Digital BW, The Print

I agree with Peter (had to happen some day) that any digitial media
and the means to read it will become obsolete. Except I swear by
external hard drives. When they're nearing the end of their technical
life cycle, you just copy the ENTIRE thing at one time over to
whatever media is being used in the future. 

The alternative is to someday look at this HUGE stack of CDs, DVDs, or
whatever and think that you must find time to copy them, one by one,
to the new media. It will probably never happen and their utility will
be lost forever. I know from eventually tossing a big stack of 5 1/4"
floppies. 

As Peter says, saving the original film is a mechanical means and
completely isolated from whatever happens in digital storage. The only
problem is finding the good ones. I have thousands and thousands of
slides from decades ago. I really wish I'd picked out the hundred best
and only saved them. 

Bob Michaels

 --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Nelson"
<pnweb@s...> wrote:
> 
> --- 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.