Anyone still shoot film?

Alan Browne. wrote:


My solution, two separate backups. At first hint of at hard drive
failing replace it.


And nobody else knows what's on the disk. Nobody else cares.

The images will likely be lost without a plan and path to the future.

Quite an old thread. Anyway...

Which means that I have a reasonable chance of not loosing them. As you
suggest, when I'm gone the disks will probably go in the same skip as the
negs. So what is the difference?



Pete

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

"Peter Chant" wrote in message
...
Alan Browne. wrote:


My solution, two separate backups. At first hint of at hard drive
failing replace it.


And nobody else knows what's on the disk. Nobody else cares.

The images will likely be lost without a plan and path to the future.

Quite an old thread. Anyway...

Which means that I have a reasonable chance of not loosing them. As you
suggest, when I'm gone the disks will probably go in the same skip as the
negs. So what is the difference?


A huge difference.
One which will likely be responsible for the tragic (yes... "tragic"!) loss
of countless, priceless images.

Whe I was settling my grandfather's estate I happened upon some cigar boxes
full of glass-plate negatives he had taken in the 20s and 30s. They were in
perfect condition and yielded hitherto unseen (to us) priceless images of my
family's history. In order to view them I simply had to hold them up to the
light.

When I die, and my son or my grandchildren settle my estate, they may well
find a box of 3½" HDDs.
(Or maybe a couple of hundred DVDs)

What chance is there that they will have access to hardware capable of
reading this media?
The safe storage life for optical disks used to be quoted as 10 years.
Who knows how long a HDD will last in storage before seizing up?

Unless I can find a better solution to the archiving problem, I have to
accept that my only alternative is to print them all out as 11x14s, on
acid-free paper, and store them in lightproof box filled with inert gas.

....or copy them onto film/microfilm.

Either option would take me months and gawd-knows how much money.
(i.e.: "not likely")

Don't discount this problem. It's a huge one, and the person who finds a
satisfactory solution to it will make millions.

--
Jeff R.

"Jeff R." wrote in message
...

"Peter Chant" wrote in message
...
Alan Browne. wrote:


My solution, two separate backups. At first hint of at hard drive
failing replace it.


And nobody else knows what's on the disk. Nobody else cares.

The images will likely be lost without a plan and path to the future.

Quite an old thread. Anyway...

Which means that I have a reasonable chance of not loosing them. As you
suggest, when I'm gone the disks will probably go in the same skip as the
negs. So what is the difference?


A huge difference.
One which will likely be responsible for the tragic (yes... "tragic"!)
loss of countless, priceless images.

Whe I was settling my grandfather's estate I happened upon some cigar
boxes full of glass-plate negatives he had taken in the 20s and 30s. They
were in perfect condition and yielded hitherto unseen (to us) priceless
images of my family's history. In order to view them I simply had to hold
them up to the light.

When I die, and my son or my grandchildren settle my estate, they may well
find a box of 3½" HDDs.
(Or maybe a couple of hundred DVDs)

What chance is there that they will have access to hardware capable of
reading this media?
The safe storage life for optical disks used to be quoted as 10 years.
Who knows how long a HDD will last in storage before seizing up?

Unless I can find a better solution to the archiving problem, I have to
accept that my only alternative is to print them all out as 11x14s, on
acid-free paper, and store them in lightproof box filled with inert gas.

...or copy them onto film/microfilm.

Either option would take me months and gawd-knows how much money.
(i.e.: "not likely")

Don't discount this problem. It's a huge one, and the person who finds a
satisfactory solution to it will make millions.

--
Jeff R.

I think these on-line backup services will be the wave of the future.....Let
them bother with keeping up with the latest technology.....All your
grandchildren will have to do is download the pictures to whatever machines
they happen to have at the time.

On 10/5/2010 7:28, Bill Graham wrote:

"Jeff R." wrote in message
...

"Peter Chant" wrote in message
...
Alan Browne. wrote:


My solution, two separate backups. At first hint of at hard drive
failing replace it.


And nobody else knows what's on the disk. Nobody else cares.

The images will likely be lost without a plan and path to the future.

Quite an old thread. Anyway...

Which means that I have a reasonable chance of not loosing them. As you
suggest, when I'm gone the disks will probably go in the same skip as
the
negs. So what is the difference?


A huge difference.
One which will likely be responsible for the tragic (yes... "tragic"!)
loss of countless, priceless images.

Whe I was settling my grandfather's estate I happened upon some cigar
boxes full of glass-plate negatives he had taken in the 20s and 30s.
They were in perfect condition and yielded hitherto unseen (to us)
priceless images of my family's history. In order to view them I
simply had to hold them up to the light.

When I die, and my son or my grandchildren settle my estate, they may
well find a box of 3½" HDDs.
(Or maybe a couple of hundred DVDs)

What chance is there that they will have access to hardware capable of
reading this media?
The safe storage life for optical disks used to be quoted as 10 years.
Who knows how long a HDD will last in storage before seizing up?

Unless I can find a better solution to the archiving problem, I have
to accept that my only alternative is to print them all out as 11x14s,
on acid-free paper, and store them in lightproof box filled with inert
gas.

...or copy them onto film/microfilm.

Either option would take me months and gawd-knows how much money.
(i.e.: "not likely")

Don't discount this problem. It's a huge one, and the person who finds
a satisfactory solution to it will make millions.

--
Jeff R.

I think these on-line backup services will be the wave of the
future.....Let them bother with keeping up with the latest
technology.....All your grandchildren will have to do is download the
pictures to whatever machines they happen to have at the time.


After the grandchildren have cracked the password or have gone through a
legal hassle to have access....

On 05 Oct 2010 in rec.photo.equipment.35mm, Rol_Lei Nut wrote:

On 10/5/2010 7:28, Bill Graham wrote:

I think these on-line backup services will be the wave of the
future.....Let them bother with keeping up with the latest
technology.....All your grandchildren will have to do is download
the pictures to whatever machines they happen to have at the time.

After the grandchildren have cracked the password or have gone
through a legal hassle to have access....

While I agree with Bill Graham that some method where image files will
continually be rolled over into more recent storage technology is good,
the other problem is format rot. Even if the files are pristine 20 years
from now, will jpeg still be a readable format? For example - do you
have any WordStar files? If so, do you have anything which will still
read them? It will be even worse for more closely held formats, like
camera raw files.

--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

Joe Makowiec wrote:
While I agree with Bill Graham that some method where image files will
continually be rolled over into more recent storage technology is good,
the other problem is format rot. Even if the files are pristine 20 years
from now, will jpeg still be a readable format? For example - do you
have any WordStar files?

No but I have a copy of WordStar 3.3 for MS/DOS and WordPerfect 4.2 and 5.2,
all three of which run under Windows 7.

Somewhere around I have a CP/M emulator that runs under MS/DOS (so you can run
8080/Z80 WordStar etc. It's still available for download, it was on a PC/Blue
library disk and I found it with a web search a few months ago for someone.

I also have most versions of MacWrite including the first one on 400k floppies
(along with hard disk, CD and DVD copies), MacWrite 5, MacWrite II, WordPerfect
Mac 1,2 and 3.5e, MS Word 5 (for the Mac), and a bunch of other programs.

I also have film cameras, film and a complete black and white darkroom.

However I need to downsize and if anyone wants a Bessler 23CII and is willing
to come to Jerusalem to pick it up, they are welcome to it. I probably could
give them 3 trays, a developing tank and some film too.

You're on your own for a safelight, changing bag, easel, tongs, chemicals,
etc.

I'm keeping a smaller Durst enlarger which I bought because it came with a
Schneider lens.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
To help restaurants, as part of the "stimulus package", everyone must order
dessert. As part of the socialized health plan, you are forbidden to eat it. :-)

Joe Makowiec wrote:

While I agree with Bill Graham that some method where image files
will continually be rolled over into more recent storage technology
is good, the other problem is format rot. Even if the files are
pristine 20 years from now, will jpeg still be a readable format?
For example - do you have any WordStar files? If so, do you have
anything which will still read them? It will be even worse for
more closely held formats, like camera raw files.


File formats are surprisingly well preserved in a very redundant
form on the internet. Hardware that will still read the media
is likely to be the limiting issue.

A few months ago I went back and read all of the 720K and 1.4M
backup disks that were not already online at my company. In reading
several hundred disks that averaged 20 years old I had three hard
read errors. Two were on disks that were created 3 days apart making
them suspect either media or the original drives they were created
on.

All of the disks were read on a 1.4M drive including the 720K disks.
I would have expected the failure rate at the time they were created
to be higher than three failures. Software disk drivers have improved
over time to be able to reliably read media that previously would
simply have been flagged as an error.

Lots of things are changing. One is computer independent media.
We are not far away from terabyte USB and SD Silicon drives.
There is a local drugstore chain that sells SD drives as digital
film a marketing approach that seems to be working. I overheard
a shopper in a grocery store recently telling her fried that she
had to go next door and buy more digital film because her current
film was almost full. This is a store that sells sdcards at the
checkout for about half the cost of "digital Film"

The interface for sdcards is so simple maybe they were on to
something. Shoot and never erase buy "digital film" and label
it with Grandpa's 90th birthday party. Hacking together a reader
in 2080 might still be possible.

Go Figure

Walter..

"Joe Makowiec" wrote in message
83.62...
On 05 Oct 2010 in rec.photo.equipment.35mm, Rol_Lei Nut wrote:

On 10/5/2010 7:28, Bill Graham wrote:

I think these on-line backup services will be the wave of the
future.....Let them bother with keeping up with the latest
technology.....All your grandchildren will have to do is download
the pictures to whatever machines they happen to have at the time.

After the grandchildren have cracked the password or have gone
through a legal hassle to have access....

While I agree with Bill Graham that some method where image files will
continually be rolled over into more recent storage technology is good,
the other problem is format rot. Even if the files are pristine 20 years
from now, will jpeg still be a readable format? For example - do you
have any WordStar files? If so, do you have anything which will still
read them? It will be even worse for more closely held formats, like
camera raw files.

But any online storage service worth its salt will be able to convert
anything it has into whatever the latest file formats are. I get stuff all
the time in formats I can't decode, and I have to download free converter
programs and put it into PDF to send out to our band.....I pride myself on
being able to do this for free. There are dozens of free software sites out
there that specialize in these routines. Surely the people who make their
living saving and protecting your photos will be able to do the same thing.

"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote in message
...
Joe Makowiec wrote:
While I agree with Bill Graham that some method where image files will
continually be rolled over into more recent storage technology is good,
the other problem is format rot. Even if the files are pristine 20 years
from now, will jpeg still be a readable format? For example - do you
have any WordStar files?

No but I have a copy of WordStar 3.3 for MS/DOS and WordPerfect 4.2 and
5.2,
all three of which run under Windows 7.

Somewhere around I have a CP/M emulator that runs under MS/DOS (so you can
run
8080/Z80 WordStar etc. It's still available for download, it was on a
PC/Blue
library disk and I found it with a web search a few months ago for
someone.

I also have most versions of MacWrite including the first one on 400k
floppies
(along with hard disk, CD and DVD copies), MacWrite 5, MacWrite II,
WordPerfect
Mac 1,2 and 3.5e, MS Word 5 (for the Mac), and a bunch of other programs.

I also have film cameras, film and a complete black and white darkroom.

However I need to downsize and if anyone wants a Bessler 23CII and is
willing
to come to Jerusalem to pick it up, they are welcome to it. I probably
could
give them 3 trays, a developing tank and some film too.

You're on your own for a safelight, changing bag, easel, tongs, chemicals,
etc.

I'm keeping a smaller Durst enlarger which I bought because it came with a
Schneider lens.

Geoff.

I understand that there is a French company that will send you their Lascaux
cave art in TIFF format for a price......

Bill Graham wrote:
I understand that there is a French company that will send you their Lascaux
cave art in TIFF format for a price......

Which reminds me of the first art critic in Mel Brook's "History of the World,
Part I". :-)

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
To help restaurants, as part of the "stimulus package", everyone must order
dessert. As part of the socialized health plan, you are forbidden to eat it. :-)