Could this kill film for good?

Ric Trexell · Sep 25, 2012

To address some of the comments on here about this, and my reason for posting it is to find out your views on this new technology. Compared to CD/DVD's, this is supposed to be a lot longer lasting. Yes, it only has 40 MB of storage, but that will no doubt be improved to something higher. As with anything the price will come down I assume. As much as I love film, I'm finding it to become so expensive that in a few years I will not afford it no matter what I prefer. I would hope that some of my pictures, especially of family will be around for at least 100 years. My old Kodachrome slides will probably do that easily as some are 50 years old now and look great. If I go to digital 100% some day, (and being 60 years old I know that I will only be a digital photographer for about 20 years at most) I would like to know that I can back up my shots to last for years after my death. Right now there doesn't seem to be anything out there in the digital world that will last for 100 years that a simple scratch will render useless. Ric.

pentaxuser · Sep 25, 2012

Roger Cole said:
Ink jet prints already last longer than chromogenic color ones but color isn't dead..

Roger are you making a comparison with RA4 prints? If so I hadn't realised that we had got to the point where an inkjet print from a colour neg scan or straight from a digital card might be the better bet if I want my grandchildren to see what life was like in beginning of the second decade of the 21st century.

pentaxuser

BradS · Sep 25, 2012

Huh? I really don't understand how a new digital memory technology has anything at all to do with the future of film....the two seem totally unrelated?

Prof_Pixel · Sep 25, 2012

BradS said:
Huh? I really don't understand how a new digital memory technology has anything at all to do with the future of film....the two seem totally unrelated?

I suppose the underlying assumption is that long term image archiving is digital imaging's Achilles Heel and that this new storage technology solves that issue.

fstop · Sep 25, 2012

None of this matters, the world is going to end this year according to the mayan calender.

Photo Engineer · Sep 25, 2012

BradS said:
Huh? I really don't understand how a new digital memory technology has anything at all to do with the future of film....the two seem totally unrelated?

Kodak management said something like this in the 80s! With this in mind, you could have had a bright future at Kodak for as long as it might have lasted.

PE

flatulent1 · Sep 25, 2012

BradS said:
Huh? I really don't understand how a new digital memory technology has anything at all to do with the future of film....the two seem totally unrelated?

They are totally unrelated. Roger Cole pointed that out in post no. 2. Almost nobody chooses one over the other because of its longevity.

BradS · Sep 25, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Kodak management said something like this in the 80s! With this in mind, you could have had a bright future at Kodak for as long as it might have lasted.

PE

That was then...this is now. The damage has been (mostly) done. Besides, I think that you're talking about the advent of digital imaging technology whereas this thread is about yet another digital memory device...

I remember the first time I saw a digital camera. It was August of 1994 or 1995. I was working for Ford Motor company. We were out at the Arizona proving grounds doing some tests. There was a failure and we wanted to get photographic evidence back to the mother ship in Dearborn. They had a digital camera in one of the labs...it was big and expensive...and amazing! I had no idea that it would so quickly displace consumer photography but, I knew then that this was a very big deal.

Anyway, I get the impression that the OP only shoots film because he recognizes that film has superior archival properties and that is an important concern for him. I really do not see this new technology solving the problem. One still needs a machine to make sense of the bits...and as others have pointed out, the million year claim is complete Bull Shit (aka marketing hype).

(PS: I'll pretend that you didn't just call me an idiot. )

summicron1 · Sep 25, 2012

useless if you can't read it. vinyl records use technology which, engraved in titanium or some other non-corroding metal (gold?) will last for millenia.
But who's got a record player?

even simple writing on stone has problems -- Someone needs a Rosetta Stone, or even the best writing can turn into nothing but squiggles...

elekm · Sep 25, 2012

I have a floppy disk drive, but a good number of my factory disks are unreadable.

The real challenge is all of the proprietary RAW formats. While there is plenty of support in various image editing programs now, I wonder about 25 years from now. And whether current RAW programs will run in the future.

On the other hand, I'll be gone in 50 years, so I guess that I won't really care.

Photo Engineer · Sep 25, 2012

Brand;

Only if you feel like one!

PE

EASmithV · Sep 25, 2012

fstop said:
None of this matters, the world is going to end this year according to the mayan calender.

Actually, the Mayan's didn't account for leap year, their 2012 happened a while ago.

Steve Smith · Sep 26, 2012

summicron1 said:
But who's got a record player?

Me... and lots of others.

Steve.

PentaxBronica · Sep 26, 2012

I've got one. If you look carefully you can find very nice turntables for not a lot of money now, as the marketing machine has convinced people that they're old and uncool (which is odd, as apparently production of vinyl is on the way back up again). Just put a new stylus (or cartridge/headshell if you can't find a stylus to fit) on and they keep going.

The whole Maya nonsense makes me laugh. Anyone considered that the Maya thought process went something like this: "Right, that's the calendar worked out for the next couple of thousand years, let's go and do something more useful until we need to work out the rest!"

I found an article a while ago about the New York World's Fair time capsules. Looking at the lengths they went to I'd say said capsules have a good chance of surviving and being found in 6939, "fifty feet down at exactly 40° 44' 34".089 North Latitude, 73° 50' 43".842 West Longitude" to quote Tales of Future Past. Books explaining what the capsules are, where they are, how to open them and how to read the contents were distributed around the world on the basis that the more copies the better the chance of at least one surviving.

Film probably can survive long-term but needs to be properly stored - albums in a dry room won't do for the real long-term. The capsules mentioned above were lined with glass and filled with nitrogen to preserve the contents.

wblynch · Sep 26, 2012

The biggest threat to photographic film is film company management!

Steve Mack · Sep 26, 2012

Probably. Everything else has been tried.

With best regards.

Steve

SkipA · Sep 27, 2012

summicron1 said:
useless if you can't read it. vinyl records use technology which, engraved in titanium or some other non-corroding metal (gold?) will last for millenia.
But who's got a record player?

I have a turntable of recent manufacture and I listen to LPs all the time. There are plenty of turntables being made and sold today, from good quality ones in the $350 to $2500 range, to exotic ones costing tens of thousands of dollars.

If you are talking about some time in the distant future, any halfway technological culture could easily figure out how to build one. An LP is a pretty simple analog recording medium.

lacavol · Sep 27, 2012

I replied to this thread in the MF forum. I deal with archived audio at work. The problem isn't with the medium, it's with how do you retrieve it. I have to maintain an OS9 computer just to read a backup that was generated in 2002. That is because the software now will not read the old format. Of course I could spend countless thousands of dollars to port the old software to OSX and Windows 7 as I need two incompatable computers. Yes, there are conversion programs, but at what degredation. Will your Photoshop of today read all the formats, will your computer read a 3 1/2 inch floppy? What if the format is a flop like Beta? Or is it just Sony 1630 vs. JVC vs. Mitsubishi vs. 3M vs. Sony DASH? Or in the computer world of audio Broadcast wave vs. SDII? In the artistic world people think of 100+ years, in the business world people think of 7-10 years, IRS years. But you can still play back an audio tape from 1950, I did it today actually.

PentaxBronica · Sep 27, 2012

The other thing to think about is what you need to read the data.

If you're thinking in terms of a time capsule then you need to make it as simple as possible to read and also include instructions as to how to read it. The Voyager golden record included a stylus and instructions on how to use it, which any civilisation able to find the probes should be capable of following. Prints obviously don't need anything beyond captions explaining what they show, and maybe a Rosetta stone-type guide to help a future civilisation understand the language.

fstop · Sep 27, 2012

PentaxBronica said:
The other thing to think about is what you need to read the data.

If you're thinking in terms of a time capsule then you need to make it as simple as possible to read and also include instructions as to how to read it. The Voyager golden record included a stylus and instructions on how to use it, which any civilisation able to find the probes should be capable of following. Prints obviously don't need anything beyond captions explaining what they show, and maybe a Rosetta stone-type guide to help a future civilisation understand the language.

When played backward does it say "paul is dead" ?

removed account4 · Sep 27, 2012

who cares
film and prints
won't last long
the way most people process
and store it.
and if it does kill commercially
available film and paper
there are ways to do photography
as the photographers did
before 1870 when commercial plates
and flms and papers became commonplace,
making emulsions, wet+dry plates. salt prints and
albumen papers really isn't that hard ...

its almost 1890 at this point, whats a few more years

Prof_Pixel · Sep 27, 2012

lacavol said:
But you can still play back an audio tape from 1950, I did it today actually.

I don't know, the last time I played some of my old audio tapes there was a lot of print-through.

Steve Smith · Sep 28, 2012

wblynch said:
The biggest threat to photographic film is film company management!

Not all of them suffer from this problem.

Steve.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Sep 28, 2012

I think if you want to be sure about your quartz lantern to be found after 250 million years later , there is one place in USA ,
it is Carlsbad New Mexico , my sister stayed at there for 3 weeks this summer. It is nuclear waste disposal site and if a continent fault line wouldnt crack there too many pieces , if sea ocean dont invade there , if there wouldnt invaded with volcanic eruptions , or world would be hit with an astreoid ,it will stay there for another 400 million years and any civilization could detect there.

I think if you want to keep whatever you have in photography , the best way is to carve that lantern with analog pictures. Or may be someone would invent a way to carve in a quartz block a long video to be watched after directed to light. That would be even better. May be you can load all the internet as a person view from the LCD and everything is fine.

Dont underestimate the future and inventors.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Sep 28, 2012

By the way , if there would be a future for intelligent life for not more than 2000 years after , we will be at other galaxies , invent quantum teleportation and time travel.
No need for small glass pieces.
But if you can invent now a extremelly high quality translating software , allow to the book distribution free on e books without thinking to restrict the technology race , etc.

I think obama contucted the biggest crime on earth with closing free ebooks site , it looks like nazis burned the books.
He will pay this.

Umut

Could this kill film for good?

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