Film preservation 2.0

[kbg32]

"Digital technology offers a chance for perfect, lossless preservation, but only at significant financial cost, and higher risk of catastrophe. Unless the unique challenges of digital preservation are met, we run the risk of a future in which a film from 1894 printed on card stock has a better chance of surviving than a digital film from 2014."

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/429-film-preservation-20/

 

[kshapero]

Me loves film. But people laugh at me. Me thinks me might have the last laugh.

 

[mwoenv]

It's a real issue.

The U.S. Libray of Congress's initiatives: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/series/challenge/

Interesting that they are working with Flickr to make their photos more accessible to the public.

 

[Photo_Smith]

It's interesting how governments are using microfilm to store digital originals:
Long term archiving of Digital data on microfilm

The benefits being cheap long term both analogue (for quick identification) and digital storage on the same sheet of film.

 

[jsrockit]

The challenges will be met. Film has been lost before too.

 

[Texsport]

The chance of catastrophe is real for digital images.

I have a relative who recently lost thousands of images while attempting to back up her digital files.

She was being instructed by 3 "geniuses", as they call themstves, at Apple through the whole operation.

Apple technicians later admitted to her that there is a problem with Apple's photo programs, resulting in numerous customer digital image losses.

Apple is not equipted to retrieve data off customer hard drives, and offered the name of a company which might be able to attempt retrieval - but with the likely sacrifice of her iPad.

I've heard a discussion of a class action law suite being thrown around over the issue.

I shoot film almost exclusively!

Texsport

 

[Ko.Fe.]

OK. Lets talk about redundancy here.

OP used "catastrophe" word.
In broadcast industry we have now "disaster recovery site" term.
It means digitally stored media is redundantly positioned at alternative location in case if catastrophic events occurred on the main site of broadcasting organisation.

This is short term redundancy. Because main problem with digital images is in relatively short life of storage solutions. Floppies and SCSI drives are absolute now. Digital tapes libraries are facing same kind of challenge. Drives to read those digital tapes are going out of support much sooner comparing to digital tape life.
It means in long term it is necessary to migrate digital archives to supported media. Which isn't cost effective yet.

Maybe giving the image to free public access, no copyrights, on the Internet is good alterative. If image is interesting and valuable it will be naturally duplicated on different (up to date) media and locations constantly.

Wet printing with archival solutions is still good method to not only preserve the image, but make it directly accessible even if here is no power anymore in the wall power outlet.

And most effective method is to make it on the stone, still. 🙂

 

[kbg32]

For digital files, the only way to ensure safety is to have multiple backups of all files you want to keep. Hard drives are cheap compared to lost imagery.

 

[Rangefinderfreak]

have you heard of a ROM called "Film"... you lift it against sunlight and you can read the image.. as long as there is "sun"...