A reawakening to film?

[Roger Cole]

In 1988, one could have made analog copies of any analog photographs and stored them at six different places locally and around the globe. In fact it could have been done anytime during the 20th century if one had really wanted to. Digital may make it easier to do but really changes nothing per se. Protection of images with redundancy has always been possible.

Well, yes and no. The thing is that any analog copy is bound to lose at least some quality, if it's truly a copy of a final image. (Of course one can make multiple "final" prints from the same negative, which is a rather different thing. It's hard to make them identical using solely traditional dodging and burning practices, but making dodge/burn masks can overcome that as well.)

A digital copy does not (if done properly anyway) lose quality though. Once you have one image you can save ten or a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand absolutely identical copies if you so desire.

It's kind of a silly debate about longevity. What it boils down to for those of us shooting manageable numbers of images is that they CAN be stored, and pretty easily, in ways that will ensure they continue to be available and are less susceptible to accidental loss than traditional analog images, but while this CAN be done, it often ISN'T. Things like feature films are a different matter due to file size if nothing else, but I fail to see how this is really that much of a problem either. To the extent it is a problem the problem seems to be one of infrastructure rather than a technical issue.

 

[tomfrh]

@ Drew: You really hate anything new, don't you? You summarily dismiss all digital images as worthless just because of how they were made. You think your paper prints are inherently superior, but you've not experienced a fire that destroys them. I have. A household fire or flood is a thousand percent more likely than some electromagnetic flash from whatever the source. If someone has lost pictures on the cloud, as you claim, they did something stupid. Accidental deletion or maybe stored with a little startup company without redundancy. You can be sure that all of the major image storage players have lots of redundancy. I'll take that over blind luck.

My images, scanned from film or digital, exist in six different places locally and around the globe. If I had had that type of redundancy in 1988 I could have just shrugged off the damage. And if so inclined, reprinted them.

You can do both. Unless your photo religion won't let you.

I've never had a fire, but nearly all the family photo collections I've inherited have some degree of fading, fungus attack etc. A lot of nice slides and prints ruined.

There's a reason why people archive their analog stuff to digital, but vary rarely the other way around.

 

[georg16nik]

.... Things like feature films are a different matter due to file size if nothing else, but I fail to see how this is really that much of a problem either. To the extent it is a problem the problem seems to be one of infrastructure rather than a technical issue.

In motion pictures, a feature normally requires two sets of LTO tapes as archival backups with cost between $12K and $15K, that's every 5 years.
So far, this constant data migration is disastrous to them, hence they refer to it as the “digital nitrate”.

The problem is not a matter of size, and not surprisingly it's currently unsolvable problem.
So, the filmmakers - like everyone else - assumed digital is manageable to them, but couple of technical reports from within the community shows how big the disaster currently is.

It's not like they don't have the resources or there are no competent computer scientists involved.

but since it's all good for some of you guys, then enjoy it.

 

[RPC]

I've never had a fire, but nearly all the family photo collections I've inherited have some degree of fading, fungus attack etc. A lot of nice slides and prints ruined.

There's a reason why people archive their analog stuff to digital, but vary rarely the other way around.

That's probably because they weren't cared for properly. Anything you want to last a long time must be cared for properly or things can happen to it. It has nothing to do with analog vs. digital.

It is known that analog photographs, properly processed and stored, can have archival qualities. The jury is still out on digital archiving.

 

[AgX]

There's a reason why people archive their analog stuff to digital, but vary rarely the other way around.

Not private persons, but companies and institutions. This option had been discussed in the photoengineering world, there was scientific research and there are few firms around offering such sercvice.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

In 1988, one could have made analog copies of any analog photographs and stored them at six different places locally and around the globe. In fact it could have been done anytime during the 20th century if one had really wanted to. Digital may make it easier to do but really changes nothing per se. Protection of images with redundancy has always been possible.

That's really a stretch for an argument! No one would ever do that; time, effort, money.

Essentially, a non sequitur. "It does not follow......"

 

[Paul Verizzo]

I've already said my piece but here's something extra.

From American Society of Cinematographers, http://www.theasc.com/

Things take time. Standards evolve. And just because there isn't a universal standard doesn't mean everyone isn't doing it just fine.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

So, I wonder, with all those floods in Texas, how many prints got washed down the Brazos, the San Jacinto, the Pecos?

Oh, sure, people lost their phones and digital cameras, but if they auto-upload to The Cloud, they are retrievable.

As I type this, I'm looking at the beautiful morning sunlight on Whitaker Bayou, Sarasota, Florida. My feet are about six feet above sea level. Our house almost had water intrusion from Hurricane Donna in 1960. I have to pay $2200/yr for flood insurance with huge deductibles. This is all much more likely than bogus electromagnetic flashes. Eight years ago I discovered a metal chest in the garage that held thousands of photos of my family's amazing 130 year photo heritage www.vphotoestate.com If I had not discovered this trove, and we had a flood, they would have been lost forever. They are now all scanned - and in many cases quite improved - and back in the chest. I do have a contingency plan in the event of a hurricane, but very worst case scenario, that hurricane is no where near my three offsite, global, servers.

BTW, some have talked about data loss, but in a photo you can have all kinds of blanks and perversions and it will not functionally effect the image. Data loss at CERN is indeed an issue, but not with an image.

 

[RPC]

That's really a stretch for an argument! No one would ever do that; time, effort, money.

Essentially, a non sequitur. "It does not follow......"

I wasn't implying that one should have done it, I was trying to make the point that redundancy as you are doing was possible in the past if one wanted to do it. You seem to imply that it wasn't, since digital, and the "cloud" wasn't available. Such overkill is really not necessary; a copy or two of a print stored elsewhere that could be replaced when needed is all that would have been necessary, and your photos wouldn't have been lost.

Unfortunately, the mindset to backup photos was lacking in the past for most people, unlike the computer world today, where backup is on our minds, .