Why did you move from film to digital?

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2019

paulbarden said:
I don't know ANYONE who still archives their digital images on DVDs - they all rely on spinning disc hard drives, which are guaranteed to fail after a number of years. The oldest hard drive I have that is still accessible is eleven years old - all others older than that have either failed completely or have bad sectors that make reading them impossible. If folks believe that archiving on traditional (spinning disc) drives is in any way "permanent" then they are fooling themselves.

I archive on something called film.

Berkeley Mike · Feb 22, 2019

I started Digital in1999. I resisted it but coming back from a mountain bike ride and uploading images in seconds to see the captures was hard to resist. By 2002 I was transitioning in big way, using dig for my Bankers who only used images online. By 2005 I was all digital for all uses. It was a matter of practicality; time saved, no darkroom and my favorite lab closed, and the agencies were modifying images like crazy in Photoshop. I simply took my work ethic (math/science, blue collar, writer) out of the darkroom process and into the Lightroom process. (Did you see what I did there?)

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2019

I actually started taking digital photographs and movies in 1977 at JPL on Voyager I and Voyager II.

JWMster · Feb 22, 2019

My progression went forth from film, side-by-side with digital, and then all digital. Now it's back to film mostly when I have the luxury of shooting what I want... my travel and creative stuff. Digital is get-it-now.

I have the luxury of photography for fun and for family, and not the press of time. And I don't try to let time drive me. The slow film process has its advantage in making me more of a ruthless editor of my images. I like the way it prints digitally... which is the only way I print. I like the given-ness of film that color often comes out of the can cleaner and more spot-on than digital - at least to my eye. Yes I still make adjustments to the scanned images in Capture One, but it starts at a higher level of authenticity for me. I am not sold on the current fad of sharpness as the only aesthetic as its just not my cup of tea. My aesthetic is more impressed by tones and composition. So perhaps my eye is just more flexible and my brain more contrary in this way than some others, and film accentuates this.

I think analog film shooting with manual cameras has really forced me to learn the craft, and though I think it can be learned without this, its a process that increases understanding that is essential at least to my process. Yet I can see that ultimately as I grow older, digital's convenience will increase its standing even in my eyes. If today, I had the $'s invested in a Leica Monochrome or ALPA 12C or PhaseOne, I'm not sure I would have bothered to go backwards in order to leap forward. I'm glad I did, and have had the opportunity to shoot 35mm and MF across a wide variety of cameras and films. It's been a lot of fun in how much it leaves to me to get it right without spending all of that time on the computer. Yes, I still spend time in post, but I don't try to make something out of nothing.

jtk · Feb 22, 2019

paulbarden said:
I don't know ANYONE who still archives their digital images on DVDs - they all rely on spinning disc hard drives, which are guaranteed to fail after a number of years. The oldest hard drive I have that is still accessible is eleven years old - all others older than that have either failed completely or have bad sectors that make reading them impossible. If folks believe that archiving on traditional (spinning disc) drives is in any way "permanent" then they are fooling themselves.[/QUOT
People that are anxious about "archival" generally back up on additional HDs these days...nobody uses CDs...however if they're serious they back up in cloud.

I started shooting digital (DSLR) because the medium was at least equal to the best film about the time Canon brought out version 2 of the 5D...which was overkill by far because hardly anybody prints larger than 13X19" (I do that routinely).

I also shoot film, mostly because I like the mass weight of my antique SLRs and because I like the workflow from film to scan to inkjet print.

benjiboy · Feb 22, 2019

I don't think I will ever buy a digital camera, I can use my smartphone, and my film cameras for my serious photography.

warden · Feb 22, 2019

benjiboy said:
I don't think I will ever buy a digital camera, I can use my smartphone, and my film cameras for my serious photography.

That's my approach as well, at least for now. If I'm in the mood for photography and I have a film camera I grab that first, and if I don't have one I use my phone.

I sometimes wish for a MF film camera when I brought only my 35mm, but I never wish for a bigger/better digital camera when I'm holding my phone.

removedacct1 · Feb 22, 2019

jtk said:
People that are anxious about "archival" generally back up on additional HDs these days...nobody uses CDs...however if they're serious they back up in cloud.

Neither of those actions in any way contributes meaningfully to the long term archivability of digital images: trusting a third party to preserve your work is a fools errand (none of them promises to safeguard your stuff indefinitely!). And as I said, ALL hard drives fail eventually. Even a faithful, diligent backing up of data on multiple drives is no guarantee that the work will live beyond the life of any individual drive.

There is NO LONG TERM SOLUTION to the problem of archiving digital data.

faberryman · Feb 22, 2019

paulbarden said:
There is NO LONG TERM SOLUTION to the problem of archiving digital data.

They are no certainties in life. I lost a lot of my early negatives is a move. I'm sure my current negatives will get pitched when I'm gone, along with my hard drives with digital images.

removed account4 · Feb 22, 2019

paulbarden said:
I don't know ANYONE who still archives their digital images on DVDs - they all rely on spinning disc hard drives, which are guaranteed to fail after a number of years. The oldest hard drive I have that is still accessible is eleven years old - all others older than that have either failed completely or have bad sectors that make reading them impossible. If folks believe that archiving on traditional (spinning disc) drives is in any way "permanent" then they are fooling themselves.

I know ! I've given up trying to convince the powers that be, because they are convinced that DVD and CD storage is better and "safer". Hard to argue with someone who has never experienced catastrophic failure or blindly believes what their boss or they have been told is the right way to to it ( for 20 years ). Humans can be funny like that, creatures of habit and all that. They also don't realize that completing the job using pixies instead of grains ends up costing more, not only to receive the product in hand but perpetual backups, making sure they can read a TIFF file in 50 years, and of course making sure the pigment prints didn't vanish or fade or in-storage outgas and create problems ... and not only vanish the prints but vanish the pixies too.

Just like Loki, Tinkerbell can be kind of a trickster..

JWMster · Feb 22, 2019

faberryman et al said:
I don't think I will ever buy a digital camera, I can use my smartphone, and my film cameras for my serious photography.
That's my approach as well, at least for now. If I'm in the mood for photography and I have a film camera I grab that first, and if I don't have one I use my phone.

I sometimes wish for a MF film camera when I brought only my 35mm, but I never wish for a bigger/better digital camera when I'm holding my phone.There is NO LONG TERM SOLUTION to the problem of archiving digital data.... (and) They are no certainties in life. I lost a lot of my early negatives is a move. I'm sure my current negatives will get pitched when I'm gone.

These comments nail it on the head for me. I've traded out a few things and picked up a Nikon FM2n and F100 to have boxes to use for a set of 24/50/105 lenses that could (emphasis on could) also be used with digital. Picking up a used D800 or similar isn't out of the question if I dump my Sony A7Rii and Zeiss Loxia lenses. Not a fan of the D800's bulk, but not a fan of having more gear than I'm actually using either. Digital may either become strictly an iPhone for capture and D800 for camera scans.

Finally I'm coming around to printing mostly on 8 X 11 paper and that prints are the only keepers. Agree with all those who admit no one else will cull our digital negatives OR our film negatives. Too much work. And let's face it, the rest of you may be discovered to have been geniuses posthumously,.,,, but I suspect something a lot more like ignoramus in my case.

faberryman · Feb 22, 2019

JWMster said:
These comments nail it on the head for me.

I don't think any of the quoted comments are mine. I don't know how you were able to attribute them to me. And who is et al?

removed account4 · Feb 22, 2019

paulbarden said:
There is NO LONG TERM SOLUTION to the problem of archiving digital data.

Yup, it seems the only long term solution is a physical negative or physical print.

paulbarden said:
Neither of those actions in any way contributes meaningfully to the long term archivability of digital images: trusting a third party to preserve your work is a fools errand (none of them promises to safeguard your stuff indefinitely!).

Wasn't there a problem with an online image hosting service going belly up ( photo bucket? ) and everyone losing access to their images? I guess people can upload all their images to g00gle/g00gle images but who knows what the whole privacy thing is going to be as they continue to rule the planet. Use people's personal images as part of online advertising endorsements like Fessebook? While they might be accessable ( unless they have their servers hacked like a few years back ) whereever one has an internet connection and can remember their g00gle password, like you said cloud storage doesn't see like a solution.

wiltw · Feb 22, 2019

faberryman said:
They are no certainties in life. I lost a lot of my early negatives is a move. I'm sure my current negatives will get pitched when I'm gone, along with my hard drives with digital images.

And all your photos would be lost to historians and anthrologists in the future, but the digital ones would be lost and irretrievable first! Media deterioration, or no way to plug in a device to computers of the future, or no app to read some of the digital files written by special apps.
The hardcopy photos in a shoe box may be faded and stained, but at least ordinary human eyeballs of the future will be able to view them, and historians/anthropologists will cherish the ones with historically prominent scenes/persons in them.

wiltw · Feb 22, 2019

jnantz said:
Yup, it seems the only long term solution is a physical negative or physical print.

Wasn't there a problem with an online image hosting service going belly up ( photo bucket? ) and everyone losing access to their images? I guess people can upload all their images to g00gle/g00gle images but who knows what the whole privacy thing is going to be as they continue to rule the planet. Use people's personal images as part of online advertising endorsements like Fessebook? While they might be accessable ( unless they have their servers hacked like a few years back ) whereever one has an internet connection and can remember their g00gle password, like you said cloud storage doesn't see like a solution.

There certainly were all the cloud service providers who went belly up during the Great Recession, many of whom never transferred the stored data to another (continuing) cloud service provider, causing loss of lots of customer data!

Sean · Feb 22, 2019

When it comes to digital, multiple backups can do the trick. Disks are pretty solid these days, as you can see our DB has been going since 2002 and we're still here. That being said I have SSD raid on our server which is mirrored disks, plus a 3rd backup disk, plus I do off-site data syncs to 3 geos, plus weekly off site backups to my house on 2 different encrypted disks. I guess the question is can anyone be bothered looking after their data to that extent. As time passes, new disks are introduced and the data makes its way there. There seem to be some new storage technologies in the works, iirc one based on diamond that can store data indefinitely. Then the main issue is hardware, software etc.

faberryman · Feb 22, 2019

wiltw said:
And all your photos would be lost to historians and anthrologists in the future, but the digital ones would be lost and irretrievable first!

My negatives were lost before I even had a computer, a decade before the first digital camera hit the market. Anthropologists are not beating down my door for copies of photos of my son's birthday parties or our family vacations to the beach. There are billions of such pictures.

tedr1 · Feb 22, 2019

It was 2006 and a work colleague used this tiny little inexpensive pocket camera to make great color pictures, that were visible immediately on the camera screen, that were able to be viewed on desktop computers, and able to be sent anywhere on the planet instantly. I was hooked. I make prints, from digital images.

wiltw · Feb 22, 2019

faberryman said:
My negatives were lost before I even had a computer, a decade before the first digital camera hit the market. Anthropologists are not beating down my door for copies of photos of my son's birthday parties or our family vacations to the beach. There are billions of such pictures.

Yes, the 'no one would be interested in my photos' is a common sentiment. Yet one needs to keep in mind that historians and anthropogists find that photos from 'everyman' can be quite informative about how people lived at a certain point in history. If you were taking photos of NYC protests over TRump's most recent statement on Twitter, that is history being captured, and even though you are a nobody in sense of photographic notoriety, your digital photos do capture a way of life for folks in the early 21st century.

Truzi · Feb 22, 2019

I never moved to digital, though I dabbled a bit because tech can be fun. I had taken a single-use digital camera, soldered a usb port on the board, and reused it. Did the same with a single-use camcorder.

There is a difference between running a website/business and having family photos. I think Sean is right to question whether people will bother with their data. Most of us on Photrio know how to preserve our film, prints, and digital files for posterity, but the average person does not; a shoebox of negatives is more robust in this regard.

Concerning hardware and format changes, a professor came in this week asking if we could get data off an old zip disk. Unfortunately, we've not had a zip drive since before I came on (or I'd have kept it in the office). The question is whether he will go to the effort to hunt down the hardware he needs while it is still available. I still keep a floppy drive, though, as people bring in floppies once or twice a year.

As for hard drive backups, I think John Cleese had something to say about that:

wiltw · Feb 22, 2019

Sean said:
When it comes to digital, multiple backups can do the trick. Disks are pretty solid these days, as you can see our DB has been going since 2002 and we're still here. That being said I have SSD raid on our server which is mirrored disks, plus a 3rd backup disk, plus I do off-site data syncs to 3 geos, plus weekly off site backups to my house on 2 different encrypted disks. I guess the question is can anyone be bothered looking after their data to that extent. As time passes, new disks are introduced and the data makes its way there. There seem to be some new storage technologies in the works, iirc one based on diamond that can store data indefinitely. Then the main issue is hardware, software etc.

In spite of multiple backups, there is still the hard fact that magnetic media under optimal conditions is expected to have maximum lifetime of about 50 years

faberryman · Feb 22, 2019

wiltw said:
Yes, the 'no one would be interested in my photos' is a common sentiment. Yet one needs to keep in mind that historians and anthropogists find that photos from 'everyman' can be quite informative about how people lived at a certain point in history. If you were taking photos of NYC protests over TRump's most recent statement on Twitter, that is history being captured, and even though you are a nobody in sense of photographic notoriety, your digital photos do capture a way of life for folks in the early 21st century.

They’re plenty of images on the web to keep anthropologists busy, often accompanied by text to place them in context. It is not as if anyone needs to go rooting around in closets to find images.

slackercrurster · Feb 22, 2019

Alan Edward Klein said:
After you're dead, you wife's next husband will throw out all your stuff.

Any extended family I got hates my work. It would all go in the nearest dumpster if they got their hands on it. But really, they would not bother with it. I got nothing of interest to them and we do not get along.

That is the benefit of prints / negs / chromes. They can be seen and someone might adopt them. With a computer and digital it is a crap-shoot. Esp if you got password protection.

Speaking thereof. If I came across a desktop computer that was password locked. Could I take the hard drive out and look through it or does the password block looking at the hard drive if it is removed from the computer?

slackercrurster · Feb 22, 2019

faberryman said:
They’re plenty of images on the web to keep anthropologists busy, often accompanied by text to place them in context. It is not as if anyone needs to go rooting around in closets to find images.

They do. Believe me. The pickers will get your family albums and sell on eBay.
They sell anything photo related...as long as silver based or earlier. Inkjet stuff is not that popular unless it is some special image.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-50...868108?hash=item3facbae10c:g:a6kAAOSwVVRaassd

Old family movies too. I buy them myself if interesting time capsule movies.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-PO...033144?hash=item3ac54985f8:g:sDsAAOSwintXSfGZ

slackercrurster · Feb 22, 2019

wiltw said:
In spite of multiple backups, there is still the hard fact that magnetic media under optimal conditions is expected to have maximum lifetime of about 50 years

Dunno. Still got some reel to reel from the 50's that is Ok. It is about 64 yo, so it may be headed off the deep end if 50 is the magic number.

I want to work on these M discs. they last for 1000 years. But M disk drives are not that popular, so who knows if they would be able to be read?

Best bet it to make master 8 x 10 prints. You can scan the print and recover 90% or so.

Why did you move from film to digital?

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