Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Christer 
Rosewelll <christerart@m...> wrote:
>  you gotta leave something behind for those who's
> supposed to dissect you and your work when you're
> not around anymore - if nothing else - this will 
> make it a lot easier for 'em...=*^)

WRONGO!

It will make it a lot HARDER for 'em!

Digital technology changes so fast that even 15 years from now there 
will be no easy way to read those DVD's. 

Assuming that the shelf life of the media itself isn't an issue, in 
15 or 20 years we'll be - what - maybe 3 generations of storage 
technology past DVD's.    Traditionally PC's overlap one generation 
prior to what's current.   When 3.5" floppies came out most PC's also 
came with 5.25" floppies, too.   When CD's came out they still 
shipped with 3.5" floppies but 5.25's were gone.  Now that DVD's are 
standard, 3.5" floppies are going away (NONE of my last 3 computers 
came with one) but PC's can still read CD's.

So say XYZ replaces DVD in 5 years - DVD's will still be around.    
But 5 years later, when ABC replaces XYZ, DVD's will go and computers 
will still have old XYZ drives.     

And nevermind the drives - you would also need DRIVERS, and something 
that can read the file formats, etc!!    How many PC's today have 
drivers and display software for hardware and image formats that were 
in use 20 years ago?

So your plan forces your heirs and descendants to keep copying your 
images to whatever is current every few years!   That's a lotta 
trouble for them to go through!   What makes you think they'll be 
willing to do that?

Now *I*, on the other hand, have Kodachrome slides and BW negatives 
my father took over 60 years ago!!    They have been sitting around 
in attics and drawers all this time and NOBODY had to do ANYTHING to 
update them.   Yet I can pop them into my Nikon Coolscan and read 
them like they were taken yesterday.

If you want archival images for your descendents, you need to pick a 
storage medium that does not force them to do constant maintenance.   
I suggest BW silver-emulsion film.   Even if there are no scanners, 
because no ones uses film, in the future, there will still be 
cameras.   And those cameras will be FAR higher-res and wider dynamic 
range than today.   So your descendants can just "scan" the old film 
by taking a picture of it, like people do today to copy slides with 
their cameras.