Sad news for film-based photography

McLeod wrote:

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 13:49:46 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:


The article at dpreview gives the e-mail addresses of the principles at K-M,
Fuji and Kodak. I've written to them stating the archival longevity problem
that needs to be cracked for their effort to be truly meaningful (in the context
of "Picture Archiving".)

I would urge everyone with an interest in the matter to write to them as well,
highlighting the problem of archive material longevity. See below for e-mail
addresses.



http://www.pictureline.com/computers...itsuimore.html

Well aware of the 'gold' CD's...

I've never heard that they are guaranteed forever ... in fact that page has no
guarantee or warranty at all ... just claims.

I've never heard of anyone using one over 5 years with 0 errors (or the contrary).

I'd love for it to be true, just haven't seen the evidence (other than their
claim of accelerated life cycle testing).

Cheers,
Alan


--
-- rec.photo.equipment.35mm user resource:
-- http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
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On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 13:49:46 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:


The article at dpreview gives the e-mail addresses of the principles at K-M,
Fuji and Kodak. I've written to them stating the archival longevity problem
that needs to be cracked for their effort to be truly meaningful (in the context
of "Picture Archiving".)

I would urge everyone with an interest in the matter to write to them as well,
highlighting the problem of archive material longevity. See below for e-mail
addresses.


http://www.pictureline.com/computers...itsuimore.html

"jjs" wrote in message ...
"Nils Rostedt" wrote in message
...
[...]
I'm happy to see that industry is awake and look forward to see the
results.
//Nils

Link: http://konicaminolta.com/releases/2004/0927_01_01.html

When those people use the word "archival", I hope they mean the same thing
Henry Wilhelm does, but I seriously doubt it. Let's hope Wilhelm can find
time to be on the case.

And you all know that DNG is already available to settle one part of the
picture, right?
http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html

But none, absolutely none of these efforts address the issue of archival
storage.

That's about like complaining that a great new food preservative doesn't
address the need for better refridgerators. Would you REALLY expect these
two things to come from the same folks????????

Of course not.

"J" wrote in message
...

You mean that given a spec (like JPEG/DNG) and a binary file, people in
the
future won't be able to determine how to read it? I find this hard to
believe. The file is not the problem, the problem is the media it is
stored
on.

I agree, J. Our history of forgotten formats is what makes the present more
solid. We are beyond the fronteer mentaliy. We have today a billion people
using contemporary formats. I can't imagine the sophisticated future that
does not know how to read any of our more popular format. It's just plain
crazy.

Gordon Moat wrote:

Alan Browne wrote:


Gordon Moat wrote:


One item that came out of Photokina, and from Fuji, was a presentation they
made. The suggestion from Fuji was that people should produce chemically
printed photos from their image files, since future generations could
probably figure out what to do with those. Of course, it could have just been
a marketing ploy from Fuji to get more people to print from digital,
something very few people do currently.

Given the current state of non-longevity of digital storage, they might be onto
something... maybe micro printed slides from digital is what we need. Oh, the
irony! (At least you'd only print the ones worth, IYO, archiving).


Might be an idea . . . Polaroid still makes devices that output to film. I think
the best do 8000 ppi outputs, which would provide nice tonality.

While you're at it, make them separation negatives (cyan, magenta,
yellow), so you can output them on micofilm and have color pictures that
will last five hundred years.

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

In rec.photo.equipment.medium-format jjs wrote:
"J" wrote in message
...

You mean that given a spec (like JPEG/DNG) and a binary file, people in
the
future won't be able to determine how to read it? I find this hard to
believe. The file is not the problem, the problem is the media it is
stored
on.

I agree, J. Our history of forgotten formats is what makes the present more
solid. We are beyond the fronteer mentaliy. We have today a billion people
using contemporary formats. I can't imagine the sophisticated future that
does not know how to read any of our more popular format. It's just plain
crazy.


78rpm,45rpm and 33 1/3 rpm are all pretty close to being lost. All used to
be pretty common. Sure somebody could make almost ANYTHING readable in the
future. We can now read long lost languages. The question is will anybody
put the effort into it?

Let me put it this way. The world knows how to read latin. If you hand a
book in latin to the average person how much effort will they make to read
it? Now imagine if the book might contain nothing but a collection of
shopping lists?

It's great to say the stuff can be read in the future. So what?
It's all about the effort to read something. A paper print takes zero effort
to look at and decide it's a waste of paper. Or to figure out it's something
worth saving.

Nick

In rec.photo.equipment.medium-format jjs wrote:
"J" wrote in message
...

You mean that given a spec (like JPEG/DNG) and a binary file, people in
the
future won't be able to determine how to read it? I find this hard to
believe. The file is not the problem, the problem is the media it is
stored
on.

I agree, J. Our history of forgotten formats is what makes the present more
solid. We are beyond the fronteer mentaliy. We have today a billion people
using contemporary formats. I can't imagine the sophisticated future that
does not know how to read any of our more popular format. It's just plain
crazy.


78rpm,45rpm and 33 1/3 rpm are all pretty close to being lost. All used to
be pretty common. Sure somebody could make almost ANYTHING readable in the
future. We can now read long lost languages. The question is will anybody
put the effort into it?

Let me put it this way. The world knows how to read latin. If you hand a
book in latin to the average person how much effort will they make to read
it? Now imagine if the book might contain nothing but a collection of
shopping lists?

It's great to say the stuff can be read in the future. So what?
It's all about the effort to read something. A paper print takes zero effort
to look at and decide it's a waste of paper. Or to figure out it's something
worth saving.

Nick

"Nick Zentena" wrote in message
...

78rpm,45rpm and 33 1/3 rpm are all pretty close to being lost. All used
to
be pretty common. Sure somebody could make almost ANYTHING readable in the
future. We can now read long lost languages. The question is will anybody
put the effort into it?

Nick, your assertion strikes me to the depth of my heart. A significant
amount of my work is to support non-print media in a partialy
federally-funded library, a university library, and while I did create, code
and implement the digital storage and retrieval of music for my site, there
is much work yet to do. (For those interested, there is a scholarly journal
that describes my work in this regard).

The problem is not so much to recapitulate the existing media, which is not
a big problem, but how to perpetuate the digital versions through enduring
backup media. At this time our great support people make tape backups, but
you know in the worst case I am not sure that such is the answer.

It's a dauntin issue and a humbling charge.

J wrote:

"Gordon Moat" wrote in message
...
jjs wrote:

"Nils Rostedt" wrote in message
...
[...]
I'm happy to see that industry is awake and look forward to see the
results.
//Nils

Link: http://konicaminolta.com/releases/2004/0927_01_01.html

When those people use the word "archival", I hope they mean the same
thing
Henry Wilhelm does, but I seriously doubt it. Let's hope Wilhelm can
find
time to be on the case.

And you all know that DNG is already available to settle one part of the
picture, right?
http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html

But none, absolutely none of these efforts address the issue of archival
storage.

One item that came out of Photokina, and from Fuji, was a presentation
they
made. The suggestion from Fuji was that people should produce chemically
printed photos from their image files, since future generations could
probably figure out what to do with those.

You mean that given a spec (like JPEG/DNG) and a binary file, people in the
future won't be able to determine how to read it? I find this hard to
believe. The file is not the problem, the problem is the media it is stored
on.

Imaging formats change all the time. I would imagine some really early video
might be entirely unreadable at some point in the near future. JPEG is already
slated for changes. MPEG is also an evolving standard. TIFF is somewhat stable,
though there was a variation that Adobe used once that caused some problems.

All these engineers trying to do more will continue to evolve file formats.
Software of the future might not be able to read older files. While something
on the internet might still be found, even through some like the web archive
organization, the reality is that usually someone needs to pay to keep
information on any server.

Obviously some more important information will survive. Family histories are
another thing, and it would not surprise me to hear of many losses in the
future. What is the incentive to keep things the same as they are digitally
now?

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Donald Qualls wrote:

Gordon Moat wrote:




Might be an idea . . . Polaroid still makes devices that output to
film. I think
the best do 8000 ppi outputs, which would provide nice tonality.


While you're at it, make them separation negatives (cyan, magenta,
yellow), so you can output them on micofilm and have color pictures that
will last five hundred years.

Wow look at those digital money savings pile up!!



--
-- rec.photo.equipment.35mm user resource:
-- http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch.--