Digital BW, The Print

I'm getting excellent results scanning Kodachrome (and Ektachrome) 
slides taken in the late 70's. So 25 year old Kodachrome slides are 
holding up well in my hands. The slides look good visually and they 
produce nice images via my Nikon 4000 ED scanner. The overwhelming 
majority of them do not appeare to have visually deteriorated at all. 
I'm not confident any of my digital images will be easily readable 25 
years from now. Long term storage of digital data (not just images) is 
a major issue for many of the reasons outlined by Peter Nelson (and 
others). I've got lots (probably hundreds) of 3.5" floppy disks with 
data (documents, etc.) prepared on a Macintosh IIx or IIci back in the 
late 80s-early 90s. I doubt if I could read much of it anymore. The OS 
has changed, software has changed or disappeared, floppy disk drives 
are no longer standard equipment (on Macs, anyway), etc.  Most of them 
will simply be discarded -- not worth the time or trouble anymore to 
even figure out what's on them.

On the other hand, I have talked to some friends who, during that time 
period (late 70's) bought cheap film (repackaged inexpensive movie 
film, I think it was) thinking they were saving money vs. buying 
Kodachrome. Their images have all but disappeared, and are now useless. 
So not all film will last. Kodachrome is apparently among the best of 
the color films in this regard. Properly processed and stored high 
quality B&W film is probably the best for long term storage.

Regards,
Bob Damon

On Nov 23, 2004, at 5:34 PM, Hans Van Rafelghem wrote:

>
>
>> 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.
>>
> Taken yesterday??
> My father was a professional photographer about 50 years ago. His
> filmrolls were typically stored in drawers, each roll wrapped in paper.
> I tried to scan some of them on my Nikon 4000ED. I also tried to scan
> some slides with snapshots from when I was a kid - I am now 42. Those
> were typically stored in the pouches that came from the lab. All scan
> results were simple horrible. All the slides from the family trips I
> made with my parent are all fading fast up to the point of being
> completely useless. And I am not even mentioning the hundreds of
> photographs were I can't find a single negative from.
> -- 
>
> Hans Van Rafelghem
> http://www.vanrafelghem.com