Digital Obsolescence vs. Film Obsolescence

[Oh Two]

Yesterday I bought a QuickTake 100 for $25 on Craig's list (a damn good price I am told). Having one already, I offered it to my neighbor who teaches digital photography at the local JC for my cost.

He asked me why he should ever want that? And, my thought was that here is THE example of one of the first commercial digital cameras in the world, and it would be a wonderful example for a unit on the history of digital photography.

So, I looked for some images from my QuickTake, and found those I had converted to TIFF years ago to show him. Finding the images, I attempted to open them in Photoshop CS4. It can't read the TIFF! Only Photoshop 7 and earlier can read TIFF 6.

I have no fewer than four old Macs that I use to open up and manipulate images that I have scanned from 1994.

My friend's class in digital photography, it turns out, is just a class in how to manipulate RAW images. There are NO classes offered that I can find anywhere covering the history of digital imaging. Apparently it's too new for a history, but old enough to die with the PEZ dispensers.

After 15 years with digital imaging I now have come to realize that digital photography faces obsolescence at a greater rate than film photography.

In only 15 years my digital images face being lost for ever.

Over and over we see posts on this blog of film vs. digital, and when will film be obsolescent?

It looks to me that analog imaging at 150 years old will clearly outlast digital which creates images dependent on complicated hardware of a short life span. These images are already being lost, and the chances of digital imagery such as RAW images surviving in their current form for only 15 years are VERY slim.

Pick your poison: digital obsolescence or film obsolescence? I'll stick with film first.

 

[user237428934]

If you really wanted to convert those files you would find a solution. There must be many companies who love to convert the files for all the lazy guys who don't want to handle that problem 😉

 

[Colin Corneau]

People often make the mistake that digital is effort-free -- no film, no developing, no chemistry. They don't take into account that the workflow has simply been shifted down the line further...now it's a matter of archiving, updating files as formats change, redundant backups, on and on and on.

The best term I've heard for the issue is "digital dark age" -- a generation or three from now, we won't have nearly as much a visual record of this age as we think we should. Ironic, given that more photographs are taken now than ever before, by far.

 

[semilog]

I have no fewer than four old Macs that I use to open up and manipulate images that I have scanned from 1994.

You really shouldn't need a bunch of old Macs. In all likelihood all you need is a copy of Graphic Converter.

The only files from that era that I've had any issues with were (1) files that had been corrupted, and (2) images in obscure, proprietary formats designed for digital microscopy, but the stuff saved as TIFF has not posed challenges.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

If documentation exists on the file format, you can always get someone to write some code. These formats are not hard to unpack. My wife faced a similar problem about 14 years ago with some medical images stored in TIFF format, produced with a 1MPixel microscope camera- fairly advanced for its time. It was fairly easy to write a FORTRAN/Assembly program to unpack them and save in a new format. ".BMP" format is common, and very easy to generate.

 

[Roger Hicks]

There are no computer problems that cannot be sorted out by anal-retentive nerds who don't even understand the third word in the phrase "Get a life."

Pity about the rest of us.

EDIT: Sorry, that sounds like a attack on Brian et al who posted while I was writing it (and barbecuing a shoulder of lamb at the same time). But most people just aren't interested in that degree of hassle. Just as they weren't interested in developing their own films -- though at least there was more incentive in terms of rapid gratification with film development than there is in the transmigration of image files.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Steve M.]

"film obsolescence"? Good luck on that one, as it doesn't exist. I can print a 100 year old negative or glass plate as easily as a new one.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Well, it was much easier to write than the algorithm to recognize and count the number of cancer cells in the images.

And she let me be a co-author on the IEEE paper about it...

(Roger- I had a good laugh over the first part.)

 

[healyzh]

So, I looked for some images from my QuickTake, and found those I had converted to TIFF years ago to show him. Finding the images, I attempted to open them in Photoshop CS4. It can't read the TIFF! Only Photoshop 7 and earlier can read TIFF 6.

I'm sorry, but I really have to question how accurate this statement is. The whole purpose of the TIFF format is that it is a high-quality image format suitable for image archival. I'm not sure what you mean though by "TIFF 6" how do you tell what version of the spec the image conforms to?

If CS4 won't open *ANY* TIFF file, I would first have to question if the file is corrupt, and if it is in fact a good file, I would classify this as a serious bug in Photoshop.

Of course as mentioned GraphicConverter should open just about any graphics file you might have. I've used it in years past to access some truly obscure formats.

There might be a real warning in here though for those of us that shoot RAW. For how long will Adobe continue to support our RAW formats?

 

[user237428934]

There are no computer problems that cannot be sorted out by anal-retentive nerds who don't even understand the third word in the phrase "Get a life."

Most innovations in film, chemistry, camera technology, etc. were brought to you by those person you call anal-rentivitve nerds. They do this so that you can get a life.

 

[Morca007]

There are no computer problems that cannot be sorted out by anal-retentive nerds who don't even understand the third word in the phrase "Get a life."

Pity about the rest of us.

As opposed to the anal-retentive nerds who can tell you more than you ever needed to know about film chemistry?

 

[Soothsayerman]

It's not digital obsolescence, it's software obsolescence; a subtle but significant distinction. Software goes out of date pretty quickly, that's why hanging on to old hardware software without updating is a bad idea.

iIf you really wanted to convert those files, there are plenty of programs that will do the job, you just have to look a bit.

 

[kuzano]

You get agreement here from me.

You get agreement here from me.

There are no computer problems that cannot be sorted out by anal-retentive nerds who don't even understand the third word in the phrase "Get a life."

Pity about the rest of us.

EDIT: Sorry, that sounds like a attack on Brian et al who posted while I was writing it (and barbecuing a shoulder of lamb at the same time). But most people just aren't interested in that degree of hassle. Just as they weren't interested in developing their own films -- though at least there was more incentive in terms of rapid gratification with film development than there is in the transmigration of image files. R.

Some would thank God for the "Protectors of the Digital Realm".

I use digital, but I certainly don't expect it to archive well. The required migration of digital format to changing media is certainly, as Roger mentions, relegated to the "anal-retentive nerds who don't even understand the third word in the phrase "Get a life."

I make my living on computers, but I am NO programmer, and will never be, just as I am NO film developer and not likely to become one.

There is no doubt in my mind that film is imminently more archiveable than digital will ever be. An industry that cannot be trouble with a concern for "standards" and "compatibility" is no place to look for permanence of media or file format longevity.

There will always be a way for the industry whiz kids to migrate the media forward, but it has to be done with relative consistency and is a constant process.

It's been a while since I looked at some history on TIF or TIFF, and when I did (for a class presentation) there were well over 40 different proprietary formats for TIFF alone, and that was based on a very short search.

Although APPLE now owns the copyright to TIFF, it wasn't always that way, and when Aldus came out with it in the mid eighties, many variations soon existed, both from Aldus and private programmers.

TIFF means Tagged image File Format, and exists in as many proprietary formats as there are programmers who want to tailor the code to their particular mindset.

Most file formatting is coded by very ego driven individuals who operate from the "My Way Is Best" position.

Hence, without some regulation to force a long standing standard, longevity will always be a shortcoming of digital media. Even now, in the area of RAW, many think the DNG format from Adobe will become a standard. Hah!

Naturally the OP and people who bring up this problem will always be *** ***'d and digital will be defended by those who are invested in digital and care naught for archiving.

I propose that the best archiving for digital media would be to take it to the final conclusion.... Analog. Output to a final print using archival products, inks, papers, and archival framing, or stored in darkness. Better yet, the digital community needs to make the last final step to archival media.... outputting digital image files to "FILM".

And Lastly, I agree with those who propose that there will always be a way to go back in time and find tools to open those old files. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for me), I have a life that does not include time to participate in such "hunts".

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Maybe we could have a poll on Anal Retentive vs Anal Expulsive and how early members were potty trained vs what field of engineering they went into.

I've worked with a lot of engineers and scientists, being at a research lab for 32 years now. Computer Scientists in the 70s and 80s tended to be "nerdier" than most. By the mid 80s, dealing with computers was pretty much part of every engineers life.

Personally, I found Roger's statement very funny. Nikki used some software I wrote in the 1980s for "scientific visualization" of data for her 5th grade science project. The teacher liked the graphs, she got an "A". Made it really worth writing. That, and I bought a new car in 1990 with the money I made off of it.

 

[sc_rufctr]

OK... Film or Digital?

B&W Film lasts for a very long time if it's properly processed and stored. I recently read that some may last beyond 500 years.
But Color is different. We all know it doesn't last like B&W does.

Digital... I guarantee you more digital images have already been lost to failed hard drives, carelessness and indifference.
But how important were the digital images in the first place?
If they were/are important they wouldn't have be lost but stored in such a way so that they can be retrieved and used as needed. (redundant backups etc)

I'm pretty sure non of the photos I've taken on film will change the world even though they may last for a very long time.
So how important is it that they are still viewable years after I'm gone?

There's only one reason I shoot film.
My pictures have more sole... More life than if they were shot using digital.
And that's it. it's not complicated or deep. It a personal and selfish thing. 🙂

 

[Colin Corneau]

So how important is it that they are still viewable years after I'm gone?

You can't really know, often times, until after the fact. Plenty of art discovered 'after the fact' or after a photographer's life ends. Maybe I'm veering into packrat territory but it's better to have it than not. Unless you're willing to pour an increasing amount of work into keeping up, digital doesn't allow you to do that.

The facts about digital archiving, kindly provided by people far more computer-literate than I, do point towards an interesting idea put forward by Jaron Lanier in "You Are Not a Gadget" -- that we end up working for our machines instead of the other way around...interesting reading there for those who want to track it down.

 

[igi]

Digital... I guarantee you more digital images have already been lost to failed hard drives, carelessness and indifference.
But how important were the digital images in the first place?
If they were/are important they wouldn't have be lost but stored in such a way so that they can be retrieved and used as needed. (redundant backups etc)

I can guarantee you as well that when digital files are properly stored, it can survive as long as Flickr, PBase and other image hosting sites are around.😛

I seriously believe that!

There's only one reason I shoot film.
My pictures have more sole... More life than if they were shot using digital.
And that's it. it's not complicated or deep. It a personal and selfish thing. 🙂

Glad you said that it was a personal view for it truly and will always be🙂

 

[back alley]

film or digital...no one seems to care for my images now so why worry about 15 years from now?

 

[Soothsayerman]

Some would thank God for the "Protectors of the Digital Realm".


And Lastly, I agree with those who propose that there will always be a way to go back in time and find tools to open those old files. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for me), I have a life that does not include time to participate in such "hunts".

Took me less than 10 secs to find a file converter doing a google search, you must be very busy indeed.:angel:

 

[Nikon Bob]

Oh Two

I would check your copy of CS4, Adobe seems to think it is compatible with Tiff files http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405978.html#main_Image_file_formats. It still seems to be some kind of standard file type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format.

Bob