

Philipp

 

[Nachkebia]

Aleksandr Rodchenko was my favorite photographer when I got interested in photography Philipp, I still love his photos...