The Nikon D3 makes everyone's life better, even mine!!!

"William Graham" wrote:
"Floyd L. Davidson" wrote in message
...
TH O wrote:
In article ,
"William Graham" wrote:

Date: 2070
Place: The attic of grandpa's old place, just before we put it on the
market.
Found in a box: A bunch of CD's with Grandpa's old pictures on
them.......

They are probably coasters because he used CD-Rs and didn't realize that
they are not archival media and can fail over years.

Found in a box: A bunch of grandpa's old slides.

Year: 2500
Place: Every Museum in the World

Found: Thousands of reproducable 500 year old digital images,
all as "new" as they were when taken.

Not Found: Even one surviving photograph that preceeded digital
archiving.

If they haven't melted from the attic heat, there is a greater chance of
them being viewable.

Viewable, but in horribly faded condition.


Which are more likely to be viewed and enjoyed by the grandkids? Will
the
computers of 2070 even be able to accept the CD's of 2008? And, even if
they
are, will the grandkids ever get around to actually installing them in a
machine? For sure, they won't have one with them in that attic. But they
will be able to hold a slide up to the light and look at it.

Not likely there will be any originals left by 2500, but I scan my slides
too, (The ones that are worth it) so there is some possibility that they
might make it till then. The question is, will there be anything in 2500 at
all?

The lifeforms on Mars may be sending probes by then, to
see if there actually used to be water on this planet...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Rita Berkowitz wrote:
John Sheehy wrote:
It's just a machine, sucker.

Yep, and it should be sold after 18-months of use.

Why?

Rita Berkowitz wrote:
The Dave© wrote:

If everything you've said about this in this thread is true, and I
have nothing with which to dispute it, then it seems that Canon
actually made the better long-term choice in changing everything to
EF as far as the customer is concerned.

I'm not sure about this. In my opinion FDs had much better build
quality, optics, and IQ than the EFs. Funny thing is Canon didn't
gain any ground in optical and IQ. Even a simple comparison of
Canon's overpriced 85/1.2 to Nikon's 85/1.4 clearly shows most Canon
shooters would rather have the Nikon because of the much better
optics and IQ. The list goes on. Canon's 16-35/2.8L II is still a
dog compared to Nikon's 17-35/2.8. And now with Nikon's 14-24/2.8
and 24-70/2.8 Canon is so far in the dust. The EF mounting system
bought Canon nothing more than a cheaper and easier to manufacture
mounting system at the expense of sacrificing what their customers
want and need.

Subjective and biased consumer reviews aside... why would the mounting
necessarily affect the glass itself?

Tony Polson wrote:
"The Dave©" wrote:

If everything you've said about this in this thread is true, and I
have nothing with which to dispute it, then it seems that Canon
actually made the better long-term choice in changing everything to
EF as far as the customer is concerned.

I agree. However, I suspect that neither you nor I had a big
investment in Canon FD lenses at the time the EOS system was
introduced.

A friend was heavily into Canon equipment and was very annoyed. Canon
had tried AF versions of the FD mount (in the T80 if I recall
correctly) and he felt reassured that Canon would stay with FD. When
they announced EOS, he was livid.

He is still using Canon T90s and FD lenses and still uses only film!

At the time all I had was a Minolta XG9 and a Vivitar zoom lens. It
wasn't until years later that I caught the 'photo bug', so I wasn't
even aware of the change over at the time. What I know is more from
reading and talking with people and trying to look at it in a
historical perspective.

The Dave© wrote:

At the time all I had was a Minolta XG9 and a Vivitar zoom lens. It
wasn't until years later that I caught the 'photo bug', so I wasn't
even aware of the change over at the time. What I know is more from
reading and talking with people and trying to look at it in a
historical perspective.


Didn't Minolta go through a similar process, with manual focus lenses
being incompatible with the (then) new AF mount?

The Dave© wrote:

Subjective and biased consumer reviews aside... why would the mounting
necessarily affect the glass itself?


The large diameter opening in the lens mount would allow larger rear
elements, and the very short film/sensor plane to lens flange distance
would allow optics that were not so dependent on retrofocus designs.

The irony is that, with the exception of the Tilt and Shift lenses,
Canon has never truly taken advantage of these two opportunities to
produce high quality optics, especially wide angle lenses.

I am very happy with my two Canon EOS 5D bodies, but most of the
lenses I use have "Carl Zeiss" engraved around the front element.

On 3/10/08 6:40 PM, in article , "Rita
Berkowitz" wrote:

Tony Polson wrote:

Subjective and biased consumer reviews aside... why would the
mounting necessarily affect the glass itself?

I put my money where my mouth is

Rita

I would guess so.

William Graham wrote:

Date: 2070
Place: The attic of grandpa's old place, just before we put it on the
market.
Found in a box: A bunch of CD's with Grandpa's old pictures on
them.......
Found in a box: A bunch of grandpa's old slides.

Which are more likely to be viewed and enjoyed by the grandkids? Will the
computers of 2070 even be able to accept the CD's of 2008?

Accept the CD's? Certainly. Why not? The survival of standards,
devices and the s/w to read them is growing, not fading. I can still
read late 80's 9 track tapes that I have stored. (But the data has
migrated else wise and more convenient to get at ...)

However, what is more likely is that the CD backups were
made with ordinary organic based CD or DVD's. These will go 5 - 10
years in benign (20'C or less, not humid) conditions. An uninsulated
attic will spend many months per year above 35'C or so... these disks
will be dead within a few years. The slides will be faded, perhaps, but
quite viewable. If you store the CD's in a very cool, dry place, they
might go 10 years or so.

To really archive reliably for decades you need to get the "metal" based
CD's and DVD's. They retail for a higher price, of course about $2 /
disk in spindles.

OTOH, the practice of migrating data on external drives has certainly
taken off. I just ordered a 1 TB drive; double the capacity of my
40% or so used 500 GB drive. We'll see how well "Time Machine" works.
The life of data on a hard disk is probably not much better than 5 - 10
years. Gotta move it around to preserve it.

For fire coverage, however, disk, CD/DVD or attic does not work well
(unless the CD/DVD's are stored off site).

Cheers,
Alan

--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:01:06 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

William Graham wrote:

Date: 2070
Place: The attic of grandpa's old place, just before we put it on the
market.
Found in a box: A bunch of CD's with Grandpa's old pictures on
them.......
Found in a box: A bunch of grandpa's old slides.

Which are more likely to be viewed and enjoyed by the grandkids? Will the
computers of 2070 even be able to accept the CD's of 2008?

Accept the CD's? Certainly. Why not? The survival of standards,
devices and the s/w to read them is growing, not fading. I can still
read late 80's 9 track tapes that I have stored. (But the data has
migrated else wise and more convenient to get at ...)

However, what is more likely is that the CD backups were
made with ordinary organic based CD or DVD's. These will go 5 - 10
years in benign (20'C or less, not humid) conditions. An uninsulated
attic will spend many months per year above 35'C or so... these disks
will be dead within a few years. The slides will be faded, perhaps, but
quite viewable. If you store the CD's in a very cool, dry place, they
might go 10 years or so.

To really archive reliably for decades you need to get the "metal" based
CD's and DVD's. They retail for a higher price, of course about $2 /
disk in spindles.

OTOH, the practice of migrating data on external drives has certainly
taken off. I just ordered a 1 TB drive; double the capacity of my
40% or so used 500 GB drive. We'll see how well "Time Machine" works.
The life of data on a hard disk is probably not much better than 5 - 10
years. Gotta move it around to preserve it.

For fire coverage, however, disk, CD/DVD or attic does not work well
(unless the CD/DVD's are stored off site).

Cheers,
Alan

FYI....

I recently decided to replace my CD backups, starting with the oldest CD...
aprox. 1998... since they are at the 10 year mark...

I had about 100 to do, and it took me a few months of leisurely after-work
activity... I moved them to a HD and then burned them onto both CDs and DVD's.

Of the 100 discs, I had 2 that had read errors. And only a few of the files were
bad, not the whole disk. Pretty good results I'd say... because of my multiple
backup philosophy, I didn't lose anything.

But the big problem?

Format!!

Lots of the discs were Direct CD, now called drag-and-drop, a form of packet
writing... Most disks were closed, but a few were open, but that didn't seem to
matter... these old format discs took 3.5 hours each to copy the files! I know I
timed a few!!

These disks had from a few hundred to a few thousand files, depending on type,
and you could watch the names slowly go by! 10,000 seconds IS a long time!

If you have packet discs I suggest you get started replacing them!

As for other storage problems, I have 3 bad HD's that were in my sock drawer...
it seems that putting a HD aside doesn't do any good... someone recently told me
they should be spun every month or so because the mech gets frozen... like your
old bike from the 60s in the back of the garage!

Did you ever open a HD to see what makes it tick? Those little parts look real
fragile!

Now I'm relying on massive DVD redundancy... every file on 3 or more discs...

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:01:06 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

William Graham wrote:

Date: 2070
Place: The attic of grandpa's old place, just before we put it on the
market.
Found in a box: A bunch of CD's with Grandpa's old pictures on
them.......
Found in a box: A bunch of grandpa's old slides.

Which are more likely to be viewed and enjoyed by the grandkids? Will
the
computers of 2070 even be able to accept the CD's of 2008?

Accept the CD's? Certainly. Why not? The survival of standards,
devices and the s/w to read them is growing, not fading. I can still
read late 80's 9 track tapes that I have stored. (But the data has
migrated else wise and more convenient to get at ...)

However, what is more likely is that the CD backups were
made with ordinary organic based CD or DVD's. These will go 5 - 10
years in benign (20'C or less, not humid) conditions. An uninsulated
attic will spend many months per year above 35'C or so... these disks
will be dead within a few years. The slides will be faded, perhaps, but
quite viewable. If you store the CD's in a very cool, dry place, they
might go 10 years or so.

To really archive reliably for decades you need to get the "metal" based
CD's and DVD's. They retail for a higher price, of course about $2 /
disk in spindles.

OTOH, the practice of migrating data on external drives has certainly
taken off. I just ordered a 1 TB drive; double the capacity of my
40% or so used 500 GB drive. We'll see how well "Time Machine" works.
The life of data on a hard disk is probably not much better than 5 - 10
years. Gotta move it around to preserve it.

For fire coverage, however, disk, CD/DVD or attic does not work well
(unless the CD/DVD's are stored off site).

Cheers,
Alan

FYI....

I recently decided to replace my CD backups, starting with the oldest
CD...
aprox. 1998... since they are at the 10 year mark...

I had about 100 to do, and it took me a few months of leisurely after-work
activity... I moved them to a HD and then burned them onto both CDs and
DVD's.

Of the 100 discs, I had 2 that had read errors. And only a few of the
files were
bad, not the whole disk. Pretty good results I'd say... because of my
multiple
backup philosophy, I didn't lose anything.

But the big problem?

Format!!

Lots of the discs were Direct CD, now called drag-and-drop, a form of
packet
writing... Most disks were closed, but a few were open, but that didn't
seem to
matter... these old format discs took 3.5 hours each to copy the files! I
know I
timed a few!!

These disks had from a few hundred to a few thousand files, depending on
type,
and you could watch the names slowly go by! 10,000 seconds IS a long time!

If you have packet discs I suggest you get started replacing them!

As for other storage problems, I have 3 bad HD's that were in my sock
drawer...
it seems that putting a HD aside doesn't do any good... someone recently
told me
they should be spun every month or so because the mech gets frozen... like
your
old bike from the 60s in the back of the garage!

Did you ever open a HD to see what makes it tick? Those little parts look
real
fragile!

Now I'm relying on massive DVD redundancy... every file on 3 or more
discs...

Definitely good advice.

I tend to split my efforts between maintaining an external USB HD backup,
and dual layer DVD's. I have a phobia about simply using multiple disks
written from the same drive. If the drive is slightly off in it's sector
writing, they can be useless in other drives.


But, at the first signal that dual layered disks are going the way of the
dodo, I'll be using an alternate secondary storage method.

Take Care,
Dudley