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#11
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Going back to film...
wrote in message ... Alan Browne wrote: A major attraction of digital is that you can shoot a lot more, with no cost, loss or penalty and of course convenience. This is one of the reasons for me to stop shooting digital. On the analog issue, when you shoot film and optically print it in the darkroom, that's pretty much an analog process don't ya think? There isn't much analog about a digital camera other than the light hitting the sensor. After that point, it's all digital. The image is converted to digital data before it ever leaves the sensor. Stephanie Digital properly refers to a method of storage and transmission that samples the original continuous data in a discontinuous way and further codes it into numbers. There are discontinuous methods that are not digital such as pulse coding. These can have some of the advantages of digital in that they are immune from non-linearities in the storage and transmission system. For instance, pulse coding can be adapted to magnetic recording. Digital goes another step from simply sampling the data, it codes it into numbers following some set plan so that the original data can be exactly reconstructed. In practice, because of limitations of bandwidth in both transmission and storage media digital data is often compressed. Some compression methods loose some of the original information and some don't. The common JPEG compression scheme used for digital images on the internet is a "lossy" compression method. It assumes certain statistical characteristics of the original in order to reconstruct an approximation of it. A low compression JPEG can be nearly as good as the original but, if its decoded and recoded some additional information is lost so it can go only a limited number of generations. By this I mean generations where decoding and recoding are required such as editing. Other compression schemes are do not have data loss and can be reapplied essentially without limit. The main advantages of "digital" photography is that it is electronic and would have many of the same advantages even if digital encoding were not used. However, properly applied, digital encoding and decoding can eliminate many problems with imperfect transmission and storage methods. -- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
#12
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Going back to film...
On 10-03-09 15:56 , Richard Knoppow wrote:
Digital properly refers to a method of storage and transmission that samples the original continuous data in a discontinuous way and further codes it into numbers. There snipped The main advantages of "digital" photography is that it is electronic and would have many of the same advantages even if digital encoding were not used. However, properly applied, digital encoding and decoding can eliminate many problems with imperfect transmission and storage methods. The main reasons for digital photo popularity remain its _convenience_ and low recurring cost, low cost of experimentation, high image quality, immediate feedback (try again if you screwed up), post processing convenience and cost, ease of storage and storage maintenance - not that everyone practices good storage habits. That the data is loss-lessly manageable after the fact is a huge benefit. Digital photography also lends itself to the information exchange age so well. Snapshooters and journalists share the trait of shooting and transmitting images in short periods of time. In 500 years, a lot ( say 0.0001% ) of the digital photography of today will be available to future historians. It will be very well documented in many cases. Those who preserve the data well will be more likely to document it well. And yes, I know common CD/DVD ROMs don't last more that 5 - 10 years, but there are other archival media that will easily do 200 years. Some of that will survive much longer. A lot of key data will be attached to these images in tag/exif form, and I wouldn't doubt that they will be linked to very descriptive documents (or be in the documents). For those with other photographic pursuits, where film has its advantages or character, film will continue for a very long time. (All predictions of film's demise having so far been way off the mark). Most movies (and many television shows) are still shot on film, often because the cinematographer, producer and director have agreed on a certain look that digital fails to capture. But I bet that digital cinematography will improve (mainly in highlight capture) that film cinematography will become quite rare. (Some cinematographers are shooting mixed film and digital now...). -- gmail originated posts are filtered due to spam. |
#13
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Going back to film...
Alan Browne wrote:
In 500 years, a lot ( say 0.0001% ) of the digital photography of today will be available to future historians. It will be very well documented in many cases. Those who preserve the data well will be more likely to document it well. And yes, I know common CD/DVD ROMs don't last more that 5 - 10 years, but there are other archival media that will easily do 200 years. Some of that will survive much longer. If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival storage and since very few people even make prints, most of the images from this "digital age" won't be around for anyone to see even one generation from now. At least with film people HAD to make prints and unless you intentionally throw them away or otherwise destroy them, they are still around many years later. If I had even $1 for each time I heard someone say "My computer crashed and I lost all the pictures of my children" etc. And if you think a computer 500 years from now will understand digital data from today... I'd be shocked if even 50% of people have anything other than the copy on their hard drive for a back up, much less a "200 year archival" form. http://www.archivaladvisor.org/shtml...digmedia.shtml While some disks may claim "Archival for 300 years", until they have actually done this, IMHO it's just marketing... With B&W and even RA4 prints, we know in RL aging what we can expect. Stephanie |
#15
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Going back to film...
Alan Browne wrote:
On 10-03-10 0:50 , wrote: Alan Browne wrote: In 500 years, a lot ( say 0.0001% ) of the digital photography of today will be available to future historians. It will be very well documented in many cases. Those who preserve the data well will be more likely to document it well. And yes, I know common CD/DVD ROMs don't last more that 5 - 10 years, but there are other archival media that will easily do 200 years. Some of that will survive much longer. If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering the number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of images. storage and since very few people even make prints, most of the images from this "digital age" won't be around for anyone to see even one generation from now. At least with film people HAD to make prints and unless you intentionally throw them away or otherwise destroy them, they are still around many years later. On the other hand the time period has been shorter. The documentation of most of these prints is close to nil forcing researchers to spend a lot of time or abandon interpretation. You assume a lot thinking people "will document it well". I doubt any more will document their digital images than did with film images. And the information added to the file by the camera really isn't anything other than camera specific things like what model and f stop etc. Assuming someone bothered to set the date on the camera that MIGHT be there, depends on the file format used. If I had even $1 for each time I heard someone say "My computer crashed and I lost all the pictures of my children" etc. And if you think a computer 500 years from now will understand digital data from today... I'd be shocked if even 50% of people have anything other than the copy on their hard drive for a back up, much less a "200 year archival" form. Again, as I stated above, a 1:1,000,000 survival rate is still a deluge of information given the amount of photography taken today. I highly doubt there will be a deluge of images from this era. It's much more likely that very little will survive, especially family records, childhood pictures etc. I know too many people personally who have lost them all for the very reasons you stated, too many pictures to archive so none are. It's not like 1 image will be archivally kept by someone and the rest they just put on a CD-R (or do nothing) and hope.. Thats the problem with digital storage, it's all too likely for the whole lot to just disappear. The only hope most have is if someone took the card somewhere to get RA-4 prints made. http://www.archivaladvisor.org/shtml...digmedia.shtml While some disks may claim "Archival for 300 years", until they have actually done this, IMHO it's just marketing... Fortunately it's not based on your opinion but accelerated life cycle testing, a proven method of determining fading characteristics over time. Until actual times passes, no one knows how archival these will actually be. Especially data storage. People assumed CD-R's would last until it was proven they don't. These other optical disks could have a failure they aren't testing for. You can't accurately recreate everything that can happen with age. Further, while not all "archival" data will keep, a goodly number will. It's much more likely that most won't, than a goodly number will. The only scenarios that look even somewhat promising have to be actively maintained. Something very few people will do. I could point to hundreds of web sites that explain this stuff but you would dismiss even MIT as being a "hobby site", so there is not much point in doing that. Once again, Allen has spoken against what most places agree on and all he has to base this on is his mouth. Stephanie |
#16
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Going back to film...
On 10-03-10 16:31 , wrote:
Alan Browne wrote: On 10-03-10 0:50 , wrote: Alan Browne wrote: In 500 years, a lot ( say 0.0001% ) of the digital photography of today will be available to future historians. It will be very well documented in many cases. Those who preserve the data well will be more likely to document it well. And yes, I know common CD/DVD ROMs don't last more that 5 - 10 years, but there are other archival media that will easily do 200 years. Some of that will survive much longer. If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering the number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of images. storage and since very few people even make prints, most of the images from this "digital age" won't be around for anyone to see even one generation from now. At least with film people HAD to make prints and unless you intentionally throw them away or otherwise destroy them, they are still around many years later. On the other hand the time period has been shorter. The documentation of most of these prints is close to nil forcing researchers to spend a lot of time or abandon interpretation. You assume a lot thinking people "will document it well". I doubt any What part of 1 in 1,000,000 says to you "a lot"? You have to abandon the notion of "everyone" and "all data" and start looking at the slivers. more will document their digital images than did with film images. And the information added to the file by the camera really isn't anything other than camera specific things like what model and f stop etc. Assuming someone bothered to set the date on the camera that MIGHT be there, depends on the file format used. First off I stated that very few images will survive. However, those that survive are those that were the most taken care of so they would survive. The same applies to documents of the time and by the same author or entourage. Again: very few survivors, but well prepared and documented. If I had even $1 for each time I heard someone say "My computer crashed and I lost all the pictures of my children" etc. And if you think a computer 500 years from now will understand digital data from today... I'd be shocked if even 50% of people have anything other than the copy on their hard drive for a back up, much less a "200 year archival" form. Again, as I stated above, a 1:1,000,000 survival rate is still a deluge of information given the amount of photography taken today. I highly doubt there will be a deluge of images from this era. It's much more likely that very little will survive, especially family records, childhood pictures etc. I know too many people personally who have lost Again, 1 in 1,000,000 _is_ very little. But it is still a deluge when there are billions of photos taken daily. I never mentioned what kind of images will survive. You're right that many family photos will be lost. OTOH, there are in some families people who treasure family history and who want the record to survive. They will prepare it to do so and out of those, some, not all will survive for a long time. them all for the very reasons you stated, too many pictures to archive so none are. It's not like 1 image will be archivally kept by someone and the rest they just put on a CD-R (or do nothing) and hope.. Thats the problem with digital storage, it's all too likely for the whole lot to just disappear. The only hope most have is if someone took the card somewhere to get RA-4 prints made. No different. My parents took hundreds if not a couple thousand rolls of film in their non-photography-interested lifetime. I have about 300 slides and 200 prints left out of all of that. The bonus here is that I scanned those of people I don't know and e-mailed those out - and immediately received messages to help me identify the subjects. The rest is gone. Nobody knows where. Some might yet turn up. But the few that did survive, I will push further into the future along with documents from the era that I have in hand. http://www.archivaladvisor.org/shtml...digmedia.shtml While some disks may claim "Archival for 300 years", until they have actually done this, IMHO it's just marketing... Fortunately it's not based on your opinion but accelerated life cycle testing, a proven method of determining fading characteristics over time. Until actual times passes, no one knows how archival these will actually be. Especially data storage. People assumed CD-R's would last until it was proven they don't. These other optical disks could have a failure they aren't testing for. You can't accurately recreate everything that can happen with age. Who said accurately? The claim is based on accelerated life testing. (for CD/DVD's this is heat at the limits, intense light and moisture). Where an ordinary CD/DVD only survives weeks or months in such testing, the "gold" CD/DVD's go for years in the same conditions. This is extrapolated out to indicate that in benign (room temperature, low humidity and no light) that the same media can go well in excess of 100 years. From there, it's a statistical likelihood that some of the media will go 2, 4, 8 times as long. It's a certainty that ordinary media will have long since faded away and that prints and film will do not much better than 100 - 200 years. And even there, some, not all, will go further. Further, while not all "archival" data will keep, a goodly number will. It's much more likely that most won't, than a goodly number will. The only scenarios that look even somewhat promising have to be actively maintained. Something very few people will do. Again, it's those that take archival seriously that will document the most. And with the right media, this can be quite passive. I could point to hundreds of web sites that explain this stuff but you would dismiss even MIT as being a "hobby site", so there is not much point in doing that. Once again, Allen has spoken against what most places agree on and all he has to base this on is his mouth. I never said all images will survive. Only a very small number as a proportion. The sites you refer to talk about carelessness. Entropy. Neglect. Ignorance. They are right. But it doesn't apply to 100% of images. I'm talking about deliberate care and preparation and the few who do it. The few who do it include archivists, scientists, historians, etc. and hobbyists too. I'm not claiming you're wrong, just that there is that small slice of digital information that will survive because somebody today makes sure it does. Film (kept in benign condition) will go a long way; prints too, but less than film. And that small slice (digital, film, print) will still be a huge find 500 years from now and more data that they can handle easily. Again, it's not about all of it surviving, but a very small slice of it. And that will be an awful lot data. (See last weeks Economist). -- gmail originated posts are filtered due to spam. |
#17
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Going back to film...
"Alan Browne" wrote:
On 10-03-10 16:31 , wrote: If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering the number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of images. One problem with this line of reasoning is that you are describing two pools of photo takers. By your own statement, the digital images that survive will be managed by those that take extraordinary care of their data. This is not likely to be the same group that will generate the large number of images you are basing your "1 in 1,000,000 surviving images" upon. Considering the archival replication processes necessary in order to keep a digital image for 500 years, I'd say that your notion is grossly overestimated, if for no other reason than the cost of the effort to preserve them. -- best, Neil --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
#18
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Going back to film...
On 10-03-10 23:59 , Neil Gould wrote:
"Alan wrote: On 10-03-10 16:31 , wrote: If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering the number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of images. One problem with this line of reasoning is that you are describing two pools of photo takers. Yes to the "two pools" notion, and the "conservators" being a much smaller group. (I don't see that as a "problem" however). By your own statement, the digital images that survive will be managed by those that take extraordinary care of their data. I'd characterize it more as "best reasonable effort." Which is orders of magnitude better than ordinary neglect. And then an even smaller group making extraordinary efforts. This is not likely to be the same group that will generate the large number of images you are basing your "1 in 1,000,000 surviving images" upon. Considering the archival replication processes necessary Really to illustrate the vast number of photos taken that drive a likelihood of a portion surviving. in order to keep a digital image for 500 years, I'd say that your notion is grossly overestimated, if for no other reason than the cost of the effort to preserve them. To be clear: I'm really addressing "survivors" on a statistical basis. And of course survival favours the prepared. The cheapest method that requires no long term plan is to use archival CD/DVD (BluRay?) and to store them benignly. There is a very high probability that a small number of the disks will be well kept. Out of those, a fraction will retain their data in whole or in part. It's just big, big, big numbers and the survival of some of the data. But some small part of a really big number is still a lot. I should mention the image agencies such as Corbis which amass images (film and digital) and go to great lengths to preserve those images. Most of the images they own are very ordinary and some are important. All are cataloged and preserved. Given the value of image businesses, these images are destined to survive for a very long time even as the business changes hands and purpose, technology changes and so on. -- gmail originated posts are filtered due to spam. |
#19
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Going back to film...
Alan Browne wrote:
On 10-03-10 23:59 , Neil Gould wrote: "Alan wrote:\ One problem with this line of reasoning is that you are describing two pools of photo takers. Yes to the "two pools" notion, and the "conservators" being a much smaller group. (I don't see that as a "problem" however). Of course you don't, it's your position and you have repeatedly shown you have no intent on ever bending your position no matter how much evidence is thrown at you. I highly doubt the "conservators" are much more than .1% of camera users, if even that. And of those an even smaller % will be successful at even 100 year archival status of digital data. By your own statement, the digital images that survive will be managed by those that take extraordinary care of their data. I'd characterize it more as "best reasonable effort." Which is orders of magnitude better than ordinary neglect. And then an even smaller group making extraordinary efforts. The problem with digital "best reasonable effort" = failure. With film that wasn't the case. So with digital ONLY the "extraordinary efforts" will = success. I recently found some B&W negatives of my parents as children, they are at least 80 years old and the only effort taken was they were put in an envelope and put in a drawer, forgotten. This is not likely to be the same group that will generate the large number of images you are basing your "1 in 1,000,000 surviving images" upon. Considering the archival replication processes necessary Really to illustrate the vast number of photos taken that drive a likelihood of a portion surviving. Not a reasonable way to calculate this. in order to keep a digital image for 500 years, I'd say that your notion is grossly overestimated, if for no other reason than the cost of the effort to preserve them. To be clear: I'm really addressing "survivors" on a statistical basis. And of course survival favours the prepared. But you just pulled the statistics out of thin air. You have absolutely nothing to base your assumptions on. The cheapest method that requires no long term plan is to use archival CD/DVD (BluRay?) and to store them benignly. There is a very high probability that a small number of the disks will be well kept. Out of those, a fraction will retain their data in whole or in part. You ignore that these disks almost never keep data "In part", they usually fail 100% or work 100%. It's just big, big, big numbers and the survival of some of the data. But some small part of a really big number is still a lot. You totally ignore that this data is MUCH more fragile than prints or film is. You have to physically destroy them for them to 100% fail. Given lots of the "billions of images taken" never are even saved to a hard drive (most are garbage and just are deleted)the chances of a "deluge of images" being around even 10 years from now is being naive.. In fact MOST people predict the exact opposite, this era will be a vacuum of images. I should mention the image agencies such as Corbis which amass images (film and digital) and go to great lengths to preserve those images. Most of the images they own are very ordinary and some are important. All are cataloged and preserved. Given the value of image businesses, these images are destined to survive for a very long time even as the business changes hands and purpose, technology changes and so on. Sure and these "professional images" aren't what most people consider important to save. They want to see pictures of their childhood or their grandmother as a child etc. Those will mostly disappear in a short period of time. Stephanie |
#20
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Going back to film...
"Alan Browne" wrote:
On 10-03-10 23:59 , Neil Gould wrote: "Alan wrote: On 10-03-10 16:31 , wrote: If anything, MOST of the digital images shot today will disappear in 10 years or less. I highly doubt very many people do any sort of archival That's why I said 1 in 1,000,000 surviving images. Considering the number of photos shot today, it will still be a deluge of images. One problem with this line of reasoning is that you are describing two pools of photo takers. Yes to the "two pools" notion, and the "conservators" being a much smaller group. (I don't see that as a "problem" however). One might see it as a problem, if the fact that "conservators" will not be in the larger pool of folks making digital images. My WAG is that there are closer to a billion shots *a day* being taken, and due to the many factors that lead to the loss of digital data, it is a reasonable guess that less than 1% of those will survive for 10 years. That's a pretty drastic difference from your notion, and from a cultural perspective, it can be considered a problem. By your own statement, the digital images that survive will be managed by those that take extraordinary care of their data. I'd characterize it more as "best reasonable effort." Which is orders of magnitude better than ordinary neglect. And then an even smaller group making extraordinary efforts. I don't know what you mean by "best reasonable effort", but what I'm referring to is that for digital data to survive longer than one generation, the interest in preserving the data has to be continued across generations. If one considers the preservation of collections of any type to be a guide, it is easy to see that less than extraordinary efforts in maintaining digital data will be inadequate. in order to keep a digital image for 500 years, I'd say that your notion is grossly overestimated, if for no other reason than the cost of the effort to preserve them. To be clear: I'm really addressing "survivors" on a statistical basis. And of course survival favours the prepared. For that many generations, the statistics favor retentions closer to zero. The cheapest method that requires no long term plan is to use archival CD/DVD (BluRay?) and to store them benignly. I suggest you do some research on "archival" digital storage media. The writable materials will not survive for even a small fraction of 500 years. It's just big, big, big numbers and the survival of some of the data. But some small part of a really big number is still a lot. Pure fantasy. I should mention the image agencies such as Corbis which amass images (film and digital) and go to great lengths to preserve those images. No reason to mention such organizations. They are representative of the extraordinary efforts I referred to, and even their survival is not likely to be for 500 years. -- best, Neil --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
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