below $1000 film vs digital

"Stacey" wrote in message
...


That's assuming their digital files are actually archival, most aren't.
I'd
say the chances of someone's "stored" digital files being readable,
without
active participation of the user, to be unlikely at best. YMMV on that
point and only time will tell how many digital images taken today will be
around 20-30 years from now. I know I can't read any of the punch cards or
"digital cassettes" I have from 30 years ago on anything I own today! :-)
--

Yes, CDs and JPGs will be readable in 20-30 years. I already have 20 year
old audio CDs that are perfectly playable. If CDs, DVDs, and JPG files were
to become unreadable in a generation, that would mean a near total loss of
popular culture (music, movies, photographs). When has such a thing ever
happened? Punch cards and "digital cassettes" were never ubiquitous like
CDs and JPGs.

Mark

Mark Weaver wrote:


"Stacey" wrote in message
...


That's assuming their digital files are actually archival, most aren't.
I'd
say the chances of someone's "stored" digital files being readable,
without
active participation of the user, to be unlikely at best. YMMV on that
point and only time will tell how many digital images taken today will be
around 20-30 years from now. I know I can't read any of the punch cards
or "digital cassettes" I have from 30 years ago on anything I own today!
:-) --

Yes, CDs and JPGs will be readable in 20-30 years. I already have 20 year
old audio CDs that are perfectly playable.

Stamped, not a dye based CD-R.

And I'm not so sure jpegs will still be a software standard in 20 years nor
will the file systems be the same, you obviously think they will. FAT is
already a past tense file system and with longhorn, it probably won't even
be recognized. How long will the curent CD filesystem be used? You might
still have a CD reader (not so sure about that, they already are leaving
floppy drives out of systems and 5.25's have been gone for a while..) but
the OS might not recognize the filesystem. They are already changing the
DVD from red to blue. How many years in the future do you think you'll be
able to buy a red lazer DVD reader?


Punch cards and "digital cassettes" were never ubiquitous like
CDs and JPGs.


You don't think punch cards were "ubiquitous" in their time? They were the
-only- way to store computer info back then. Good luck finding a reader or
a system that would even recognize the data on them if you could hook up a
reader. I wrote a program years ago and saved it on a paper punch tape the
machine used. If I hadn't made an analog copy of the code on the printer,
it would be gone.

--

Stacey

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
Why can't people compare a good optical print to a digitally printed
digital
shot? Why do they always scan the film and use that to compare them?

I haven't seen any advantage to a straight optical print compared to
digital, and certainly not one that would justify the price difference. I'd
like to hear your experience in detail. Notice we're no longer talking about
deli counter prints.

As to scanning versus direct digital, DSLRs deliver gorgeous pixels, but not
very many of them. The current generation is equivalent to carefully shot
35mm. Quality is better at 8x10; both are challenged at 11x14. You need
larger film to get better images. And this brings us right back to optical
print versus scanned digital print. Scanning is an enabler, not the problem
child.

Custom lab optical prints from 35mm are decidedly a waste of hopes, time,
and money. It's the worst of all possible worlds. DSLRs match it in image
quality, and edge it decisively in convenience and consumables cost. MF
kills it in film area.

Mark Weaver wrote:


You miss the point. It's not that punch cards are no longer 'readable' in
the sense that they have deteriorated (they're just thin bits of cardboard
with rectangular holes--I assume they'd hold up for decades if not
centuries). The point is that the market for the equipment was never broad
enough and it didn't have a wide enough variety of uses, so when 'highly
paid professionals' stopped using punch cards for data, the equipment became
rare. But CDs/DVDs are not used just for data by a relatively small number
of 'highly paid professionals', they're used for music, movies, and data by
literally hundreds of millions of people. Completely different situation.


Those little bits of paper might represent million dollars worth of data.
Paying somebody $100K to read it would be cheaper then recreating it. How
much are you willing to pay for that data you think will always be readable?
If it costs you $15 to read a DVD you can buy in a new format for $14
which are you going with? The same with all that music. LPs used to be in
almost every house. You can still buy a turntable but for most people it's
cheaper to just get new CDs. Sorry but CDs will die sooner or later. You'll
then have to decide if saving the data is worth your time and money.

Nick

"Nick Zentena" wrote in message
...
Mark Weaver wrote:


You miss the point. It's not that punch cards are no longer 'readable'
in
the sense that they have deteriorated (they're just thin bits of
cardboard
with rectangular holes--I assume they'd hold up for decades if not
centuries). The point is that the market for the equipment was never
broad
enough and it didn't have a wide enough variety of uses, so when 'highly
paid professionals' stopped using punch cards for data, the equipment
became
rare. But CDs/DVDs are not used just for data by a relatively small
number
of 'highly paid professionals', they're used for music, movies, and data
by
literally hundreds of millions of people. Completely different
situation.


Those little bits of paper might represent million dollars worth of
data.

If they were worth millions of dollars then it was worthwhile for the
organization to move the data to another medium before pitching their last
card-reader/paper-tape reader/9-track tape drive.

Paying somebody $100K to read it would be cheaper then recreating it.

But even now, there would be no reason to pay anywhere near that amount.
Organizations that don't have in-house abilities to read old media can
contract it out for a small fraction of that.

How
much are you willing to pay for that data you think will always be
readable?
If it costs you $15 to read a DVD you can buy in a new format for $14
which are you going with? The same with all that music. LPs used to be in
almost every house. You can still buy a turntable but for most people it's
cheaper to just get new CDs. Sorry but CDs will die sooner or later.
You'll
then have to decide if saving the data is worth your time and money.


Cheaper to buy, say, a hundred or a few hundred new CDs than to buy a new
turntable? Not even close. And turntables, really, are a much better
analogy here, not punched cards. Despite the fact that CDs have been around
for 20 years, it is not at all hard to buy the equipment to play LPs. It
does not cost $15 to 'read' a record, and in fact there are millions of
vinyl enthusiasts. Even when the 5" optical disc is finally and completely
obsoleted for all purposes (data, music, video) they will have been in use
for 30-40 if not 50 or more years. Consider, the high-capacity, blue-laser
variant hasn't even hit the market yet -- how long before the HD movies on
such discs are going to be even as obsolete as video tape is now? A couple
of decades, probably. We can reasonably expect inexpensive optical disc
hardware to remain at least as available as turntables for decades to come.
(Hell, I expect that in 25 years it still won't be a problem to go out and
buy a new turntable, for that matter).

Mark

In article ,
Nick Zentena wrote:
Those little bits of paper might represent million dollars worth of data.
Paying somebody $100K to read it would be cheaper then recreating it. How
much are you willing to pay for that data you think will always be readable?
If it costs you $15 to read a DVD you can buy in a new format for $14
which are you going with? The same with all that music. LPs used to be in
almost every house. You can still buy a turntable but for most people it's
cheaper to just get new CDs. Sorry but CDs will die sooner or later. You'll
then have to decide if saving the data is worth your time and money.

Who says that your DVD will be released in the new format? There are plenty
of records that were never released on CD.

For writable media this is of course completely different. You can't simply
go out and buy the pictures you took on a new format.



--
The Electronic Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video
recorder. [...] Video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving
you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electronic Monks believed things for
you, [...] -- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Mark Weaver wrote:
Yes, CDs and JPGs will be readable in 20-30 years. I already have
20 year
old audio CDs that are perfectly playable. If CDs, DVDs, and JPG files were
to become unreadable in a generation, that would mean a near total loss of
popular culture (music, movies, photographs). When has such a thing ever
happened? Punch cards and "digital cassettes" were never ubiquitous like
CDs and JPGs.

Mark



Partly inspired by this thread, I downloaded a program (Nero CDspeed) to
check the error rate of my CD-Rs.

Result? Scanning my older audio CD-Rs (1997-1999), so far I'm finding
about a 50% serious error rate (and, yes, media type does make a
difference, though not absolutely - "green dyes" are almost all bad and
"Mitsui Gold"s are "only" about 15% bad...).

So now I'm copying the bad CD-Rs, and to my joy have discovered that the
first 2 have errors to the extent that I'll have to do extensive manual
editing.

User be warned!

Chris

Mark Weaver wrote:

"Neil Gould" wrote in message news:1SBxc.19039

Yes, CDs and JPGs will be readable in 20-30 years. I already have 20
year old audio CDs that are perfectly playable.


Your audio CDs are manufactured using a completely different technology
than CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. I doubt that you would go to the trouble and
expense to produce back-ups of your image files using CD replication (the
stamping and sandwiching process used for commercial releases), if for no
other reason than a minimum order is about 500 pieces! ;-)



There are archival-rated CDRs as well -- I have a batch to back up photos.
And, BTW, I've been using CDRs for a relatively long time (back when it was
bleeding edge technology). My oldest CDRs are getting up around 8 years old
and even the no-namers are still perfectly readable.


My earliest ones are probably Kodak Photo CDs from 1990. 14 years and
still readable.

David

Chris Loffredo wrote:

Mark Weaver wrote:
Yes, CDs and JPGs will be readable in 20-30 years. I already have 20
year

old audio CDs that are perfectly playable. If CDs, DVDs, and JPG
files were
to become unreadable in a generation, that would mean a near total
loss of
popular culture (music, movies, photographs). When has such a thing ever
happened? Punch cards and "digital cassettes" were never ubiquitous like
CDs and JPGs.

Mark



Partly inspired by this thread, I downloaded a program (Nero CDspeed) to
check the error rate of my CD-Rs.

Result? Scanning my older audio CD-Rs (1997-1999), so far I'm finding
about a 50% serious error rate (and, yes, media type does make a
difference, though not absolutely - "green dyes" are almost all bad and
"Mitsui Gold"s are "only" about 15% bad...).

So now I'm copying the bad CD-Rs, and to my joy have discovered that the
first 2 have errors to the extent that I'll have to do extensive manual
editing.

Try burning a new CD and then checking the error rate. I would
not be surprised if there were recoverable errors right off the
start. Question is, how much v. the 5 yr. old CD's.


--
--e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch.--

Alan Browne wrote:
Chris Loffredo wrote:

Partly inspired by this thread, I downloaded a program (Nero CDspeed)
to check the error rate of my CD-Rs.

Result? Scanning my older audio CD-Rs (1997-1999), so far I'm finding
about a 50% serious error rate (and, yes, media type does make a
difference, though not absolutely - "green dyes" are almost all bad
and "Mitsui Gold"s are "only" about 15% bad...).

So now I'm copying the bad CD-Rs, and to my joy have discovered that
the first 2 have errors to the extent that I'll have to do extensive
manual editing.


Try burning a new CD and then checking the error rate. I would not be
surprised if there were recoverable errors right off the start.
Question is, how much v. the 5 yr. old CD's.



First thing I did: New CD-Rs (5 out of 5) had zero errors.

Relatively new CD-Rs (about 1 year old) - spot checks, maybe 4 samples -
were 100% ok.

But the older ones, whether through age or outdated(?) media seem pretty
unreliable.

Not a nice prospect...

Chris