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#11
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David Nebenzahl wrote: On 10/16/2004 1:51 PM Richard Knoppow spake thus: [more good stuff snipped] Everything else snipped as it deserves to be... Everything you say is so; my point was simply that it will undoubtedly be possible to read digital images, even from obsolete media and formats, in the future. You pointed out that it may be difficult to do so, which is true. But it will still be possile. I think your point must be to gain gratification by crossposting so as to take an ongoing multithread dicussion in one nsg group and limiting it's context in your favor in another nsg. Welcome to the killfile david... |
#12
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David Nebenzahl wrote: On 10/16/2004 1:51 PM Richard Knoppow spake thus: [more good stuff snipped] Everything else snipped as it deserves to be... Everything you say is so; my point was simply that it will undoubtedly be possible to read digital images, even from obsolete media and formats, in the future. You pointed out that it may be difficult to do so, which is true. But it will still be possile. I think your point must be to gain gratification by crossposting so as to take an ongoing multithread dicussion in one nsg group and limiting it's context in your favor in another nsg. Welcome to the killfile david... |
#13
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NASA, with multi-million dollar budgets, couldn't recover much of the data they had stored on tape from the early space probes (Ranger..). So a bunch of rocket scientists, with all the $$ and support engineers and software geeks in NASA, can't recover their own digital tapes 30 years on, right?! Doesn't say much for our odds for recovery 50 or 100 years from now? ;-) The first reason most digital images are going to be lost is that most such images are not recorded on permanent storage media in the first place. By most, I mean 63%, as found in a digital camera user survey by Fuji-UK (see BJP PROFESSIONAL NEWS - 21 May 2003 for details), where most users had images stored on their computer hard drives -with no backups! Second, most of the remaining images are not going to be properly managed, meaning they won't be recopied every year or two, or converted to new formats etc. Like most photographs of the past, those CDRs are going to end up in a shoebox in a hot attic, and chemical "bit-rot" will make them unreadable in a decade or less. Magnetic "bit-rot" kills off that form of storage media quickly too. These losses can be catastrophic in many image formats using compression, where most of the image is encoded as offsets from an initial value. Even worse are images with encrypted or protected or enbedded features. We already have "data archeologists" (seriously) who specialize in excavating data from older corporate databases and resources Third, for the few % of images that are recorded on "archival media", failure to strictly maintain temperature and especially non-exposure to UV will mean far shorter lives than claimed in the ads. And you may have noticed that a number of so-called "archival" CD products (e.g., Kodak..) have been withdrawn or recharacterized for longevity, yes? ;-) This is a really big deal for digital librarians and others in the data storage biz. Film remains the only proven archival image storage media today... Fourth, the number of proprietary formats continues to explode in number (e.g., raw data), with lots of "streaming" updates in software upgrades added to products. The number of incompatible file compression formats is also quite large. The number of operating system variables are large (cf. XP vs. MS-DOS etc. ;-). And lots of those software programs have bugs and "features" which may prove critical to recovering or reconstructing the original data decades from now. So, how many of us have recorded all this information with our CDs, so we could reconstruct the creation environment say fifty years from now? None, right? ;-) Fifth, your experience as a data conversion company worker is different from mine. I "inherited" a nifty heathkit version of a DEC minicomputer, complete with software and 8" diskettes etc. The original owner had spent years searching online and with our campus archivists and librarians for a service that could convert her original dissertation notes and resources off the 8" diskettes in some odd freeware word processor format to MS-WORD. Nobody could do it. Not even the heath user group folks could help her out That was less than 20 years old hardware and software too, rather less than 100 years, eh? ;-) What does Fuji-UK recommend? They suggest that if you have something you really want to be sure is available archivally decades from now, you should get it on FILM (!) :-0) Makes sense, since film is a direct access medium (no computer hardware or software required) with proven archival potentials (with proper fixing etc.). And the US government continues to mandate COM (microfilm) as their archival medium of choice etc. The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc. Just as parents are upset to discover that their VHS tapes of their kids can't be viewed at the kid's graduation from High School, so to are most of today's digital users likely to be disappointed that their digital images are lost over the same double decade time period. In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the first place ;-) my $.02 ;-) bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
#14
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NASA, with multi-million dollar budgets, couldn't recover much of the data they had stored on tape from the early space probes (Ranger..). So a bunch of rocket scientists, with all the $$ and support engineers and software geeks in NASA, can't recover their own digital tapes 30 years on, right?! Doesn't say much for our odds for recovery 50 or 100 years from now? ;-) The first reason most digital images are going to be lost is that most such images are not recorded on permanent storage media in the first place. By most, I mean 63%, as found in a digital camera user survey by Fuji-UK (see BJP PROFESSIONAL NEWS - 21 May 2003 for details), where most users had images stored on their computer hard drives -with no backups! Second, most of the remaining images are not going to be properly managed, meaning they won't be recopied every year or two, or converted to new formats etc. Like most photographs of the past, those CDRs are going to end up in a shoebox in a hot attic, and chemical "bit-rot" will make them unreadable in a decade or less. Magnetic "bit-rot" kills off that form of storage media quickly too. These losses can be catastrophic in many image formats using compression, where most of the image is encoded as offsets from an initial value. Even worse are images with encrypted or protected or enbedded features. We already have "data archeologists" (seriously) who specialize in excavating data from older corporate databases and resources Third, for the few % of images that are recorded on "archival media", failure to strictly maintain temperature and especially non-exposure to UV will mean far shorter lives than claimed in the ads. And you may have noticed that a number of so-called "archival" CD products (e.g., Kodak..) have been withdrawn or recharacterized for longevity, yes? ;-) This is a really big deal for digital librarians and others in the data storage biz. Film remains the only proven archival image storage media today... Fourth, the number of proprietary formats continues to explode in number (e.g., raw data), with lots of "streaming" updates in software upgrades added to products. The number of incompatible file compression formats is also quite large. The number of operating system variables are large (cf. XP vs. MS-DOS etc. ;-). And lots of those software programs have bugs and "features" which may prove critical to recovering or reconstructing the original data decades from now. So, how many of us have recorded all this information with our CDs, so we could reconstruct the creation environment say fifty years from now? None, right? ;-) Fifth, your experience as a data conversion company worker is different from mine. I "inherited" a nifty heathkit version of a DEC minicomputer, complete with software and 8" diskettes etc. The original owner had spent years searching online and with our campus archivists and librarians for a service that could convert her original dissertation notes and resources off the 8" diskettes in some odd freeware word processor format to MS-WORD. Nobody could do it. Not even the heath user group folks could help her out That was less than 20 years old hardware and software too, rather less than 100 years, eh? ;-) What does Fuji-UK recommend? They suggest that if you have something you really want to be sure is available archivally decades from now, you should get it on FILM (!) :-0) Makes sense, since film is a direct access medium (no computer hardware or software required) with proven archival potentials (with proper fixing etc.). And the US government continues to mandate COM (microfilm) as their archival medium of choice etc. The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc. Just as parents are upset to discover that their VHS tapes of their kids can't be viewed at the kid's graduation from High School, so to are most of today's digital users likely to be disappointed that their digital images are lost over the same double decade time period. In the meantime, lots of us will be glad we were shooting on film in the first place ;-) my $.02 ;-) bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
#15
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Bob Monaghan wrote:
The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc. I don't even work in the computer industry but have witnessed this first hand at least a dozen times. People store their digital images on the same partition as their windows install! They pop in the restore disk that came with their computer and are shocked all their childen's pictures are gone. And of course they never printed any of them so they are GONE. Of course with enough diligence this can be avoided but how many people are going to take on the active -fight- of keeping all their images safe? I'd bet less than 5% of digital camera users will. -- Stacey |
#16
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Bob Monaghan wrote:
The sad part here is that the very vast majority of digital images being made by regular people will be lost, not in a century, but at the next hard drive failure or virus attack (63%..), most "archived" CDROM images will deteriorate from chemical "bit-rot" in the next decade or so etc. I don't even work in the computer industry but have witnessed this first hand at least a dozen times. People store their digital images on the same partition as their windows install! They pop in the restore disk that came with their computer and are shocked all their childen's pictures are gone. And of course they never printed any of them so they are GONE. Of course with enough diligence this can be avoided but how many people are going to take on the active -fight- of keeping all their images safe? I'd bet less than 5% of digital camera users will. -- Stacey |
#17
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"Tom Phillips" wrote in message ... Richard Knoppow wrote: recordings. Now, having said all this basically I disagree with the original premise that electonic images are not photography. They obviously are despite any argument about longevity. They obviously are not, Richard, since 1. the process are different and produce different results. 2. Digital silicon sensors do not and cannot produce a photograph. What they do produce is a voltage based on the photoelectric effect. This is then regenerated into digital signals that are then used to output reproductions of those signals. At no time during this process is there an optical image nor any photograph. A photograph is an image produce by the direct action of light. Digital does not do this nor can it. The physics don't allow it. 3. The ISO standard states definitively digital still cameras produce a signal that _represents_ still pictures, not actual pictures. As I've pointed out in my posts in rec.photo.darkroom (now being cross posted and the discussion deliberately taken out of context...), people need to look at the processes to determine what digital is vs. what photography is. Looking at the end result is misleading, since in our society the words photo and photographic have come to idiomatically mean any image we see. But as we all well know calendars, though we call them photos/photographs, are not. They are offset reproductions. Simialrly paintings are pictures, but they are not photographs. Digital produces pictures and reproductions, but there is no original photograph created by digital imaging. What is the definition of Photography? I think that fixing it as a method of producing pictures via a particular chemical process is not sufficiently broad. Is television photographic, it is completely electronic (I am excepting the use of motion pictures are original material, they are transmitted by electronic means). I think this argument confuses the method with the result. Digital photographs are "pictures" as much as chemical ones are once they get to the finished form. If silicon or any other elecronic sensors (they are not digital) do not produce pictures what do they produce? If you say an electronic signal you are partially right, that _is_ what comes out of the sensor, but it is not the _result_ of what comes from the sensor. The _result_ IS a picture. Also, "electronic" is not interchangibe with "digital". ALL of the electronic signals used for digital imaging purposes represent analogue functions. Even those which start out in life in the digital domain, such as the output of graphics generators, are meant to be translatable to analogue form in order to be meaningful to the human sensorium. Digital referes to a method of encoding analogue information in order to store or transmit it. In some ways digitally incoded information is superior to the original analogue information for transmission or storage (and in some ways is not). This has nothing to do with the process a user goes through. A person using an electronic camera to produce images which are to be reproduced on a computer screen or printed on a computer printer, can be a photgrapher just as much as someone using chemical methods. It is the production of the image that defines the process not the means. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
#18
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"Tom Phillips" wrote in message ... Richard Knoppow wrote: recordings. Now, having said all this basically I disagree with the original premise that electonic images are not photography. They obviously are despite any argument about longevity. They obviously are not, Richard, since 1. the process are different and produce different results. 2. Digital silicon sensors do not and cannot produce a photograph. What they do produce is a voltage based on the photoelectric effect. This is then regenerated into digital signals that are then used to output reproductions of those signals. At no time during this process is there an optical image nor any photograph. A photograph is an image produce by the direct action of light. Digital does not do this nor can it. The physics don't allow it. 3. The ISO standard states definitively digital still cameras produce a signal that _represents_ still pictures, not actual pictures. As I've pointed out in my posts in rec.photo.darkroom (now being cross posted and the discussion deliberately taken out of context...), people need to look at the processes to determine what digital is vs. what photography is. Looking at the end result is misleading, since in our society the words photo and photographic have come to idiomatically mean any image we see. But as we all well know calendars, though we call them photos/photographs, are not. They are offset reproductions. Simialrly paintings are pictures, but they are not photographs. Digital produces pictures and reproductions, but there is no original photograph created by digital imaging. What is the definition of Photography? I think that fixing it as a method of producing pictures via a particular chemical process is not sufficiently broad. Is television photographic, it is completely electronic (I am excepting the use of motion pictures are original material, they are transmitted by electronic means). I think this argument confuses the method with the result. Digital photographs are "pictures" as much as chemical ones are once they get to the finished form. If silicon or any other elecronic sensors (they are not digital) do not produce pictures what do they produce? If you say an electronic signal you are partially right, that _is_ what comes out of the sensor, but it is not the _result_ of what comes from the sensor. The _result_ IS a picture. Also, "electronic" is not interchangibe with "digital". ALL of the electronic signals used for digital imaging purposes represent analogue functions. Even those which start out in life in the digital domain, such as the output of graphics generators, are meant to be translatable to analogue form in order to be meaningful to the human sensorium. Digital referes to a method of encoding analogue information in order to store or transmit it. In some ways digitally incoded information is superior to the original analogue information for transmission or storage (and in some ways is not). This has nothing to do with the process a user goes through. A person using an electronic camera to produce images which are to be reproduced on a computer screen or printed on a computer printer, can be a photgrapher just as much as someone using chemical methods. It is the production of the image that defines the process not the means. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
#19
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"Tom Phillips" wrote in message ... Richard Knoppow wrote: recordings. Now, having said all this basically I disagree with the original premise that electonic images are not photography. They obviously are despite any argument about longevity. They obviously are not, Richard, since 1. the process are different and produce different results. 2. Digital silicon sensors do not and cannot produce a photograph. What they do produce is a voltage based on the photoelectric effect. This is then regenerated into digital signals that are then used to output reproductions of those signals. At no time during this process is there an optical image nor any photograph. A photograph is an image produce by the direct action of light. Digital does not do this nor can it. The physics don't allow it. 3. The ISO standard states definitively digital still cameras produce a signal that _represents_ still pictures, not actual pictures. As I've pointed out in my posts in rec.photo.darkroom (now being cross posted and the discussion deliberately taken out of context...), people need to look at the processes to determine what digital is vs. what photography is. Looking at the end result is misleading, since in our society the words photo and photographic have come to idiomatically mean any image we see. But as we all well know calendars, though we call them photos/photographs, are not. They are offset reproductions. Simialrly paintings are pictures, but they are not photographs. Digital produces pictures and reproductions, but there is no original photograph created by digital imaging. What is the definition of Photography? I think that fixing it as a method of producing pictures via a particular chemical process is not sufficiently broad. Is television photographic, it is completely electronic (I am excepting the use of motion pictures are original material, they are transmitted by electronic means). I think this argument confuses the method with the result. Digital photographs are "pictures" as much as chemical ones are once they get to the finished form. If silicon or any other elecronic sensors (they are not digital) do not produce pictures what do they produce? If you say an electronic signal you are partially right, that _is_ what comes out of the sensor, but it is not the _result_ of what comes from the sensor. The _result_ IS a picture. Also, "electronic" is not interchangibe with "digital". ALL of the electronic signals used for digital imaging purposes represent analogue functions. Even those which start out in life in the digital domain, such as the output of graphics generators, are meant to be translatable to analogue form in order to be meaningful to the human sensorium. Digital referes to a method of encoding analogue information in order to store or transmit it. In some ways digitally incoded information is superior to the original analogue information for transmission or storage (and in some ways is not). This has nothing to do with the process a user goes through. A person using an electronic camera to produce images which are to be reproduced on a computer screen or printed on a computer printer, can be a photgrapher just as much as someone using chemical methods. It is the production of the image that defines the process not the means. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
#20
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Tom Phillips wrote:
Richard Knoppow wrote: recordings. Now, having said all this basically I disagree with the original premise that electonic images are not photography. They obviously are despite any argument about longevity. They obviously are not, Richard, since 1. the process are different and produce different results. Photography to me is capturing a moment in time. You can define it in a narrow way so that only your way of doing it is photography. IMHO if what you display never actually existed in front of the camera, it's photographic (or digital) art, not photography. But that's my narrow deifinition. I have some "digital art" hanging in the walls of my home, but I know what it is... -- Stacey |
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