The Digital Elephant

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
David J. Littleboy wrote:

........
I'm shooting some digital now and trying to be active about storage, I
doubt
many casual users are. Most seem to have a hard time even downloading them
onto a computer much less archival storing them. They just take the CF
card
to walmart, have prints made and erase the card.
--

Stacey

To illustrate your point:

An acquaintance of mine recently had her hard drive crash, she was very
upset because she lost 3 years worth of digital photos, never backed them
up, even though she has a cd burner. She has 2 young kids, had stopped
using film 3 years ago and only had a few of them printed. I'm willing to
bet that she's a typical
case. Another friend thinks I'm crazy for backing up the photos more than
once. I have been lucky though - I've yet to find even one disc that's gone
bad in eight years, some the oldest ones are finicky about what drives
they'll run on, but I've not yet had one "totally" fail.

Tom

"LR Kalajainen" wrote in message
...

All in all, there isn't any archival color process. B&W properly
processed and stored comes as close as it gets [...]

So shoot three B&W frames, R,G,B respectively. Kinda hell with sports,
though.

"Matthew McGrattan" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:17:44 GMT, "Shelley"
wrote:

I do think they're being ignored, largely by the general,
non-technologically-oriented public--the very people whose daily lives
are of such interest to historians and archaeologists.

Yes, I agree. I didn't realize you were talking about newspapers, TV, the
general public, etc. when you posted your first message. Since you posted
here I thought you were talking about these things being ignored here and
other photo forums. But I think you're right when it comes to general
consumers, many of them haven't been properly educated about the short
life
of CDs and some digital prints, file deterioration, etc. Of course I
don't
think the general public realized that traditional prints, especially
color,
would be lost in a few decades either so that they should save the
negatives, organize them in a manner such that the negatives could be
matched with the prints and reprints made, store them in a cool, dark
place,
etc.


I'm curious about this claim traditional colour prints. Our family
photo album has photographs from the early 70s (me as baby, for
example) that look fine. No apparent fading or damage.

They are stored in a photo album so not generally exposed to light,
but there's nothing special about them apart from that.

All of my own photos from school in the mid 80s - the ones I still
have anyway - still look fine too. [Although now that I've been using
decent 35mm and medium format cameras they all look horribly out of
focus and grainy....]

Do the photographs need to be exposed to light for this damage to
occur?

Or have we just been lucky?

Matt

According to an advertising brochure from Kodak on Professional Endura
papers (traditional RA-4 papers), the photos will last 200 years in
darkness, or 100 years in average room lighting. Prints are affected by
light, temperature and humidity.
More info, including testing procedures, is available at
www.kodak.com/go/endura . Look for publication PPI-1097, "Kodak Professional
Endura Papers. Defining Print Life: The critical balance of light and
thermal stability"

Ken Hart

"jjs" wrote in message
...
The way to preserve a digital image is to beam the digital signal into
space
via high-power laser and leave it to posterity to recapitulate the signal
later. Much later.




The way I preserve digital data is to email it to a friend and ask them to
forward it to someone else, who forwards it to someone else, etc...
BTW, everyone here should soon be getting a bunch of "How many ___ does it
take to change a lightbulb?" emails shortly! Just forward them to someone
else!

Ken Hart

In article ,
LR Kalajainen wrote:

[snip]
All in all, there isn't any archival color process.
[more snip]

What about Kodachrome? Or 3-strip Technicolor imbibition prints (a process
formerly used for motion-picture prints).

(Not like it matters to me...I almost always shoot B&W Tri-X.)

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 22:15:21 GMT, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Recently, jjs john@xstafford.net posted:

"Neil Gould" wrote in message
Recently, jjs john@xstafford.net posted:

I didn't say it would be easy. As a challenge, I'd like to see a
_properly made_ (by the book) made TIFF that I cannot open.

An interesting challenge... why not take a look at the "book"?
[...]

I know The Book. What I was saying is that we can do nothing about
software that doesn't follow the standard TIFF, for example.

Agreed. Nor can we do anything about applications that only support a
subset of legitimate variants of a file format.


By this same logic, I assume maximum safety comes
from using a mainstream editor such as Photoshop.

IOW, given that many/most of the important and
valuable images are created (or passed through)
Photoshop, I suspect the "Photoshop" variant of
TIFF will be well supported.


rafe b
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

In article ,
(Scott Norwood) wrote:

In article ,
LR Kalajainen wrote:

[snip]
All in all, there isn't any archival color process.
[more snip]

What about Kodachrome? Or 3-strip Technicolor imbibition prints (a process
formerly used for motion-picture prints).

(Not like it matters to me...I almost always shoot B&W Tri-X.)

There was a "archival color process" known as dye transfer
very stable indeed, but like many other things Kodak
saw fit to discontinue it.

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

"rafe bustin" wrote in message
...

[...]
IOW, given that many/most of the important and
valuable images are created (or passed through)
Photoshop, I suspect the "Photoshop" variant of
TIFF will be well supported.

Can you tell us how the Adobe Photoshop TIFF is different from the rest?

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 19:57:20 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

"rafe bustin" wrote in message
.. .

[...]
IOW, given that many/most of the important and
valuable images are created (or passed through)
Photoshop, I suspect the "Photoshop" variant of
TIFF will be well supported.

Can you tell us how the Adobe Photoshop TIFF is different from the rest?


Not at all, but Neil implies that there are
several variations on the standard.. or perhaps
variations in implementation of the standard.

I imagine there might be issues in some cases
with 16 bit images, or where there are multiple
layers and/or alpha channels.

But that really doesn't concern me much --
the files in my "archives" are generally
flattened.

I know for a fact that the byte-ordering issue
is part of the standard (ie., there is no issue.)


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

"rafe bustin" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 19:57:20 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

Can you tell us how the Adobe Photoshop TIFF is different from the rest?


Not at all, but Neil implies that there are
several variations on the standard.. or perhaps
variations in implementation of the standard.

A large number of the errors regarding standards is in interpretation. I've
lived with it all my computer career. Someone gets a standard that specifies
no response to an erred packet and he makes a friggin case of it and sends
back something like "F*kwit..." and screws it all up. In image standards
there are similar miscreant commisions. Nuke 'em all.