On Tuesday, September 24, 2002, at 04:23 pm, Albert wrote:
I have a burned CD that is 7 years old. My friend was one of hte
first to buy a CD burner. I threw the disk in my drive the other day,
and it no longer would read. Don't let "optical" media fool you.
What's scary is, it will either read or it won't, and if it doesn't,
you have ZERO pictures!
Degradation of film, I can still pull an image off of it. I can
always scan film in, and have both physical and digital medias. But I
cannot have digital get put on film (actually, I can now, I know a
local company that will do it) but why would you go in reverse, as far
as quality and density??
Actually, that to me is the killer app: the ability to put digital pics
onto traditional negatives. I mean, if there is no (or very little)
loss of quality in putting a raw TIFF onto a 35mm negative, it would be
great for archival purposes, reprints would just be a matter of
bringing your negs in to almost any printer (or DYI), and viewing the
pictures or the negatives wouldn't require a computer (just hold the
negatives to the light, after all). Plus, you wouldn't have to worry
about your CDs losing their dyes after five years or having to transfer
all of your CDs onto DVDs, then onto whatever other format supercedes
CDs and DVDs in 10-15 years. And that's not even considering that
JPEGs and TIFFs will probably also be superceded by newer formats in
the future. So not only are you "stuck" transferring your images to
newer storage formats or backups every few years, but you're also
eventually going to be forced to convert your existing images into
newer formats since newer applications may eventually lose the ability
to read legacy file formats. (Of course, those CDs you burned using
today's OS may not be readable by a newer version to be released in
2030, if that company or OS are even around anymore.) With a 10- to
20-year collection of digital images stored on CDs and DVDs in various
formats, that would be a lot of media to eventually convert and
transfer. For professional photographers, maybe this time investment
is warranted, but for a hobbyist/amateur such as myself, I'm not sure I
could justify it when I have other things to do to survive.
I've lurked on this digital vs. traditional thread, and while I don't
think digital is completely useless, I do think it's one of those
"right tool for the job" deals. For quick proofs, experimentation or
images intended solely for the web or other online display, nothing
beats digital for its ease of use and instant delivery. Arguably,
digital also allows one to be more creative since a photographer can
shoot and experiment as much as he wants without having to spend money
on developing a roll of film (even if only one or even none of the
photos are keepers in the end). But for photos that I'd like to keep
for the memories, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable relying solely on
digital formats for that just yet.
(Sorry if this is just a rehash of the same arguments, but I must admit
I don't normally track these threads...)
-f
--
Derek Fong
Web Application Developer
subtitle designs inc. <http://www.subtitled.com/>
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." --James Joyce
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