Archival pigment prints are very archival. They are top notch, only surpassed by color separations or silver gelatin prints. (Of course you got the exotics, platinum, etc, but keeping the conversation to most common means.)
I don't know. Nearly ALL the US State Historic Preservation Offices only collect DVD and Pigment Prints for State Level HABS/HAER Recordations. The Federal Program has moved closer to Digital ever since Jack Boucher passed away. When I spoke with him on the phone many years ago he was adamant not to use any digital ( files or pigment images ) but I am not sure what has happened in the last few years. From what I understand while they still require FILM negatives they are also accepting Pigment on Card prints for HABS Submissions. I did my first digital submission to a State Habs Collection in 2007, and nearly every one since then has been a digital submission ( submitting another one soon ). Many years ago the US Federal Government has has a massive PUSH with Digital Initiatives and a lot of states did not have the room to archive negatives and prints so they joined in. I have no clue what will happen down the road and chances are I will be dead by the time they need my files. I guess, maybe as long as something is backed up and there is something that is able to open the file it can be considered archival? I just hope Bob Denver from Far Out Space Nuts doesn't corrupt my files cause I won't have any files to re-submit.
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.
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.
sounds like a full-time job just for archiving.You guys do know that a CDR (and DVD+R/DVD-R) had a lifespan of 100-200 years. That's right up there with film. And unlike film, it can be perfectly copied every 100 years or so to preserve it for eons. That's hardly what I would call ephemeral.
Most issues with CD longevity circle around overuse and abuse. But with a CD, you can keep the photos on multiple discs and store them at multiple locations. And if the formats change, just burn a new disc in the new format. Just like film, the secret to longevity is in the storage methods and curation. Its a lot easier to keep 100 photos preserved than 100,000.
Sure, Vivian Maier is an example. Everyday snapshots and suddenly they are masterpieces.
People are crazy for old photos...CRAZY
Hand-tinted masterpiece
View attachment 217905
Some sellers specialize in all your old wedding photos. They will clean out your house (estate) full of photos and put them all up on eBay. The common snapshots or school portraits. (do they still take school portraits?) are sold by the pound sometimes.
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.
Your religious beliefs are your business, but your digital data in this era is archived best by distribution online. Cloud etc.
If one doesn't rely on cloud storage (I don't, yet, but I'm an old guy), one ALSO relies on DISTRIBUTION to multiple addresses. I do that digitally and, when relevant, by sending prints to friends (print album or exchange-style) and family.
Obviously, if one imagines one's prints and negatives are "archival," one has to have a lot of faith in whoever gets em' when they're daid.
Death happens.
that one is hard to beat!I actually started taking digital photographs and movies in 1977 at JPL on Voyager I and Voyager II.
Archival pigment prints are very archival. They are top notch, only surpassed by color separations or silver gelatin prints. (Of course you got the exotics, platinum, etc, but keeping the conversation to most common means.)
Not sure how inexpensive something would be when just getting to the place where you might start to make the print took 6 or 8 hours. I was just talking to my uncle who used to make dye transfers and making them was/is extremely labor intensive. I'm not sure how labor intensive becomes inexpensive, when each print's dye set is unique.In the 50s and 60s dye transfer was still the standard for inexpensive color portraits...
and silver gelatine is only archival if processed properly, archival pigment prints are les error prone.Archival pigment prints are very archival. They are top notch, only surpassed by color separations or silver gelatin prints. (Of course you got the exotics, platinum, etc, but keeping the conversation to most common means.)
... tyranny of film and the darkroom. At 71, I have less time left in life and I prefer to make the best of my days by seeing friends, being outdoors and travel - my nearly six decades of agitating Nikkor tanks...
Hard to know seeing they are just being made the last handful of years in the grand scheme of things. I'm old enough to remember way way back in 2005 when labs were telling portrait photographers that the xyz paper they were using for their light jet had a 800 year lifespan ( some labs still say this with crystal archive ) ... and within a few months photographers by the arm load were knocking at the door of the photo labs because, well, the image colors shifted under UV &c glass. So as far as I am concerned Pigment Prints might be archival but they are not archival in other words, to quote a real estate guru who was trying to flip a white elephant that for 5 years had been through EVERY real estate agent in the region "you know, there are realtors, and then there are realtors" ...
Not sure how inexpensive something would be when just getting to the place where you might start to make the print took 6 or 8 hours. I was just talking to my uncle who used to make dye transfers and making them was/is extremely labor intensive. I'm not sure how labor intensive becomes inexpensive, when each print's dye set is unique.
Back in the day (as they say today) the pros printed some dye work at top level...except when they were paying the rent with dye transfer mass production studio portraits and school photos. Dye transfer was almost totally killed off in the 70s by the excellence readily expected from Ektacolor as well as Kodaks C41 internegs.
... For people reading this thread who might wonder what a dye transfer print might be ...
and then read: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/making-a-dye-transfer-matrix-film.29949/
and then this incredible site: http://www.dyetransfer.org/Site/Dye_Transfer_Resources.html
Oh and other than scanning old color slides, I don't scan much.
I understand film, but I don't understand why someone would shoot 35mm film over full frame digital. Of course you can buy an amazing used film camera for peanuts so that's a darn good reason. And if you didn't grow up with film, I can understand the need to experience all manner of film. Even if that means scanning to see your results.
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