Film really is superior

Ian Grant said:

Film and digital arte two different media. My take for over 20 years is that that digital is just a different way to capture an image alongside B&W, Colour negative and positive, Instant films etc.

The argument of long term permance is valid, but it's cheap to save digital files in a number of ways to ensure they won't be lost although few do this. A fire couldn wipe out many of our negatives and prints.

I'm scanning all my important negatives at high resolutions and these are going to a record office to be archived alongside negatives, prints are going to a gallery. In ther short term scans will be held in in at least two sites.

My take is both originals and digitalm forms need archiving well.

Ian

Click to expand...

Ian the reality is that it is *not* cheap both in storage and time. That's the crux of the whole digital archiving thing that so many are trying to clarify.

Yeh, film is GREAT - however, I worry like sh_ _ that it won't be here tomorrow.

clayne said:

The one significant difference between film and digital archiving is that film (for the substantial most part) is a self describing material. There is no encoding, no translation, or other algorithms involved (orange mask stuff really doesn't count). As such it is not prone to technology shifts and can always be recovered/viewed given standard chemical/physical techniques. Physical self evidence combined with a decently highly amount of detail/space occupied makes it a quite good archiving material even if it is prone to minute degradation over the years.

I'd rather take a faded negative over an unreadable digital format (Domesday Book anyone?)

Click to expand...

Agreed. I've long protested that the physical original was a big plus, but recent events have made me reconsider this a bit. That single original does bring some unavoidable preciousness to the negative or slide that an endlessly repeatable digital "original" might trump. Might. Again, there is no real answer here, only best case scenarios that either is capable of winning.

clayne said:

Ian the reality is that it is *not* cheap both in storage and time. That's the crux of the whole digital archiving thing that so many are trying to clarify.

Click to expand...

Well, over the long haul that remains to be seen. What is seen as cheap today may not be cheap in 100 years when scanners or silver paper may not exist. Heck, the lightbulbs or electicity we rely on for printing might not exist in any reliable or "cheap" fashion. Nothing is sure anymore.

DF said:

Yeh, film is GREAT - however, I worry like sh_ _ that it won't be here tomorrow.

Click to expand...

Old films will remain. The negatives we've all made - assuming they've been well processed, well conserved and have not been destroyed through fire, flood or mold - will exist. But the technology to reproduce them may not. Scanners only exist today because there was a need for them over the last ten or twenty years. Once the technology of film has become so obsolete that it is no longer of interest the means of accessing it will die. How many of us can play any of those incredible performances captured on wax cylinders or view any of those stereo cards as they were intended?

Permanence is a rare thing. I'd love to hope that my grandchildren could print negatives of my kids as babies should they desire - as I've printed negatives of my parents as babies or my grandparents as young adults - but I seriously doubt that it will happen. It will likely be possible, but as possible as getting a wax cylinder performance onto your ipod is today. That I cannot see any of the videos I made of my kids as babies drives this doubt. I've been pretty careful to keep current, but the transfer of videotape to a long-lived format has proven so unwieldy that I;ve let it slip away. This does not bode well for the future legibility of anything we might make today, an arcane negative, already surpassed in numbers made (I'd suppose) by digital images, especially.

That in 150 years someone will be able to hold a negative up to a window and see an image, and be capable of accessing what that is an image of is indeed a plus. But that image may only be able to be accessed in such a fashion. Those DNG or JPG files on my hard drive or phone may be more, less or equally legible in 150 years - there is no telling. The Kodachromes my aunt made on her trip to Paris in 1953 are still here. That is a point in favor for film - of some types. I'm doubtful that any of the Kodacolor 100 negatives I made in the 70s will fare anywhere near as well as positives or negatives. Those prints are already fading, already pale substitutes for the experiences they recorded. Less vibrant than my memories in some cases. My APX25 negatives? My carefully processed archival prints? They've fared better thus far. But pictures made with such care and attention to process represent a small proportion of the images made between 1860 and 1990.

It does seem to come down to what level of interest one takes in making sure that something can last. It has certainly become easier over the last 15 years to have a digital format that can continue to be accessed - USB seems to be somewhat backward compatible, and TIFF and JPG have been around a relatively long time. DNG seems to be becoming another "standard" for the time being. An interesting thread.

One of my first experiences with the unreliability of digital images was back in the late 90s. I hadn't yet gotten into film, mainly because my parents wouldn't pay for any of my interests. My dad had a camera that recorded on floppies. We spent a few days in Gettysburg filling up three or four disks. That doesn't sound like much, but the camera was very low resolution, so I had quite a few pictures. On the way home, the disks rode in the motorcycle's storage compartments through 100+ degree weather. When I got home, one of the disks was still readable, but every file on it was corrupt. I've had similar experiences with Compact Flash and SD more recently. As for the ones that made it home, I have pictures that I simply can't find. I've changed computers and platforms so many times over the years, there are digital pictures I'd like to have that are lost. One of the best pictures I ever took on digital exists today only as a slightly damaged print made on a very bad printer.

I used a Sony Mavica for my work as a QC inspector in 2000/2001. Within 5 years half the images on the 3.5" floppies would either not open or open only partially (the top of the image would be there, the rest was just grey). Flash cards are not floppies, I know, but it definitely was a message to me about the ethereal nature of digital data. Digital is great for perfect copying, and by the use of check digits and such, able to avoid data distortion. The problem with that is, if it degrades it doesn't take much for it to completely fail, where analog will still be usable when degraded.

After all these years of digital music, I finally found ONE music file that may equal a 2-track 15ips open reel tape. Here is that file:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDaUsdBEhhc&list=FLs6aHygSsIXezFrAG_qQlQA&index=2

Another problem with digital files, as stated above, is that it does not take much to corrupt the entire file (unless you really know what you are doing to get the data back). Audio CDs and Audio/Video DVD formats, while "digital," were designed to compensate for some issues either in playback (low-end hardware) or with physical defects/damage to the disc itself. They can continue playing and "gloss-over" some bad data.

However, a data CD/DVD does not do this (aside from the typical redundancy and parity designed in all modern storage media formats). So a small problem with the disc can make a file worthless, or even render the entire disc unreadable (again, unless you are very good).

Both film and digital can be backed up and kept safely, but the average person will do neither, even if they have the knowledge and/or means.
My maternal grandfather used to develop and print himself, back when my parents were children. The negatives were sleeved and sat in cardboard boxes, unknown to me, well after he passed. I only discovered them recently after my grandmother died. There was no effort or expense in preservation beyond boxes in a closet. Try that with digital!

Even if there is some fading with time, or small physical damage, it will not make the images irretrievable. Horrible color shifts or badly degraded negatives can still produce an image of some sort. Its not like losing half a frame will prevent the other half from being viewed. Film is robust.

I hope to print the negatives some day, and will probably scan so family members can view the pictures on the web. The negatives, however, will probably outlast me.

My personal take is that this breaks down into two categories: Saving family photos for posterity, and museum-grade long term archiving. The two situations are very different.

I am mostly interested in preserving family photos. In that context, a bit of fading or degradation (while not desirable) is no big deal. Adds to the charm, in a way. Earlier this year I put together a photo montage for a funeral that involved scanning a shoebox full of old prints...from the 30's and 40's mostly. These were amateur, family snapshots. As such, most were not that strong technically in the first place, and time had taken a (minor) toll as well. But that didn't matter. It was still easy enough to see and recognize the people in the photos, and that's what mattered.

That's what troubles me about "the kids these days". They take a zillion iPhone photos and post them to Facebook or Instagram or (even worse) SnapChat, and not one of them will be accessible to their great grandkids. Zippo. Such a shame. 30 years ago, "taking pictures" meant film, sure, but more importantly, it meant prints. Every single shot was committed to paper. Most of those have been lost or destroyed, but many survive in shoeboxes or albums. Those will be around. In that sense, to me, this isn't about "digital v analog" so much as it is about "paper v monitor". Unless your casual photos are on paper, they are going away.

As for the museum-grade archiving, that's something else. If an institution (eg, Smithsonian, etal) has the resources, I'm sure there are all manner of reliable techniques for preserving both analog and digital photos in perpetuity. Perhaps there are techniques that amateurs and dedicated hobbyists can use for the same result, but that goes back to the human factor. Even if one is sufficiently dedicated to an active preservation strategy, its only as good as the person you hand it off to when you die. Absent some institutional persistence (such as a large museum), there is little reason to think such efforts will outlive the individual.

I'll leave such concerns to those who have a catalog worthy of the effort. I certainly don't. My "best" work is all printed out, and will probably fade or degrade with time. The most I can hope for is that maybe, someday, someone stumbles across one of my prints and finds it worthy of a moment of attention. Or not. I do this for me, not them.

Best option is to backup everything you value, including your negatives. Get scans made of your best negatives. Make prints of your best film and digital files. Keep duplicate prints and digital copies offsite. But, no system is perfect.

I have many cheap-minilab processed color negatives from the 1980s and 90s that are so faded and color shifted it took a lot of work to correct them after scanning. Stuff from the pre minilab days is all great.

Anything I ever had done by Kodak labs is still absolutely beautiful - especially the prints.

I want to keep both the original film and the scans for double insurance. It is unlikely I will ever optically print color snapshots but there could be better scanning options in the future.

I have read of people that scan all their old negatives and slides and then throw the originals all away, believing they will never need them again.

When they ever learn....

wblynch said:

I have read of people that scan all their old negatives and slides and then throw the originals all away, believing they will never need them again.

Click to expand...

More fools they! I remember when cassette audio tapes and decent recording decks came out some friends of mine taped all their vinyl and then threw the discs away. And of course over time the cassettes failed....

Nowadays folks are burning their vinyl (if they still have some!) to CDs and trashing the vinyl. "Same song, second verse; Could get better but its gonna get worse!"

I keep my negatives after scanning for indexing purposes. I have vinyl I bought in the late '50s, and the vinyl my father bought starting with the inception of the 12 inch LP. All are still playable. No index track to worry about!

wblynch said:

I have many cheap-minilab processed color negatives from the 1980s and 90s that are so faded and color shifted it took a lot of work to correct them after scanning. Stuff from the pre minilab days is all great.

Anything I ever had done by Kodak labs is still absolutely beautiful - especially the prints.

I want to keep both the original film and the scans for double insurance. It is unlikely I will ever optically print color snapshots but there could be better scanning options in the future.

I have read of people that scan all their old negatives and slides and then throw the originals all away, believing they will never need them again.

Click to expand...

I think you're wise to handle storage in that way. The digital industry has often insisted or at least implied that digital pixels are forever but we know better. In my view, they need to be originally and properly stored, copied and stored again to make sure they don't deteriorate, checked later and possibly restored once more. I have Kodachrome images that were stored in archival conditions and not exposed to projector lamp light. Those images on a light table still look excellent. E-6, so so. C-41, just fine. Digital? My wife's Nikon Coolpix suggests nay nay
even though they're less than 5 years old.
Mark

Even if digital longevity storage wasn't an issue, I still couldn't overcome the whole digital process: digging into folders, open windows/folders, browsing through the thumbnails, naming/renaming files. WTF???

I'm sorry but they aren't photographs and that isn't photography. It's Fileographs and Fileography. Drives me insane.

Anyone read their "newspapers" on their iphone? Is there something more inhuman then that? The noise of the newspaper, the feel in hand, the obligatory posture, the smell! The swears while trying to find an article, the sheet that won't stay steady, the folding, the pitching it on the table. Reading the news? Quite a secondary experience next to the senses' overload of what a physical newspaper brings as a whole experience. iPhone? Meh.

File-O-Graphy. Garbage-O-graphy. All the same. Has nothing to do with real photography, even if storage wasn't an issue.

NB23 said:

Even if digital longevity storage wasn't an issue, I still couldn't overcome the whole digital process: digging into folders, open windows/folders, browsing through the thumbnails, naming/renaming files. WTF???

I'm sorry but they aren't photographs and that isn't photography. It's Fileographs and Fileography. Drives me insane.

Anyone read their "newspapers" on their iphone? Is there something more inhuman then that? The noise of the newspaper, the feel in hand, the obligatory posture, the smell! The swears while trying to find an article, the sheet that won't stay steady, the folding, the pitching it on the table. Reading the news? Quite a secondary experience next to the senses' overload of what a physical newspaper brings as a whole experience. iPhone? Meh.

File-O-Graphy. Garbage-O-graphy. All the same. Has nothing to do with real photography, even if storage wasn't an issue.

Click to expand...

You do have a point; I have never been a fan of computers (even though I have taught Mac and Windows!), but they are part of life for millions of people, if not for you. I have seen older people struggle to understand what the computer is doing (nothing: just displaying the desktop!...). I've seen 4 year olds typing in MS Word and saving to "My life story". The world does have a choice. I read newspapers. I also read them on a Galaxy Note when travelling. I have both digital and paper-based faxes. I have analogue cameras and digital, and know what is best for each and when and why.

AND—
Everybody knows that a digi image is nothing physical or tactile in that form. But it can be made so: you can print it.
But there's more: what does a digital image become when it is converted to film?

A linear response 2 dimensional cheap imitation printed on film.

NB23 said:

Anyone read their "newspapers" on their iphone? Is there something more inhuman then that? The noise of the newspaper, the feel in hand, the obligatory posture, the smell! The swears while trying to find an article, the sheet that won't stay steady, the folding, the pitching it on the table. Reading the news? Quite a secondary experience next to the senses' overload of what a physical newspaper brings as a whole experience. iPhone? Meh.

Click to expand...

Please excuse going off thread a bit, but quite agree and also a newspaper folded correctly at the crossword page. APUG should have its own weekly crossword. Free roll of film with first correct solutions. Do we have any good crossword compilers here?

Today I dreamed that most of my files got corrupted and lost and only could retrieve a small part of them. Quite a nightmare!

NB23 said:

Even if digital longevity storage wasn't an issue, I still couldn't overcome the whole digital process: digging into folders, open windows/folders, browsing through the thumbnails, naming/renaming files. WTF???

I'm sorry but they aren't photographs and that isn't photography. It's Fileographs and Fileography. Drives me insane.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I find the file part of archiving quite boring. I should clean up and back up a few things but can't get into it... So dull!

My new HP computer, 5 months old, hard drive died. I had nothing backed up, always had ever intention of doing it. I have a very small understanding of all things digital, I know how to use my digital camera to produce decent photos but have no clue how this is done. Several years ago I bought a external hard drive to back up photos, still have it, but it failed. Also never realized that all CD's were not created equal.

My photos, 35mm slides and prints plus Polaroid photos from my tour of Nam in 68 and 69 most still look great. In my years of wandering they were not always stored under ideal conditions. The photos and slides have been stored in various shoebox's over the years. So what does this mean, which is better? For me it would seem that I am better of with my film due to my lack of knowledge of all thing digital. At least I now store all negatives in sleeves in ring binders.

David

That's it right there. Under real world conditions, prints just work. Put 500 prints in a shoebox and 100 years later, odds are you will have 500 prints. Put 500 prints on a CD and 100 years later, odds are you will have a coaster.

What about Archival Gold CD-R discs?

I bought some of these from the local camera shop. They were not cheap and are rated for 300 year archival storage. Now I don't really believe that but how good are they?

NB23 said:

Even if digital longevity storage wasn't an issue, I still couldn't overcome the whole digital process: digging into folders, open windows/folders, browsing through the thumbnails, naming/renaming files. WTF???

I'm sorry but they aren't photographs and that isn't photography. It's Fileographs and Fileography. Drives me insane.

Anyone read their "newspapers" on their iphone? Is there something more inhuman then that? The noise of the newspaper, the feel in hand, the obligatory posture, the smell! The swears while trying to find an article, the sheet that won't stay steady, the folding, the pitching it on the table. Reading the news? Quite a secondary experience next to the senses' overload of what a physical newspaper brings as a whole experience. iPhone? Meh.

File-O-Graphy. Garbage-O-graphy. All the same. Has nothing to do with real photography, even if storage wasn't an issue.

Click to expand...

I'm with you 100%. Especially about the feel and smell of a newspaper (I prefer the Chicago Sun Times when I can get it) But when you keep doing something over and over again to dissatisfaction and an unchanging result,I think that meets one definition of crazy so STOP doing it and stick with film. You'll probably sleep better at night. [There, that was easy ].
Mark

Mark Feldstein said:

I'm with you 100%. Especially about the feel and smell of a newspaper (I prefer the Chicago Sun Times when I can get it) But when you keep doing something over and over again to dissatisfaction and an unchanging result,I think that meets one definition of crazy so STOP doing it and stick with film. You'll probably sleep better at night. [There, that was easy ].
Mark

Click to expand...

Also couldn't agree more....when I'm travelling in the morning on the London Underground, opposite me are all these geeky people wearing earphones, transfixed by their i-phone and Kindle screens, like so many robots.....Sometimes I feel like the only humanoid on the train, my ancient Nokia firmly in my pocket.

Alan Gales said:

What about Archival Gold CD-R discs?

I bought some of these from the local camera shop. They were not cheap and are rated for 300 year archival storage. Now I don't really believe that but how good are they?

Click to expand...

My concern has always been, not with the lifetime of the Gold CDs, but the 'lifetime' of the technology needed to read the discs.

Prof_Pixel said:

My concern has always been, not with the lifetime of the Gold CDs, but the 'lifetime' of the technology needed to read the discs.

Click to expand...

That's a very good point. Technology keeps moving faster and faster. I took a class in Digital Energy Management Systems 20 years ago. We stored our information on floppy discs.

Prof_Pixel said:

My concern has always been, not with the lifetime of the Gold CDs, but the 'lifetime' of the technology needed to read the discs.

Click to expand...

I found out about this some years ago. I use to make my own music CD's for driving. Old CD player went out, new player would not play my home made CDs. The best that I could understand explanation it was formatted differently. By the way that computer had a "floppy disc" reader:confused:

I am not against digital, but unless taking photos of fast grandkids I use my DSLR on manual. And yes I check after most shots

David