Digital History Woes -- GREAT argument for Film

[Keith]

There are Aboriginal rock drawings in Australia that date back 40000 years or so .... done with pigments made from a variety of available elements. They are still accessible and still accurately represent their original portrayal of events of the time.

If someone had told the artists that the materials they were using would not last I wonder what their reaction would have been?

Damned good thing they weren't using either of the options we are musing over! 😀

 

[Socke]

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

Jon

I have two mirrored 120GB and two mirrored 240GB drives in a DIY Linux Server.
It serves as my personal mailserver, webdevelopment, databaseserver etc.pp, too. So the operating system, userhome, mailstore and so on is on two mirrored 40GB drives which must be four years old now. One of them failed recently and I replaced it with a spare I recycled from a broken PC with a bad mainboard.

When I scan film or return from a digital shoot I store everything in a temporary folder and burn two DVDs as soon as I have 4GB of data. With my scanner this means two rolls in colour or for rolls in B/W.
I used to convert my RAW files from the dSLR to tiff out of fear that one day a converter for the proprieatary format may not be available to me, since dcraw does a good job on my files and it is avilable in source code I don't fear that anymore and thus store RAW only. Thats some 400 shots per DVD.
Temporary backup is done on DVD-RAM when I need it.

I usualy have one year of pictures in online storage and the rest on DVDs, one set at my home and a copy at my mothers some 40 miles away and less prone to floods as my place 🙂

From the realy important films, like my vacation shots, I have maximum quality JPEGs on a CD stored with the film for quick access.

And I just finished copying CDs older than 4 years to DVDs.

 

[jaapv]

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...

This anecdote made me wonder... It is not really a story about digital vs film, as deleting shots is the same as tossing negatives into the dustbin. The photog. that saved the shot could, of course just as well have been a digital photographer who was not too cheap to buy a couple of extra memory cards. What passed my mind reading this is: how stupid can one get as a professional photoreporter😕 😕 You catch the president of the USA hugging an unknown young lady - not his wife??? And you DELETE the shot ??? 😱 That is not digital photography, that is crass stupidity. So your story proves one thing after all: film photographers are more intelligent than digital ones.😀 😉

 

[NickTrop]

... ah, the archival discussion is a red-herring, mostly, imo. It provides justification for film users and another argument - or perhaps rationalization, to use film over digital. I use film because I enjoy it more and think it looks better. I used digital too for a while but switched back to film never to return (unless I'm forced to...). No "rationalization" required. I like it better - end of discussion (for me, anyway).

My "archival" system is either a photo album or a shoe box. No scanning or backing up... In case of fire or flood - yeah, bummed out I'd be, but probably this would be superceded by my happiness of still being alive to be bummed out about my photos... Ya can't prevent everything.

 

[Al Patterson]

I have a laptop and desktop. I keep the digital photo files on both. Now, if the house burns down and both are destroyed, oh well, but the film will be gone as well.

And, I do prefer film to digital, just happen to have multiple computers for business reasons.