At 23:00 2003-04-03, Moose wrote:
One thing I've noticed over the time I've been on the list is that those
who really poo-poo digital are those who haven't tried current, top end
equipment. They tend to argue from theory. Those who give it a real try
are (mostly) converted. Not that digital is necessarily 'better', but that
it is for real and capable of producing images equivalent in quality to
wet analog methods, although not the same. I bought a 2mp DC a couple of
years ago for its size, convienience and immediacy (and maybe 'cause I
have a little gear head in me :-) ).Based on my reasearch and theory and
the 'some picture is better than no picture' principle, I hoped that 4x5
sized prints from it wouldn't be too bad. Guess what? Even cropped images
produce beautiful 8x10 prints on the Epson.
In spite of my initials I don't really pooh-pooh digital :-) I have tried
it (not with digital SLR but a N*k*n 5700) and personally just don't think
it is fun. But if I worked as a professional photog I'm sure I would use
digital, at least on some assignments.
As I see it there are two ways of going digital: (1) shooting film and scan
it (or the prints) or (2) shooting with a digital camera.
I have no problems with the former way. If you shoot film and scan it you
can have the best of the two worlds. And you can use your OMs! But I am a
bit bothered by the latter way for 2 reasons: (1) it is very non-OM
because of the way digicams work--very AF, very auto-everything; and (2)
the issue of the preservation of the pictures.
When you shoot film, the negatives (or the slides) are your originals. You
may scan them and continue to work digitally with the pictures, or you may
copy them in the old wet darkroom technique (or let a lab do it), but the
film originals will always be there for keeps, probably at least for 50
years for colour film and hopefully a lot more for B&W film. When you
shoot digitally, on the other hand, your picture files are you originals,
and you should be aware of the issue of preservation and have a strategy
for that (if it is at all important, of course).
You have to be aware of the following issues:
1. Media
2. File format
3. Software
Of these, the first is probably the one with the longest life span. CD-R
is said to have at least 25 years. File format maybe has a little shorter
life span, depending on what format you choose. And the software used to
create or manipulate the files is the most short-lived. This means that
you should not archive files in a proprietary software file format. If you
do and then forget about them, they will probably not be retrievable in a
few years. Maybe that is not a great deal to you, and then that's
fine. But if you think that it would be nice if your grandchildren (or
someone else) would be able to look at your pictures in the future, you
would perhaps want to address the problem.
One way of doing that is to have a strategy to save your files in the most
commonly used good (not compressed) file format used presently (today that
would be uncompressed TIFF, I think) and then migrate your picture files
from media to media and from file format to file format in maybe 10-year
intervals. (Or at least access them to see that they are still
readable.) This I believe is a common strategy with many museums and archives.
I think you should not save them in an internal RAW format, which is
proprietary and may not be readable in ten years, nor in JPEG, which is a
destructive compression format. Of course, converting from JPEG to TIFF
doesn't help, since the lossy compression already has been done.
If these things are taken care of in a planned way, digital filing may
actually be better and even more reliable than film, but if it is not done,
the opposite is probably the case. And I think that many family pictures
taken with digicams will disappear into the digital void in one way or the
other, often because of not knowing or bothering about this, and that is a
great pity.
Well, so many words for my simple thoughts. I might have overlooked
something or maybe misunderstood some facts, so it would be interesting to
learn what opinions you list members have. And what strategies you may
have for your digital photos, especially those working professionally.
Best regards,
-poo
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