kshapero
South Florida Man
With film I can actually hold the neg. The original film itself. Is there anything to actually hold with digital. A SD card? A Hard Drive? Are they the same as holding in one's hand a neg? Once you really think about it, are your images really all that "safe" with digital? I invite rebuttals, opinions and informative disagreements.
antiquark
Derek Ross
Never occurred to me. In fact, I prefer to look at images on a computer rather than paper.
Al Kaplan
Veteran
Maybe it's just my ego talking, but I like knowing that if somebody runs into my negatives off in the future somewhere they can hold them up, see that there's a picture there, and figure out how to make a positive from it, whatever the available hardware might be, rather than wondering if they're drink coasters, some sort of Frisby, or those things Grandpa used to buy at the music store to hear the latest rock and roll...whatever that was.
kshapero
South Florida Man
I back up my digital data to a DVD. I store my BW negs in an air conditioned room. 40 years later I die. 50 more years past by. Someone finds my DVD and my negs. I am betting that the negs will be usable and the DVD won't.
Yammerman
Well-known
I enjoy the looking at the digital images on a screen but nothing really counts for me unless it's a print. I like the idea of photographs as objects wet or digital.
Bassism
Well-known
I find a tactile satisfaction in touching and looking at a negative that just can't be matched by a few 1s and 0s on a magnetic platter, but as far as the photograph goes, a negative is no more valuable to me than a RAW file.
I don't believe in all this worry about digital formats disappearing. As long as you pay attention to the lifespan of the media, move the files to newer formats as necessary, and don't just lock a cd-r in a cupboard for the next twenty years, I don't see any problem keeping the digital files around.
I don't believe in all this worry about digital formats disappearing. As long as you pay attention to the lifespan of the media, move the files to newer formats as necessary, and don't just lock a cd-r in a cupboard for the next twenty years, I don't see any problem keeping the digital files around.
RichC
Well-known
No - but then I've never used film!
My friends and I are always sending images and communicating digitally, so, for me, digital images seem normal and negatives somewhat quaint (a bit like using a fountain pen instead of a biro).
Anyway, I can always make archival prints (which I do for exhibitions, competitions, etc.)
My friends and I are always sending images and communicating digitally, so, for me, digital images seem normal and negatives somewhat quaint (a bit like using a fountain pen instead of a biro).
Anyway, I can always make archival prints (which I do for exhibitions, competitions, etc.)
Tuolumne
Veteran
Nope, doesn't bother me at all. I can make a print and hold that in my hand, if I want something in the hand. There's nothing like a digital image viewed on a large, high res computer screen. Even beats projecting slides.
/T
/T
bradfordco
Member
I prefer digital, as I date categorize every photos, I then print the good ones in a book for everyone to view.
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, be they pixels or gelatin. Don't really care if my images outlive me (and I bet few others care about them, either).
Al Kaplan
Veteran
On occasion I'll get a request for photographs of some event, or even a well known person, perhaps at ANY event, from that era. A couple of weeks ago I mailed off some prints of a Jefferson Airplane concert from 1969. A few months earlier it was a rock festival at the Hollywood Seminole Reservation, also shot in the late sixties. Perhaps a year ago it was photos of Miccosukee and Seminole Indians from the 1970's. Lately I've been searching my files for any photos that might have an image of some former neighbors of mine...from 1966. They tracked me down via a Google search for their grandparents' names. I found some pix, but now I'm hoping to find some more, maybe party pix, where one or both of them appear.
I've taken a lot of photos of local young attorneys, fresh out of law school. I still have the negatives and contacts I shot for a magazine who was doing a story about the first female hired on by the Dade County State Attorney's office nearly forty years ago, When Janet Reno became Attorney General of the United States suddenly they had value. I really doubt that I would have backed up and copied and recopied all of those digital files all these years. They weren't digital to begin with. The negatives are still just fine!
I've taken a lot of photos of local young attorneys, fresh out of law school. I still have the negatives and contacts I shot for a magazine who was doing a story about the first female hired on by the Dade County State Attorney's office nearly forty years ago, When Janet Reno became Attorney General of the United States suddenly they had value. I really doubt that I would have backed up and copied and recopied all of those digital files all these years. They weren't digital to begin with. The negatives are still just fine!
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sebastel
coarse art umbrascriptor
ever heard of the concept of a printer?
S
Socke
Guest
Yes. Imagine three identical copies stored in San Francisco, Miami and Naples. Have you ever heard about an earthquake in California and a hurricane in Florida happening at the same time with a volcanic eruption in Italy?
back alley
IMAGES
2 things...
1. i can't get a finger print on a digital file
2. after i am dead i really could care less what happens to my stuff
1. i can't get a finger print on a digital file
2. after i am dead i really could care less what happens to my stuff
Matus
Well-known
I am not really concerned that I can not "hold" my digital shots. I am much more concerned about how they look printed ...
... and what concerns the readability over next 50 or 100 years - that is easy. If I ever created anything that will be praised by the society - it will surely survive no matter the medium. Most probably if anyone finds and old film or DVD of mine long after I am gone - it will go directly to the trash bin (separated waste I hope
). Our society produces such huge amounts (plastic bags, photographs, mobile phones, false boobs, safety regulations ... you name it) of everything that very little will be picked up and remembered. I can live with the fact that I photograph mostly for my self and maybe my friends.
... but this was a bit round about way to answer the original question I guess :angel:
... and what concerns the readability over next 50 or 100 years - that is easy. If I ever created anything that will be praised by the society - it will surely survive no matter the medium. Most probably if anyone finds and old film or DVD of mine long after I am gone - it will go directly to the trash bin (separated waste I hope
). Our society produces such huge amounts (plastic bags, photographs, mobile phones, false boobs, safety regulations ... you name it) of everything that very little will be picked up and remembered. I can live with the fact that I photograph mostly for my self and maybe my friends.... but this was a bit round about way to answer the original question I guess :angel:
rbiemer
Unabashed Amateur
I like the idea of a physical artifact Though I don't get too worried about it for my own photos.
That said I inherited my grandfather's Argus and a bunch of slides and I absolutely treasure that connection to him--the certainty that he used that camera to take these slides. Not especially rational but I'm not Spock. I don't use that camera very often because the smell of the camera and bag strongly remind me of him also and I never want that smell to dissipate. To be fair that may be all in my head by now. Least of my delusions though so I'm not worried. Yet.
Rob
That said I inherited my grandfather's Argus and a bunch of slides and I absolutely treasure that connection to him--the certainty that he used that camera to take these slides. Not especially rational but I'm not Spock. I don't use that camera very often because the smell of the camera and bag strongly remind me of him also and I never want that smell to dissipate. To be fair that may be all in my head by now. Least of my delusions though so I'm not worried. Yet.
Rob
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
I am concerned with the state of the economy.
I am in the least concerned I cannot hold a digital image. As long as it's retrievable and printable, it is the least of my concerns.
I am in the least concerned I cannot hold a digital image. As long as it's retrievable and printable, it is the least of my concerns.
RichC
Well-known
An aside...
An aside...
Al K. reminded me that I should've mentioned that I do back up systematically - all automated, so I don't have to remember to do it.
As others have said, advances in media over the years won't be a problem if you're on the ball about backing up; shouldn't even require much effort either, if you've devised an efficient system. (An "efficient system" is not simply copying everything onto CDs/DVDs, and shoving them in a box to gather dust!! Changing media would then be tedious, to say the least!)
If we end up with photos on corrupted or outdated media, then its entirely our own fault - exactly the same as if storing negatives in a damp cupboard...
An aside...
Al K. reminded me that I should've mentioned that I do back up systematically - all automated, so I don't have to remember to do it.
As others have said, advances in media over the years won't be a problem if you're on the ball about backing up; shouldn't even require much effort either, if you've devised an efficient system. (An "efficient system" is not simply copying everything onto CDs/DVDs, and shoving them in a box to gather dust!! Changing media would then be tedious, to say the least!)
If we end up with photos on corrupted or outdated media, then its entirely our own fault - exactly the same as if storing negatives in a damp cupboard...
bmattock
Veteran
This discussion has been had many times on RFF. You may have posted the question in innocence, but most who post it do so fully intending to once again proclaim the goodness of film and the badness of digital. If that is your intent, I invite you to go soak your head. If not, here is my reply.
Your bank (I presume you have one) does not store your financial records on paper, and hasn't for decades. They store those records digitally, on tape, hard drives, and other optical or electro-magnetic media. They store them in secure locations, redundantly, and they have and practice using BUR (backup and restore) on a regular basis, including having offsite third-party data centers located in other physical locations where they could take their data and restore in a matter of days even presuming the worst possible natural disaster.
As you may be aware, the 9/11 attacks on the USA were intended to bring down the financial center by attacking the twin towers. Do you know how much money was lost out of bank holder's accounts on account of the attacks, which utterly wiped out the financial records of several banks and brokerages? None. Not one penny was lost.
At the same time, 40,000 negatives of the John F. Kennedy years in office, the vast majority of them unprinted and unscanned, were destroyed when the towers fell. They were not recovered. The only remaining copies were those few negatives which had been printed over the years, which were scanned from the remaining prints. All was lost. They won't be back. They're gone.
Digital media is prone to failure. So is film. Entropy and natural and physical disasters ensure that nothing will last forever. Film, left to itself in a safe protected environment, may outlast digital media, such as a floppy disk or a CD or DVD.
However, digital media is not and was never intended to be a permanent storage solution. It is understood (by all those who are not complete luddites or flaming a-holes) that copies must be kept, and media must be updated. Unlike, say, 35mm film, which has remained unchanged in format for over a century, digital storage methods continue to change. A 5 1/4" floppy disk, even a 3.5 inch disk, is unlikely to be readable with the typical PC today, which lacks such drives entirely.
That means that the responsibility to maintain digital files is on the owner or caretaker of those files. Whether they are financial records or digital photos, the methods used for storage, backup, and recovery are the same.
Having recognized that one has a responsibility to maintain one's own digital photos, one must then decide to what extent one is willing to go. You can spend a lot or a little. You can devise complex schemes or simple ones. You can cut corners or not. There are levels of security, and it is up to the person whose photos they are to decide to what extent they wish to go.
The first problem to deal with is redundancy. Disks and drives fail, so duplicate (at the minimum) copies are a necessity. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, from using external drives (USB, Firewire, etc) to burning multiple copies on DVD.
The second problem is locality. Your home or office represents a single point of failure. If (God forbid) your home should burn down or be hit with a natural disaster of some sort, having your photos on two hard drives will not help you. So it behooves one to keep one's photos in more than one location. A friend or relative's house, hired third-party offsite storage, etc, etc. Fortunately, this is where digital media outshines film. Film copies are, by nature, inferior to the originals, even if only slightly. Subsequent copies of copies are more degraded yet. Digital files are exact. One file is the same as another, perfectly, if copied bit-for-bit, which is the normal method. So multiple copies stored in multiple locations are not only do-able, but they are also exact duplicates.
Having said this, there are those who proclaim this to be 'too much work'. Well, that is their choice, of course. However, it is what is required if one wants to protect their images. If one does not care what happens to one's images, then there is no reason to bother with backups, duplicates, remote storage, etc. It depends on what value you place on your work.
I have a friend who came back from a trip of a lifetime to Alaska, and he was very angry and upset because he had two compact flash microdrives of photos, and one of them failed. He had not copied the photos to his laptop or any other media while he was in Alaska, although he had his laptop with him, along with a card reader, so he could have done so. He did not blame digital - it wasn't the fault of digital. It was his fault.
He told me that years previous, he had dropped a critical roll of film over a bridge while standing on it taking photos and he tried to change rolls and got fumble-fingers. That was also his fault (and very bad luck), not the fault of film.
Digital media can fail. If that is understood, precautions can be taken. Failing to take those precautions is not the fault of the media, but of the person.
As an aside - anyone who imagines that in the years and decades after they shuffle off this mortal coil, some grandson or great-granddaughter will be holding your negatives up to the light to try to figure out what kind of person you were needs to take a closer look at eBay. Five minutes after you're dead, your children will have your precious cameras and lenses on eBay, and your treasured and well-preserved negatives will be at the local dump. Refer to the multiple posts by newbies on RFF that begin "I just inherited this camera from my granddad...what's it worth?"
gb hill
Veteran
I guess this is where a good ink jet printer comes in. I don't shoot digital, but a great photograph should be displayed not just stored away! Sites like flickr are great for sharing, I love flickr, but nothing beats a lovely image hanging on a wall. As far as archival storage goes, only time will tell how well a digital file will last. As far as negatives from film cameras, I have good negs from my grandparents dating back from early 1900's in great condition.