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03/19/2007 04:27:47 PM · #51 |
Originally posted by kirbic:
The flexibility of digital more than makes up for this. |
This comment only makes sense if you care about convenience more than quality, though. Not that there is anything wrong with that. |
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03/19/2007 04:32:19 PM · #52 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by kirbic:
The flexibility of digital more than makes up for this. |
This comment only makes sense if you care about convenience more than quality, though. Not that there is anything wrong with that. |
Not really. If you want the ultimate image quality out of B+W film, you are stuck with very slow emulsions. Digital, on the other hand, produces much cleaner images up to ISO 400 or beyond, and the resolution does not lag even the slower films by all that much. DR is right there as well.
So in the final analysis, though digital may not lead in all characteristics under all conditions, it leads in many characteristics over a wide range of conditions. Thus the "flexibility" statement. Flexibility is not purely a synonym for convenience, and convenience is not necessarily inversely proportional to quality. |
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03/19/2007 04:35:45 PM · #53 |
Hell I just went and purchased FILMvsDIGITAL.com should be avaliable in 24 hours i might have a forum up within 48 just need to login and setup a mysql database.
You guys have inspired my next cruddy site lol.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 16:36:43. |
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03/19/2007 04:40:06 PM · #54 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by yann:
No offense but saying that there's a chance that your digital information won't be transferable to the next tech is ridiculous. |
Well, I'm just glad that my 8-track player, vinyl record player, tape deck, zip drive and 8" floppy drives are in working order. Also, I'm glad all the database work I did on a ZX spectrum 20 years ago is easily accessible.
Oh. Wait. It isn't. What a surprise.
At least all the new computers are coming with 3.5" floppy drives still.
Wouldn't want to not be able to access that stuff. Oh. Hmm.
Well, at least all the CD-Rs and DVDs I burned last year don't have any errors. I'm sure DVD drives will be around for ever. Like VHS players & floppy drives.
Well, most of them.
Nobody is saying you can't transfer the info to the next technology. We are just saying you (for large values of 'you') probably wont. At which point, eventually you wont be able to get access to the information, without spending a lot of money to get someone who spends their life maintaining dead technologies to do it.
There are companies that just exist to transfer VHS to DVD, or 8" floppy to CD or tape info to DVD. Because the technology to access the information is expensive to the point of being prohibitive now.
And that assumes you can even do anything with the data when you get it. There isn't much hope that you'll be able to process your great grand dad's RAW files in 100 years time. But you could probably still optically print his negatives. |
It's so easy to convert any raw format to another format like DNG, you have to keep up with the technology and you won't have any problem. When the newer techs will come out, there will always be a period of time to easily and cheaply convert everything to the newest format. Of course if you waited until today to convert your 8" floppy , you're gonna have to pay more. I guess it's time for you to move your 3-1/2 floppys to DVD and catch the wave while floppy drives cost 10$ and DVDs are standard. VHS is still very easily and cheaply transferable to DVD with a cheap video card that's got the right input. Tapes are still used alot so I don't see the problem. It's not like you only have a couple of months to tranfer your stuff before it becomes pricey to do so. There's plenty of time, its just that people tend to neglect and think that their backups will last forever and ever.
About your DVDs, if you're scared of losing the data that's on them, you can always use a raid setup and make a copy to an external drive. You can even upload your stuff online nowadays since the speeds are fast enough. If you lose your information, it's because you didn't take care of it enough or you just ignored the fact that technologies change. Like, don't wait 10 years to move your precious information from 3-1/2 floppies to something else and everything will be fine.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 16:46:01. |
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03/19/2007 04:42:24 PM · #55 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
At least all the new computers are coming with 3.5" floppy drives still.
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SInce when? You can buy them new but 90% of the computers ive looked at don't.
When we bought my HP a340n 3 years ago it did and 6 months later all consumer HP's had dropped floppy drives.
A quick trip and no more then 12 bucks and u can get an internal or 19 and you get a USB external. Last time i looked at floppy drives was on tigerdirect.com.
Since the death of my last laptop without a cdrom drive ive stopped using them. But when i had that laptop up and running i had to do it either via floppy or network it had no USB and the damn USB pcmcia card wouldnt work.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 16:44:01. |
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03/19/2007 04:45:40 PM · #56 |
Originally posted by yann:
There's plenty of time, its just that people tend to neglect and think that their backups will last forever and ever. |
You are right. It is all easy if people expend the effort to maintain their archives. History shows us that most people won't.
There's going to be a few generations of lost photographs, from about the late 80's until some good solution comes up.
I can't even find a workable, affordable solution to backup the images that I take, right now.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 16:51:39. |
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03/19/2007 04:46:08 PM · #57 |
| What if you, say, found your great-grandfather's photo collection in the attic. And suppose he shot digital. And there you are, in the year 2100, with a bunch of worthless CDs that maybe only a few museums on the planet can read. |
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03/19/2007 04:46:35 PM · #58 |
Originally posted by RainMotorsports:
Originally posted by Gordon:
At least all the new computers are coming with 3.5" floppy drives still.
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SInce when? You can buy them new but 90% of the computers ive looked at don't. |
I didn't realise such blatant sarcasm would be so hard to grasp.
Ho hum. |
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03/19/2007 04:51:46 PM · #59 |
Originally posted by lament:
What if you, say, found your great-grandfather's photo collection in the attic. And suppose he shot digital. And there you are, in the year 2100, with a bunch of worthless CDs that maybe only a few museums on the planet can read. |
In 2100 when the chemicals are not sold as "photography" supplies, you'll have to be a chemist to figure it out. Soooo... :-)
This archival stuff is not convincing me much.
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03/19/2007 04:52:09 PM · #60 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by RainMotorsports:
Originally posted by Gordon:
At least all the new computers are coming with 3.5" floppy drives still.
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SInce when? You can buy them new but 90% of the computers ive looked at don't. |
I didn't realise such blatant sarcasm would be so hard to grasp.
Ho hum. |
Gordon. its DPC.. :) |
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03/19/2007 04:52:58 PM · #61 |
Originally posted by marksimms:
Gordon. its DPC.. :) |
Some days I forget, Mark, that's all. |
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03/19/2007 05:02:39 PM · #62 |
Originally posted by lament:
What if you, say, found your great-grandfather's photo collection in the attic. And suppose he shot digital. And there you are, in the year 2100, with a bunch of worthless CDs that maybe only a few museums on the planet can read. |
Btw CDs are expected to last only 75-100 years MAX. After 5-10 years, you should expect to lose a part of the data too.
But anyways, to answer your question, think of it this way:
You have a technology that was used 100 years ago and that's been improved upon alot in the last decades. Even if there is no more CD drive on the planet, it's always gonna be possible to rebuild one from scratch or find some other way to extract the data IF THE DATA IS WORTH THE EFFORT.
If it's not worth the price, then just drop it, it's like everything in life. |
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03/19/2007 05:05:22 PM · #63 |
Originally posted by yann:
Originally posted by lament:
What if you, say, found your great-grandfather's photo collection in the attic. And suppose he shot digital. And there you are, in the year 2100, with a bunch of worthless CDs that maybe only a few museums on the planet can read. |
Btw CDs are expected to last only 75-100 years MAX. After 5-10 years, you should expect to lose a part of the data too.
But anyways, to answer your question, think of it this way:
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Actually, you made the point by here. There isn't going to be data to recover in most cases. A few CDs might survive, but most of the images from our generation will be lost. |
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03/19/2007 05:07:49 PM · #64 |
Soon you'll be able to put a LOT of pictures on a single Blu Ray DVD disc. I know 25-30 GB, probably more later.
Can you do HDR (Color or B/W) prints from a film camera? Probably not easily, with WYSIWYG results.
Sorry, I don't see any advantages to a film camera.
There is always the Hasselblad 39 Megapixal that may be close to larger format film cameras. |
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03/19/2007 05:11:32 PM · #65 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by yann:
There's plenty of time, its just that people tend to neglect and think that their backups will last forever and ever. |
You are right. It is all easy if people expend the effort to maintain their archives. History shows us that most people won't.
There's going to be a few generations of lost photographs, from about the late 80's until some good solution comes up.
I can't even find a workable, affordable solution to backup the images that I take, right now. |
Here's one:
Use raid1 on your computer and backup to an external HD too. That's a very cheap solution. If you want even more protection (in case of fire), configure an additional backup over internet. It's possible to do that very cheaply too. Both of these methods combined = super protection at a very affordable price.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 17:14:10. |
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03/19/2007 05:13:36 PM · #66 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by yann:
Originally posted by lament:
What if you, say, found your great-grandfather's photo collection in the attic. And suppose he shot digital. And there you are, in the year 2100, with a bunch of worthless CDs that maybe only a few museums on the planet can read. |
Btw CDs are expected to last only 75-100 years MAX. After 5-10 years, you should expect to lose a part of the data too.
But anyways, to answer your question, think of it this way:
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Actually, you made the point by here. There isn't going to be data to recover in most cases. A few CDs might survive, but most of the images from our generation will be lost. |
That's if you don't really care and let your CDs die in the attic.
If you care about your data, you will transfer your CDs to your hard drive and use active backup solutions like raid1 and network backups.
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03/19/2007 05:15:12 PM · #67 |
Originally posted by fotomann_forever:
In 2100 when the chemicals are not sold as "photography" supplies, you'll have to be a chemist to figure it out. Soooo... :-)
This archival stuff is not convincing me much. |
You don't need chemicals to scan a bunch of negatives. It's fairly safe to assume that scanning technology will be available for as long as computers are. And even before scanning the negatives, you'd at least be able to tell what's on them, just by looking at them.
And if they're prints, you don't even need to scan them - they're ready to be put on a wall. I haven't heard of any archival-quality digital prints. |
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03/19/2007 05:15:31 PM · #68 |
Wow, so much to chew on.
Folks, we'll all be shooting whatever the market dictates whether we like it or not. You will be able to shoot film for a very long time regardless of which way the market goes. I'm just not sure how far the costs will go up. You can still make Daguerreotypes, there are tons of summer workshops on this very approach, but it's relatively expensive. As a high school photography teacher (where we have to supply many of the materials for our students) I am painfully aware of how quickly it's becoming difficult and expensive to get materials. It's happening much faster than people could possibly have expected.
You have to shoot what gets the results you need and has a work flow that you enjoy and are willing to invest your time in. I would argue that it's good to have an understanding of how to shoot film, but that will become less and less necessary. But it will teach some good habits about carefull composition instead of just shoot, shoot, shoot and hope for the best. This idea of deleting images off the camera is painfully illustrated by a film photographer who got the notorious photo of Monica Lewinski hugging Bill Clinton in the line. He said he was surrounded by other's shooting digital who deleted that shot off of their cameras, because at the time she was no one. When the story broke, he recognized her and went back to his film and printed that shot which was on the cover of every major news magazine and newspaper in the country. So ease back on the delete key.
The idea that Medium Format film somehow surpasses all digital processes is not necessarily true. I would argue that a Medium Format Digital Hasselblad is pretty strong, otherwise professionals wouldn't be forking out 30,000 for them.
I agree that there's almost no reason to work with 35mm for color anymore. As far as wanting to have the grain and noise of film, there are emulaters that work quite well. See Alien Skin.
I would disagree that B&W digital is not there yet. I worked for years shooting only Medium Format film and have recently gone back and reshot some subjects digitally and printed them using the new Epson inksets and I have stumped University level photo teachers as to which is the traditional and which is the digital print. If their archival tests are accurate, that's not a reason to avoid digital prints either.
If you look at Lenswork magazine, a top notch publication in my opinion, which is devoted to completly Black and White, you will find they have more and more portfolios that are coming from a digital workflow.
Check out film and work in a darkroom. It's therapeutic. It's a process.
Both are valid, both can be used to create beautiful art. Trying to say one is better than the other is pointless. It's about which method will accomplish your goals.
Now, go take some pictures. ; )
PS D-76 is film developer, Dektol is paper developer ; ) But you may have been referring to which one you preferred the smell of? |
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03/19/2007 05:16:07 PM · #69 |
Originally posted by yann:
Here's one:
Use raid1 on your computer and backup to an external HD too. That's a very cheap solution. If you want even more protection (in case of fire), configure an additional backup over internet. It's possible to do that very cheaply too. Both of these methods combined = super protection at a very affordable price.
It's not really expensive |
I currently have over 1Tb of on-line RAID 5 storage. I typically produce about 10-20Gb of images a month in a slow month. That amount in a day isn't unheard of. After editing, many files can be about 250Mb each. Online redundant storage for that is fine - costs about $1000 or so. But it is still vulnerable to disk failure, lightning strike/ surge damage, virus or user stupidity. Any time you have 1 digital copy of anything (and I'd include one copy on a RAID array) you are just waiting to lose it. It is simply a matter of time.
Backing that all up to another 1Tb array might make sense, but it would need to be somehow isolated electrically and logically - unplugging is probably the easiest way. But then it is still at fire/theft risk.
Offline/off site backup costs & storage is the main issue. Along with the practical issues of actually making and maintaining those backups. A typical day's shooting would require 4 or more DVDs to backup properly, ignoring the time that takes and the disk swapping required.
A month would probably require 40 DVDs.
Internet off-site backup isn't really practical. Maybe Blu-ray/ HD-DVD formats will finally get to a sane price point, but I'd assume the image generation & file sizes will have caught up.
Message edited by author 2007-03-19 17:22:37. |
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03/19/2007 05:20:11 PM · #70 |
Originally posted by lament:
You don't need chemicals to scan a bunch of negatives. |
You assume the film has been developed. :-)
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03/19/2007 05:27:35 PM · #71 |
Give me digital any day.. My Film SLR is a tempermental old thing!
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03/19/2007 05:30:14 PM · #72 |
Originally posted by lament:
I haven't heard of any archival-quality digital prints. |
//www.shutterbug.com/features/1103sb_thearchival/
//www.wilhelm-research.com/ |
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03/19/2007 05:31:09 PM · #73 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by yann:
Here's one:
Use raid1 on your computer and backup to an external HD too. That's a very cheap solution. If you want even more protection (in case of fire), configure an additional backup over internet. It's possible to do that very cheaply too. Both of these methods combined = super protection at a very affordable price.
It's not really expensive |
I currently have over 1Tb of on-line RAID 5 storage. I typically produce about 10-20Gb of images a month in a slow month. That amount in a day isn't unheard of. After editing, many files can be about 250Mb each. Online redundant storage for that is fine - costs about $1000 or so. But it is still vulnerable to disk failure, lightning strike/ surge damage, virus or user stupidity. Any time you have 1 digital copy of anything (and I'd include one copy on a RAID array) you are just waiting to lose it. It is simply a matter of time.
Backing that all up to another 1Tb array might make sense, but it would need to be somehow isolated electrically and logically - unplugging is probably the easiest way. But then it is still at fire/theft risk.
Offline/off site backup costs & storage is the main issue. Along with the practical issues of actually making and maintaining those backups. A typical day's shooting would require 4 or more DVDs to backup properly, ignoring the time that takes and the disk swapping required.
A month would probably require 40 DVDs.
Internet off-site backup isn't really practical. Maybe Blu-ray/ HD-DVD formats will finally get to a sane price point, but I'd assume the image generation & file sizes will have caught up. |
Yeah it can be a pain in the ass if you have huge amount of pictures. Imagine the pain if you were shooting all that on film hahaha... |
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03/19/2007 05:42:25 PM · #74 |
Originally posted by yann:
Yeah it can be a pain in the ass if you have huge amount of pictures. Imagine the pain if you were shooting all that on film hahaha... |
That doesn't help though, does it :) I wish there was an actual, useful solution for digital. I've yet to hear what it is though. |
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03/19/2007 05:47:14 PM · #75 |
Saying that there won't be a means of reading current data files in the future is ridculous. Floppy and zip drives don't even count or matter. How many digital images can you fit on a floppy disk? Maybe 1/4th? Zip disks kinda went the way of the dodo bird when CD's came out. As far as CD->DVD->Bluray/HDDVD goes, they are ALL backwards compatible. And I'd imagine that anything developed later on will also be backwards compatible. Tons of stuff still comes on CDs and they will be used for a very long time to come, same thing goes for DVDs. Bluray and HDDVD are both very new and very expensive, but does anyone remember how much a DVD player was costing in 2000? Time will just bring that cost down to a reasonable level. Hard drives are getting cheaper and cheaper every day and as far as an interface goes, i doubt that would be much of an issue. IDE drives from years ago can still be used on a computer today. There are going to be advances, definitely, but I doubt all these companies are going to shoot themselves in the foot by cutting off all these things that are so huge right now. If they do get cut off, it will be a transition with a reasonable cost (ie. VHS to DVD or tape to CD). Just my 2 cents.
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