Costs for photography

In article , "David J. Littleboy"
wrote:

[...]
*: To the best of my knowledge, nothing I took 1965 to 1982 has survived my
various moves and my parents various cleaning rampages through _their_ space
where my photographs might have been left.

Last year I found a box of negatives lost since 1972. It's like
discovering time again to look through them. I hope, perhaps against hope,
that you have the same good luck.

In article et, "Neil
Gould" wrote:

[...]
In my business, I've had to archive client's digital data for the last 18
years or so. [...]
Only those with rose-colored glasses on can think this isn't an issue
worthy of frequent consideration.

Panic Point: I developed an online music archive for a university. They
have tens of thousands of music tracks, many of which cannot be found
elsewhere (for example, recordings made on tape in the field of music no
longer being made). The ITS department makes "periodic" backup DAT tapes.
What does periodic mean? It _could_ mean they make iterative backups based
upon _date of last modification (or creation)_. I'm sure the backup person
is a happy puppy because that means _no backups_ after the first
installation. DAT tapes are, IMHO, a lousy way to store data anyway.

So, for those who use a service to archive their collections - find out
what, exactly, your provider means by "backup". And find out exactly what
your personal backup software is doing.

Off the soapbox! I won't get into it further.

In article , Raphael Bustin
wrote:

Do you really suppose that anyone who's taken the
trouble to acquire and use a MF film scanner hasn't
considered the issue of archiving his or her scans?
[...]

Raphael, if I recall correctly, you have been in computing for over thirty
years, therefore your habits are almost certainly well formed through
experience. Backup methods have become second nature to you. I think you
grossly overestimate the awareness of the rest of the population. I've
been in the digital information field since 1977 and found that along with
the ease-of-use and lost cost of the new technology comes a certain,
unwarranted optimisim. Consumers forget. They screw up. They haven't the
habits neccessary to achieve archival digital information.

In article , (Bob
Monaghan) wrote:

[... snip good article ...]
In short, film has demonstrated its archival capabilities from the
earliest daguerrotypes, which continue to be accessible today without any
accessory CDROM readers or software ;-) [...]

The point being that film survives neglect far better than digital storage
does. I assert that should someone 100 years from now discover a
collection of CDROMs or a couple hard drives of images that were put away
and neglected that the chances of lost data are very high. While the paper
and plastic labels survive, as would have film.

Another of my projects concerned the digitization of photographs made of a
certain area since 1885. During the early days of photography the
objective of a professional photographer-of-place was to dominate a
territory. There were not very many amateurs as compared to today. So the
disaster is to find a "professional" who practically woned a territory,
did most of the important images, but didn't wash his plates or prints
adequately. If I had a time machined, I'd go back and kick his butt.
Interestingly, one of the motivations for people to have their property
photographed was for insurance purposes. The insurance industry was just
developing methods to document risks. Fire was a _huge_ and frequent
problem back then. Devastaing fires were regular. Claims were problematic.
Am I digressing? No. Today our problem isn't fire, per se, but individual
computer disasters. Very similar in terms of digital losses.

MikeWhy wrote:

"Neil Gould" wrote in message
link.net...
Recently, Stacey posted:

David J. Littleboy wrote:


*: To the best of my knowledge, nothing I took 1965 to 1982 has
survived my various moves and my parents various cleaning rampages
through _their_ space where my photographs might have been left.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

And if you are this careless with your digital images they'll be lost
just as easily.

And *much* sooner.

That wouldn't be a problem. He can just rescan.

Why would he still have the negatives? He didn't keep up with them back then
as evidenced by his images from back then all being lost.

I still have the negatives from when I was a teen shooting B&W and they
still print fine. For that matter I still have negatives from when my
parents were in their teens and they are 82 years old! All they did was
keep them in a box and not throw them away. I don't see why archiving film
is seen as a big deal.

--

Stacey

David J. Littleboy wrote:


It seems to me that if I care that my shots remain, I have to be radically
aggressive about assuring that they do remain, whether I shoot them on
film or digital.

With film you just can't be careless and let them get thrown away or lost
when moving. I have negatives that are over 60 years old that still print
fine. They were found in the bottom of a box in my mom's closet, been there
for over 20 years without being touched and are fine. I don't see that as
"agressive" archiving.
--

Stacey

Raphael Bustin wrote:

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 02:50:43 GMT, "Neil Gould"

Why do you think it's inappropriate for a medium format group, given that
many of us *do* scan our film and would like to be able to use those
edited images in the future? Given BobM's career position, I'm sure he's
had to give it more than passing thought. So, what solution do you propose
to address the archival storage of digital media?


Oh, so deeply nuanced.

Yet the original Fuji article that bob quoted verbatim,
posited: "Some 81% of those who regularly saved images
on a computer hard drive had NO form of backups"

So, I would argue that it's you arguing the wrong issue.

So why not answer the question "What solution do you propose to address the
archival storage of digital media?" instead of going off yet again on a
pro-digital/anti-film rant?

--

Stacey

"jjs" wrote in message
...
The point being that film survives neglect far better than digital storage
does. I assert that should someone 100 years from now discover a
collection of CDROMs or a couple hard drives of images that were put away
and neglected that the chances of lost data are very high. While the paper
and plastic labels survive, as would have film.

I'm confident the commercial process machines at the minilab does a more
than adequate job. Uncle Bob's photos will last a long, long time.

"Neil Gould" wrote in message
link.net...
Recently, Stacey posted:

David J. Littleboy wrote:


*: To the best of my knowledge, nothing I took 1965 to 1982 has
survived my various moves and my parents various cleaning rampages
through _their_ space where my photographs might have been left.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

And if you are this careless with your digital images they'll be lost
just as easily.

And *much* sooner.

That wouldn't be a problem. He can just rescan.

David J. Littleboy wrote:


"jjs" wrote in message
...
In article . net, "Neil
Gould" wrote:

[....] So, what solution do you propose
to address the archival storage of digital media?

Well, let's see. We scan our MF film. The film will endure even if the
digital images do not. I see no problem. Perhaps one could photograph his
Inkjet prints in, ah, MF? See how it goes?

But Bobm's rant and article was about _consumers_. If we're talking about
consumers, most consumers aren't be able to find the negative for a print
6 months after the shot is taken, let alone 6 years.


I don't buy that. It might take some time, but most can dig up the negatives
if they need them.

--

Stacey