Film vs. Digital

[wildlightphoto]

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Hmm - you can buy CDs that are guaranteed for 100 years. And you can store your digital " negatives" in various locations. And copy/convert them if something should crop up, like new file formats. Quite a bit longer term stable and safe imo. I do not think achivability is a viable argument any more.

 

+1

 

It's also digital technology that has made several of my film photos accessible and usable. Slides that were irreparably damaged in processing or subsequent handling, and slides that were made in very poor lighting conditions can be made useable through scanning and Photoshop repair - and then I archive the repaired image file in several locations and formats along with my digital-origin photos.

 

I consider the original slides to be one of several image formats but from experience it's one of the least reliable, requires the greatest care in handling & storage, and the most difficult to work with.

[AlanG]

For a piece of film you need light and maybe a lens.

 

How do you know for sure that your film is processed properly and will be stored correctly to last as long as you hope without serious degradation? How do you duplicate and archive your film images? Who is going to look after this film once you are gone and how do you see the images being utilized after you are gone?

 

High quality prints is a storage medium that can be viewed without any equipment and are easy to make from film or digital files. When someone dies, I bet that the prints are saved and the negatives are rarely ever looked at even if they are preserved somewhere.

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[thrid]

How do you know for sure that your film is processed properly and will be stored correctly to last as long as you hope without serious degradation?

 

a) I would hope that after all of these years I would have figured out how to properly process film.

We are not necessarily talking about me, but about the technology of film.

 

 

How do you duplicate and archive your film images?

 

I don't but I suppose one could make duplicates with a Rhino LVT.

 

 

Who is going to look after this film once you are gone and how do you see the images being utilized after you are gone?

 

Again, we are talking about the technology, not me.

 

Remember Al Kaplan the Leica shooter from Florida? After he passed away his children established a scholarship and I believe Barry University now has his negs.

 

 

High quality prints is a storage medium that can be viewed without any equipment and are easy to make from film or digital files.

 

What do you think will last longer? An inkjet or a properly executed silver print or print made via an alternative process like a carbon print?

 

When someone dies, I bet that the prints are saved and the negatives are rarely ever looked at even if they are preserved somewhere.

 

Maybe. But once again, we are talking about the technology.

[adan]

I can see both sides of the archival question:

 

OTOH - Thrid (without meaning to pry - rhetorical question) I assume you have money saved up in some form other than under the mattress as cash. Which means it is stored as 1s and 0s on some digital medium in a bank or fund or whatever. Safely, we hope, until you reach retirement age or otherwise need it. Somehow insurance companies and other big businesses have managed to store digital data reliably and retrievably on magnetic or other media since, oh, about 1960. (But not by making one copy and tossing it in a drawer someplace - it does take a strategy.)

 

OTOH - Film does have the advantage of, well, looking like film. It is obviously images (even if tonally reversed). A CD/DVD looks like: a) a coaster from a hi-tech 80's nightclub; a shaving mirror; c) perhaps digital data (someone's mp3 collection?)

 

Not as part of a backup strategy, but for "posterity" - I am making pigment inkjet prints of my must-survive shots. Letter-size on untextured glossy paper. Dark-stored. Simply because someone will be able to look at them and say "Oh, a photograph." And presumably be able to reproduce them easily by some future means, if desired. Cosmic-Ray Holography or whatever the medium of 2182 is (perhaps - film?).

 

Thrid, yes, PIGMENT-based inkjet will last as long as any readily-available silver-based material - so far as can be scientifically tested. In dark storage it will last longer than the oldest photograph has existed so far (300 years vs. 182 years for the new Niepce images recently found from 1828.)

 

Fuji Crystal Archive (RA-4 process) color paper is rated at 40-60 years, BTW - Wilhelm Imaging Research

 

Note that for both inkjet and the Fuji paper, the "rated" time is until noticeable changes or fading, not total disappearance. Neither material disappears at the stroke of midnight on some future date. They fade, and one can always intervene to copy an image before the fading is excessive.

 

Different from purely digital storage, where files look brand-new right up until the moment the drive crashes or the data gets corrupted.

Edited November 15, 2010 by adan

[AlanG]

One could talk about the technology "in theory." But the practical application and need for it is what I was getting at. There won't be much point in most photographers saving all their images for "posterity." If you feel this is important for some of your work, pigment prints (as Adan pointed out) or analog prints kept in dark storage should last a very long time. The advantage of this is that you can save several sets in various places. B/w negs and prints should have a long storage life, but I don't know how long typical color negs and slides will last.

 

Separate from that photographers have to organize their negatives with their respective contact sheets (or slides on pages) and meta data and keep all of that in the proper environment if it is to last and be useful. Then you have to consider if 100 years from now, will many people be interested in pulling out those negatives, going through them and looking for a film scanner or other means to reproduce them. Who will they be and why will they want to do this? I don't expect that anyone will want to do this with my photos, so why should I go through all the trouble to make it possible? Your situation may be different than mine.

 

However if there is a method of storing images for posterity on-line, key worded for search engines, they will be accessible to anyone, anywhere, indefinitely. Sort of a perpetual Flickr account. So far, posting images on-line has proven very useful to me. Whereas my slides were only useful as long as my stock agency was showing them to people. (No more.)

 

I guess you could buy a film recorder and start a business archiving digital photos to film and see how it goes.

Edited November 15, 2010 by AlanG

[jlancasterd]

... When someone dies, I bet that the prints are saved and the negatives are rarely ever looked at even if they are preserved somewhere.

 

Very True!

 

As editor of a Magazine which fairly regularly publishes old photos, dating back as far as the 1870s, I can confirm that is is extremely unusual to be able to work with the original negatives. The best one can hope for is that a print is relatively large, and hasn't suffered creasing, fading, etc.

 

I can well remember being told, in the 1950s, when I purchased my first Box Brownie, that I was 'being stupid' to want to keep the negatives as well as the prints. 'You'll never need them again, why save them...?'

 

Fortunately, I never was much sold on taking advice of this nature, so I still have box camera negatives of railway subjects from 1955 that get scanned from time to time - and I'm amazed at the detail one can pull out of the shadows on some of them, using a decent scanner.

[AlanG]

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Very True!

 

As editor of a Magazine which fairly regularly publishes old photos, dating back as far as the 1870s, I can confirm that is is extremely unusual to be able to work with the original negatives. The best one can hope for is that a print is relatively large, and hasn't suffered creasing, fading, etc.

 

 

Posted below is a box of old family photos that I discovered in our home when when I was 11 back in 1963. A lot of them were made in the 30s and 40s. They represent the typical way that people cared for their negatives. This was what started me in photography when I learned that I could easily make contact prints from them. They are still in my office 47 years later and I still don't know who most of the people are in the photos or where they were taken, etc. Fortunately my mother has preserved many family photos as prints in albums that are well labeled, These go back to the 1800s in the Ukraine and Siberia. She also wrote a pretty complete family history along with extensive childhood memories and preserved various other docs such as my grandmother's poetry. I've thought about organizing the photos and documents on line somewhere to share with our widely dispersed relatives but haven't found the time. My mother was a painter and my sister is a painter and sculptor so it would be nice to include their artwork too. And I'm what you might consider an "expert" at this yet I haven't done it.

 

On the other hand, maybe the discovery of an old box of negatives will spark another career in photography.

 

BTW, in the b/w prints below, you can see how they are deteriorating. Thus preserving them in their current state by scanning and pigment printing seems sensible to me. I can't see why I'd want to shoot them and make some negatives.

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Edited November 15, 2010 by AlanG

[thrid]

I can see both sides of the archival question:

 

OTOH - Thrid (without meaning to pry - rhetorical question) I assume you have money saved up in some form other than under the mattress as cash. Which means it is stored as 1s and 0s on some digital medium in a bank or fund or whatever. Safely, we hope, until you reach retirement age or otherwise need it. Somehow insurance companies and other big businesses have managed to store digital data reliably and retrievably on magnetic or other media since, oh, about 1960. (But not by making one copy and tossing it in a drawer someplace - it does take a strategy.).

 

Yeah, that longterm digital data storage is working out just great.

 

I guess that is why NASA can no longer read the early data that was recorded by the Voyager probes and many other missions.

 

In order for that theory to hold water you need to constantly migrate your data to new backup systems etc.

Not cheap, but yes banks and other institutions do it BECAUSE THEIR INCOME DEPENDS ON MAINTAINING THE DATA.

 

Here is an example of what happens when you don't spend the money to migrate your backups.

 

Keep in mind that we are not talking about a dozen tapes or even one hundred. We are talking about thousands of tapes that fill a storage room and would cost a small fortune to maintain (while generating no profit or income).

 

A few years ago on a lark we tried to read an exabyte tape backup we had made almost 15 yeas ago.

 

So, we found an exabyte drive and even dug up an old SGI workstation.

 

Unfortunately the exabyte tapes had begun to oxidize and flake, so there was data dropout. Eventually we found one that was still stable, but none of us could quite figure out how to read the data off the tape. Good old tar -xf just wouldn't do the trick and this was regardless of the fact that one of us in our pimple faced youth had actually made that very tape.

 

Then through the fog of time it came to us.

 

Even back then the fellow who had written the wrappers for the backup system had been sort of a boob.

 

Back in the day he would drive everyone crazy, because he would change his code every once and a while, without warning or ensuring backwards compatibility. Suddenly nothing would work and you would have to waste an enormous amount of time back tracking. So, we ended up having to diligently keep track of which version of his software had been used to make each tape.

 

But that was no reason to lose heart. All we needed was a copy of the /bin directory of his backup software and we would be able to figure out which version had been used to make the tape. If need be we could even do that by trial and error.

 

In theory this should have worked, except for the simple fact that the computers we had used 15 years ago to make the backups were now at the bottom of a landfill.

Along with their hard drives and his code.

 

Luckily someone had made a backup of those machines and his archive software, before they were tossed. But, unfortunately they had used his software to make that backup.

 

In the meanwhile the negatives for the movie, that were generated by the data on those tapes, are resting safely in a vault under the Arizona desert; patiently waiting for someone to reissue that long awaited directors cut DVD.

 

The end.

 

.

OTOH - Film does have the advantage of, well, looking like film. It is obviously images (even if tonally reversed). A CD/DVD looks like: a) a coaster from a hi-tech 80's nightclub; a shaving mirror; c) perhaps digital data (someone's mp3 collection?).

 

 

Not as part of a backup strategy, but for "posterity" - I am making pigment inkjet prints of my must-survive shots. Letter-size on untextured glossy paper. Dark-stored. Simply because someone will be able to look at them and say "Oh, a photograph." And presumably be able to reproduce them easily by some future means, if desired. Cosmic-Ray Holography or whatever the medium of 2182 is (perhaps - film?).

 

Thrid, yes, PIGMENT-based inkjet will last as long as any readily-available silver-based material - so far as can be scientifically tested. In dark storage it will last longer than the oldest photograph has existed so far (300 years vs. 182 years for the new Niepce images recently found from 1828.)

 

Fuji Crystal Archive (RA-4 process) color paper is rated at 40-60 years, BTW - Wilhelm Imaging Research

 

Note that for both inkjet and the Fuji paper, the "rated" time is until noticeable changes or fading, not total disappearance. Neither material disappears at the stroke of midnight on some future date. They fade, and one can always intervene to copy an image before the fading is excessive.

 

Different from purely digital storage, where files look brand-new right up until the moment the drive crashes or the data gets corrupted.

 

 

Making archival prints is a safe bet and good strategy. Without wanting to state the obvious, it probably is a good idea to avoid inks using dye. The most stable prints out there are carbon prints or those made with gold or platinum on archival rag paper. Obviously you can make a carbon print the analog way, but I believe I am correct in saying that the Piezo K7 inkjet system is carbon based pigment. Printed on the right paper, those prints should also be extremely stable.

 

 

By the way, the national archives of all industrialized nations on the planet are preserved on polyester based micro film, packed in to stainless steel containers and stored in salt mines. They even store some of the data as R,G,B separations, so images can be reassembled in color, from the b/w negative.

 

Nobody is betting on any of the current digital media for extremely long storage, unless it is constantly being migrated to new media. And even if someone could design a digital media that lasts 300 years, where are you going to find a computer in 2310 that is going to be able to read the data? The beauty of Estar based microfilm is that not only is it extremely stable, but you only need light and a lens to read it. If Kodak is to be believed Estar has a lifespan of 300-500 years.

 

By then we should have figured out a better way of doing this. That is if we are still around.

Edited November 19, 2010 by thrid

[wildlightphoto]

Where's the "beating dead horse" emoticon when you need it?

[andybarton]

Here...

 

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[adan]

At the risk of flagellating a deceased equus.

 

"In order for that theory to hold water you need to constantly migrate your data to new backup systems etc. Not cheap..."

 

Absolutely - migrating to new media every 3-5 years is an integral, obvious part of backing up data - as necessary as running film through fixer.

 

I hope that is not a surprise to anyone? If you're not migrating to new media every so often, you're not backing up.

 

For both the reasons you identify - media failure (flaking tapes) and media obsolence (can't find a driver or serial cable for that old tape/disk/whatever.)

 

Keep three copies of your data - ideally, one in an off-site location. Every 3-5 years, make three new copies. An easy way is just to get disks twice as big each time, so that you migrate all your old files and have space for another 3-5 years of new files before the next migration. Hook up your 1Tb drive to your new 2Tb drive, tell it "copy all that," and go out for coffee. Times 3. Takes about as much time as doing 5 runs of film.

 

Cost? About $300 for each migration - i.e. three $100 drives every 3-5 years. About equal to one roll of film a month (@ $6.25 per roll +/-). Cost per terabyte for hard disks is dropping faster than my files are growing (even at 1,000 new images a month).

 

At the moment, my entire life's collection of digital/digitized images (including film scans dating back 18 years) takes up 300 Gigabytes. So my current $100 1-Terabyte drives are slightly overkill. But with bigger camera files arriving every day, the 3-5 year time frame is still about right.

 

(If anyone wonders why "3-5 years" - 5 years is the safe outside limit for any digital media, even the quote-"100-year"-unquote CDs, and some heavy shooters may fill their "big" hard-drives as fast as 3 years. Or simply be ready for a computer update that often.)

[Clearlight]

So, you need to back up digital data every 3-4 years; I'll do that. Out of interest, how often do you need to back up film?

[andybarton]

You can't, unless you duplicate it (not ideal) or scan it all. Which is why you have to look after it properly, or accept the consequences.

 

But then you know this already, I'm sure

[erl]

It seems to me that film is a lot easier on ignorance. I have films that I processed and filed, sometimes quite poorly, up to 57 years ago. They are still 'functional.'

 

In the past 10 years, I have lost count of how many digital files I have lost through the same ignorance regarding correct storage for the medium. Of course I do it all properly now, but the pain of getting it right for digital has been much worse. It seems film is more forgiving despite the versatility of digital.

 

Either way, I have decided to enjoy what I have here and now. My future and the future of my images, both film and digital, must take our chances together. They will probably outlast me so I hope somebody enjoys them in the future as I do now.

[Xmas]

Hi

 

Make a 10x8 Silver gelatine of best shot tone it serpia, send to Tate modern with return postage.

 

Then when the Severn floods your house, or the local factory blows up or the plumbing bursts you are ok.

 

Scan the print in event of need.

 

A back up on a disc connected to computer may dissappear on a nearby lightening strike, even if the disc is switched off...

 

Noel

[adan]

Erl - true, both the natural and the manmade worlds punish ignorance. Take a look at the politicians in whatever country you choose, and I think you'll agree that, on the whole, "going easy" on ignorance is not a good thing...

 

Clearlight - well, no. You need to BACK UP data as often as conveniently possible. Daily or hourly, if you have automated programs to handle it in the background. Preferably at least two copies in different places. To protect against hard drive crashes, or the Severn overflowing. You need to MIGRATE to completely new storage every 3-5 years, to make sure your hardware and files keep up with technological change and are written on fresh iron oxide.

 

Xmas - yes, "A" (as in "one") backup to a disk at the same location as the computer is certainly incompetent technique. Just as neglecting to use hypo clear, and a long wash, and toning is incompetent archival technique for silver. But so what? If you want to compare digital to film, compare "competent" to "competent."

 

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment. It can be argued that:

 

- If you shoot a B&W-only photograph, you've experienced a "data loss" from the moment you push the shutter button. No color information - regardless of how fine the grain or how many "megapixels" you think it equals.

 

- If you shoot on something other than grainless microfilm, color or B&W, the image is "corrupted" by grain and gelatin diffusion from the moment of exposure - at least in the 35mm size. About like walking into the Tate and running a sand-blaster over the paintings, followed by a solvent spray to make the colors run.

 

- With any film image other than large-format contact prints, the image has to be run through another lens, and for anything other than a slide show, another stage of processing, to be seen with the naked eye. All lenses and processes will add their own corrupting and lossy artifacts to the original. I hate to tell you, Xmas, but your sepia-toned 8x10 print has already thrown away about 50% of what you captured on film - a fairly poor backup. I have never seen a slide dupe that wasn't also a 50% loss over the original (or greater).

 

The fact that these "lossy, corrupted" images may (may!) then last for centuries is hardly a recommendation. Archival crud is still crud.

 

Like I said - the Devil's Advocate's position. Photographers have happily worked around the imperfections of photography for 182 years.

 

It does seem to me that most of the critical comments about digital archiving on this thread come from people whose own words reveal that (ahem!) - they don't know much about the subject.

[wildlightphoto]

A back up on a disc connected to computer may dissappear on a nearby lightening strike, even if the disc is switched off...

 

That's why I use off-site backups (I have them in three locations spread across the continent).

 

... how often do you need to back up film?

 

I haven't found an adequate method for backing up any of my film photos other than a high-resolution scan.

[Xmas]

...

Xmas - yes, "A" (as in "one") backup to a disk at the same location as the computer is certainly incompetent technique. Just as neglecting to use hypo clear, and a long wash, and toning is incompetent archival technique for silver. But so what? If you want to compare digital to film, compare "competent" to "competent."

I was trying to help, I did not say incompetent, a 'mirror' disc or RAID is desirable and an off site mirror.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment. It can be argued that:

 

- If you shoot a B&W-only photograph, you've experienced a "data loss" from the moment you push the shutter button. No color information - regardless of how fine the grain or how many "megapixels" you think it equals.

But I use trad film (e.g.5222) when I want it cause I like grain, the grain is supposed to be there. If I want I use D-23 or POTA for flattened toes or shoulders, I don't like the ADC sharp threshold, I burn and dodge the prints for softer shadows and highlights as well.

- If you shoot on something other than grainless microfilm, color or B&W, the image is "corrupted" by grain and gelatin diffusion from the moment of exposure - at least in the 35mm size. About like walking into the Tate and running a sand-blaster over the paintings, followed by a solvent spray to make the colors run.

I accept your kind submissions but it is the transformation planned for e.g. like a sharpie on cartridge paper or water colour, or indeed hot mirror, microlens, Bayer pattern, digital sensor, ADC, and anti aliasing. I can only assume your PhD is in sopistry?

- With any film image other than large-format contact prints, the image has to be run through another lens, and for anything other than a slide show,

I'd suggest the projector screen is a stage of processing, the screens always have grain and off axis rolloff?

another stage of processing, to be seen with the naked eye. All lenses and processes will add their own corrupting and lossy artifacts to the original. I hate to tell you, Xmas, but your sepia-toned 8x10 print has already thrown away about 50% of what you captured on film - a fairly poor backup. I have never seen a slide dupe that wasn't also a 50% loss over the original (or greater).

you have assumed I don't have a 10x8 camera, I think? And my 35mm 10x8s still managed to show pretty sharp film grain, what 50% do you think I've lost on those?

The fact that these "lossy, corrupted" images may (may!) then last for centuries is hardly a recommendation. Archival crud is still crud.

I was thinking about asthetices and impact more than quality, I am cautious about archival claims e.g. M/s JMCamerons prints from circa 1850, they seem to be ok? It would seem to be ignorant to call them 'archival crud', even if she used blue plates long exposure and primitive lens? The prints are still there. You think the 19 century people used hypo clear on silver gelatines?

Like I said - the Devil's Advocate's position. Photographers have happily worked around the imperfections of photography for 182 years.

sic - 'so far'

It does seem to me that most of the critical comments about digital archiving on this thread come from people whose own words reveal that (ahem!) - they don't know much about the subject.

I'd be more diffident, but you might be correct who knows.

The OP asked why the analogue people...

For those of you that are still shooting film, what do you see as the benefits vs. shooting with a M8, M8.2 or M9?

This is easy answered - for me

 

The M8 to M9 are expensive and have very limited 3rd party maintenance, bit like an RD/1 but even more expensive, they frequently need to go to Solms when they go wrong, a M2 or Canon P, can be maintained by any compentent camera repair person, I've even lifted topplates myself... If you lose a Canon P you get another for 200 GBP...

 

It was once said that Leicas had nothing inside them, e.g. compared with Contax II.

 

My cameras get wet externally, and internal condensation, only need an occassional CLA.

 

I want the analogue image fine art style prints. I like the soft shadows and smooth highlights, the grain. That is nostalgia, I can recall the Third Man on general release in the cinema. When I'm using 35mm I shoot one handed instinctive point so image quality is pretty poor to start.

 

Some of my friends have sold their M8, for Canon DSLR or M6...

 

But the point that you dont seem to recognise is that 35mm was never about quality, people had 5x4 and TLR, but the PhotoG went to 35mm, I think for the f/6.3 and being there more often, 35mm stills and 16mm cine news gathering was for immediacy. But that was yesterday.

 

Today Dig cameras are even more immediate for the photoJ today DSLR and 3G laptop, then perhaps integrated 3G + DSLR tomorrow. You push the button the news editors email has the shot seconds later...

 

I dont think the DSLR prints are better than 35mm equivalents merely different.

 

Noel

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[AlanG]

Since I already have an entire wall of filing cabinets filled with film, how do I back it up and what is going to happen to all those images when I'm gone? Even if I pay to store everything in an old salt mine, to what purpose? Is it possible that more than perhaps a relative handful of my images (if that) will matter to anyone in the future?