Digital BW, The Print

Paul,
Your thoughts on this are practicle and make sense. Film still is one of if not the best acrhive materials when properly executed. B&W film is tooted at 500 years in dark storage when temperature and humidty control are in place...and that's not frozen.. Realistically today most of us are all using data so in addition to the film a system of archiving data needs to be going in parallel.. And for those that  are shooting digital their really is no other recourse unless they get a folm recorder which in that cas emay not make the best sense...The information possible on a paper print will never come close to that in a raw digital file nor  anegative simply due to the varience in dynamic Range that's possible. 
Digital negatives are another option ..I've been fooling with these to make contact prints and am really enjoying the process .. These negs however are fairly fragile and can easily be damaged .. 
The world has and is changing we still have lots of options .. I think it boils down to how well we execute our options for our personal needs..

jimbo

 ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Paul 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 7:14 PM
  Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Anyone backing up their files online?


    
  "lgrrrb@..." wrote:

  > My safest backups are clean negatives stored in the bank safety deposit box. ...

  That's the direction I'm leaning also -- letter size film images that can be sleeved and put into a standard bank box.

  Carbon on cotton may be the most "archival," but the signal to noise ratio is not very good. Viewing and extracting the best image involve different criteria. I might be willing to give up some longevity if the image quality trade off is high enough. 

  I'm now looking at the smoothest substrate and glossy carbon inksets. I think the digital internegative group may have a lot to contribute here. In my experience, Pictarico films may be the sharpest.

  I'd like to learn more about the relative longevity of a film base. It has to be coated, but I'd think if they really do use a quality film base, there would be less internal stresses than the RC approach.

  Paul
  www.PaulRoark.com 



  

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