How long does film have?

[antiquark]

Could 4x5 and 8x10 photography keep film alive, or is it too tiny of a market segment to matter? As far as I know, there is no digital equivalent to large format. (Except for scanning backs, which are useful only for stationary scenes.)

From what I learned in university, a digital sensor of 4x5 or 8x10 in size would be mind-blowingly expensive to manufacture. Like on the order of $100,000 per unit.

 

[antiquark]

I'm sorry. In the past decade not a single common digital storage medium has been lost to the sands of time.

I think that looking 10 years in the past is not a reliable way to interpolate to 100 years in the future.

 

[climbing_vine]

I think that looking 10 years in the past is not a reliable way to interpolate to 100 years in the future.

I think you're wrong, specifically because I'm not only looking ten years in the past.

I'm comparing the arc of the consumer computer industry with the arc of every single other consumer industry in the history of mankind.

Once something is thoroughly commodified in the consumer sphere, seismic shifts do not come fast and furious. In the real world, people who wanted to save the data on their 5.25 floppies had years of overlap with other technologies to do so, and still can--and that was even before the commodifcation of the microcomputer industry was complete. There is simply nothing, nothing, in all of human history to lend credence to the idea that the media used by basically everyone in the western world to record most of their data will, with any swiftness whatsoever, become obsolete and unusable.

Point me to an exception, please. Nobody can, because none exist.

The point being, one more time: in the real world, people who care about their images will find film or digital exactly as easy to carry forward as the other.

People who don't, will without any doubt at all have less trouble getting files off a forgotten hard drive in 100 years than they would restoring a bunch of slides that have been molding in an attic for a century (someone will likely be able to do it, but it will cost five years' salary for the average person).

Face it: film and slides deteriorate and rot, are lost to fire, are simply ignored and never looked at. Almost nobody takes care of them properly. For those people, their digital files will be no less accessible in 50 or 100 years than their film images.

Nobody has been able to provide a rational support for the contrary viewpoint.

 

[pinafore2]

according to CIPA

according to CIPA

According to CIPA, Camera & Image Products Association, of Japan, film camera's are still built and exported from Japan.
I do not believe theese camera's are bought by people who intend to stop using film in just a few years.

Personally i believe that due to the evolution of digital media's the current stock of digital camera's will run out of memory-chips before we run short of film.

 

[Tuolumne]

I think the problem is with "dead". In truth, no manufacturable item is ever "dead". You can still make a flint knife out of a piece of flint rock by banging a stone against it. You can go hunting bears with your bare hands and your home made flint knife if you so choose. Nevertheless, hand made flint knives and bare handed hunting are "dead" as a way of getting food. They are a hobby of a few quirky individuals. We get our food in other ways now. In that sense - film is already dead. The main path of imaging development has left analogue technologies and is going in another direction. It doesn't mean there aren't and won't be hobbyists who continue on with it. And there will even be some money to make serving their needs. But a lot less than there used to be. And over time, the analogue film line will become more and more marginalized until it becomes - well, a bunch of people making flint knives by banging rocks against stone and going out to kill bear bare handed...

/T

 

[climbing_vine]

According to CIPA, Camera & Image Products Association, of Japan, film camera's are still built and exported from Japan.
I do not believe theese camera's are bought by people who intend to stop using film in just a few years.

Personally i believe that due to the evolution of digital media's the current stock of digital camera's will run out of memory-chips before we run short of film.

Huh??

What makes you think that memory chips are going to run out before film? I don't see that making any sense at all.

Also... there are nearly zero film cameras still in production that aren't one-time-use or dimestore junk. Not to mention that what people "intend" to do is irrelevant. What matters is whether there are enough of them to warrant keeping the current huge factories in production, or start up smaller new ones.

I'm not predicting the disappearance of film. I'm predicting the disappearance of consistent films usable in 35mm still cameras, sooner than we'd like.

 

[antiquark]

The point being, one more time: in the real world, people who care about their images will find film or digital exactly as easy to carry forward as the other.

I think you meant to say "in a perfect world."

People may care deeply about their images but may not have the knowledge or motivation or money to back them up repeatedly over the years. And even if someone doesn't care, who's to say that their children, or grandchildren, won't care? At least with a shoebox, the grandchildren can decide for themselves if the pictures are worthwhile.

As for your offer to decode outdated storage media, I have a few rolls of paper tape I've been trying to decipher... 🙄

 

[climbing_vine]

I think you meant to say "in a perfect world."

People may care deeply about their images but may not have the knowledge or motivation or money to back them up repeatedly over the years. And even if someone doesn't care, who's to say that their children, or grandchildren, won't care? At least with a shoebox, the grandchildren can decide for themselves if the pictures are worthwhile.

This is what I keep trying to say, and nobody has addressed. You have zero evidence, zilch, that that shoebox will be any more usable than a hard drive. All factors that I can think of say exactly the opposite.

Seriously, I want to know what makes you think this. Can you explain your reasoning, instead of just declaring it again and again?

As for your offer to decode outdated storage media, I have a few rolls of paper tape I've been trying to decipher... 🙄

You apparently missed the part of your own link where they offer use of their equipment to decipher any kind of paper tape made.

And if you're talking about the IBM standard "tape" or punch cards, the equipment to read them is not difficult to come by.

But, yet again--again!--this is a red herring anyway, as it is irrelevant to the topic of this discussion which is pervasive, establish CONSUMER markets! How come nobody wants to acknowledge this? It's one strawman after another...

 

[antiquark]

This is what I keep trying to say, and nobody has addressed. You have zero evidence, zilch, that that shoebox will be any more usable than a hard drive. All factors that I can think of say exactly the opposite.

Go to eBay.com and search for "photo album 1900". They exist! People are selling them! People are buying them! The photos are still visible! Is that good enough evidence? Or are you going to dismiss those ebay listings as elaborate hoaxes?

I really wish that I could find a 100 year old hard drive to test my theory, but alas, there were very few (if any) hard drives from the early 1900's.

But, yet again--again!--this is a red herring anyway, as it is irrelevant to the topic of this discussion which is pervasive, establish CONSUMER markets! How come nobody wants to acknowledge this? It's one strawman after another...

According to your own definition, the consumer market for digital storage is only ten years old. Of course it's not impossible to read digital data from the last decade. If you're willing to look beyond "digital data storage in the last decade" to other forms of information storage, I can think of a few that are either completely obsolete, or well on their way out.

 

[climbing_vine]

Go to eBay.com and search for "photo album 1900". They exist! People are selling them! People are buying them! The photos are still visible! Is that good enough evidence? Or are you going to dismiss those ebay listings as elaborate hoaxes?

I really wish that I could find a 100 year old hard drive to test my theory, but alas, there were very few (if any) hard drives from the early 1900's.

This is the crux of the issue. What percentage of the images taken do those represent? I daresay it's a tiny fraction of one percent.

And, again: irrelevant in a larger sense. You're talking about a period when very, very few people had cameras, so what pictures are available were treasured keepsakes like a family portrait painting.

I'll say it one more time, and I don't know how to be any more clear: we're talking about mature, pervasive, commodified consumer industries. Anything else is apples and oranges. It just is. If you disagree, you should have a compelling argument because it would be an extraordinary claim.

According to your own definition, the consumer market for digital storage is only ten years old. Of course it's not impossible to read digital data from the last decade. If you're willing to look beyond "digital data storage in the last decade" to other forms of information storage, I can think of a few that are either completely obsolete, or well on their way out.

Please, name one. I asked for this a number of times, and nobody has.

 

[Tuolumne]

"Go to eBay.com and search for "photo album 1900". They exist! People are selling them! People are buying them! The photos are still visible! Is that good enough evidence? Or are you going to dismiss those ebay listings as elaborate hoaxes?"

Preserve photographs? Yes.
Preserve negatives? Who gives a bleeping F****?

This is one of the points. If you want to preserve your heritage of images you better print them out and put them in archival albums. No one will give a ble*p about your negatives 50 years from now.

/T

 

[climbing_vine]

"Go to eBay.com and search for "photo album 1900". They exist! People are selling them! People are buying them! The photos are still visible! Is that good enough evidence? Or are you going to dismiss those ebay listings as elaborate hoaxes?"

Preserve photographs? Yes.
Preserve negatives? Who gives a bleeping F****?

This is one of the points. If you want to preserve your heritage of images you better print them out and put them in archival albums. No one will give a ble*p about your negatives 50 years from now.

/T

Well said. Thank you.

 

[Socke]

Go to eBay.com and search for "photo album 1900". They exist! People are selling them! People are buying them! The photos are still visible! Is that good enough evidence? Or are you going to dismiss those ebay listings as elaborate hoaxes?

I really wish that I could find a 100 year old hard drive to test my theory, but alas, there were very few (if any) hard drives from the early 1900's. .

And where would you buy those proven emulsions today?

 

[antiquark]

This is one of the points. If you want to preserve your heritage of images you better print them out and put them in archival albums. No one will give a ble*p about your negatives 50 years from now.

An ebay search for "negatives 1900" returns a few results too.

 

[Tuolumne]

An ebay search for "negatives 1900" returns a few results too.

No doubt in 2057 your great great grandchildren will have your negatives for sale on eBay with the comment:

"Our idiot great great grandfather left us this pile of plastic junk and we don't know what to do with it. Best offer takes it...or into the trash it goes." 😀

/T

 

[feenej]

One of my old profs from grad school maintains several old computers for the purpose of recovering data from obsolete storage media. Once in a while I refer people to him who need that service. I think it will be fairly easy to recover pictures from negatives in 2057. You just need to shine some light thru them, etc.

 

[Tuolumne]

One of my old profs from grad school maintains several old computers for the purpose of recovering data from obsolete storage media. Once in a while I refer people to him who need that service. I think it will be fairly easy to recover picutres from negatives in 2057. You just need to shine some light thru them, etc.

The point is --- who will care?

/T

 

[Pherdinand]

i don't know how long film has but mine is longer!😛
though i heard someone having a thousand feet roll in his fridge!
now that's long!

 

[Pherdinand]

i mean a thousand feet long film roll, of course
not something else 😀

 

[Socke]

Please, name one. I asked for this a number of times, and nobody has.

Syquest comes to mind, they had issues with the 200MB drives although mine works find, never had Bernulli drives but there where issues, too.

Iomega Jazz, my printer, offset not film, still has one or two 1GB drives in working condition, I think there was a 2GB version but I have never seen one so with one of those I'd have a problem.

In the 90s there was a phase change drive with media looking like a CD but totaly different, manufactured by Plasmon I think, wouldnt know how to read one today.

Anything magnetic is a problem, tape or floppy or Syquest or Zip or Jazz, you name it. I wouldn't trust my data more the three years to any magnetic medium, this includes harddrives. MO and DVD-RAM are my choice at the moment, those are good enough for the professionals so they should be good enough for me, oops, I am a professional 😀