Digital BW, The Print

Film is a storage medium.  When you took the photo you captured a small
slither of time on a piece of plastic (or glass).  This medium if properly
maintained had/has a certain longevity.  It could be brought out of storage
and used to make a print.  As we have moved into the digital realm and
particularly that of digital printing, this plastic storage medium has not
been appropriate and so scanners have been made to scan the film and convert
it to a digital storage medium from which digital prints can be made. As the
front end of image capture moves closer and closer to digital capture (note
the increasing capabilities of professional digital cameras, the lower price
points and greater  capabilities of now pervasive consumer digital cameras,
and the withdrawal of many film products from the market) the need for such
converters declines rapidly. They will become less available as a result.

This discussion is about migrating your data from one storage medium to
another in order to preserve your ability to easily use that data in the
future.  (The fact that it began as a simple question as to whether people
actually backed up, ie duplicated, their digital data at another location
seems to have been lost - I should ask how many people, as a matter of
prudence, keep celluloid copies of their film elsewhere?  Not that many I
suspect.) Yes digital storage formats will continue to evolve and at some
point one will have to transfer any data stored on a dying medium to the new
(no need to transfer the backup! just the original digital copy and make a
new backup on the new medium).  The question at hand is whether owners of
precious collections of data in celluloid form should be converting that
data from the celluloid domain to the digital domain (whatever its current
format - hard disk, cd, dvd etc).  I think the answer is a resounding "yes".

Film as a storage medium is subject to two major risks.  The first has
always been the same, the risk of physical damage or decay.  It is extremely
difficult to backup your data when it is in this form.  It is not easily
copied to another piece of film so that film can be stored at another
location.  If you don't want to backup your data or can't (celluloid or
digital) then you take the risk that it is not lost or damaged through
improper care, theft or accident.  This was the original subject matter of
the post and it is pretty clear that it is easier to backup data stored in a
digital format than to backup film.

The other risk is obsolescence. This seems to be the more passionate end of
the debate.  Film has been great - is great.  It can store a massive amount
of data about a scene.  Digital capture systems are only recently beginning
to match this.  But film is not mutable - it is stuck as film on the
original piece of celluloid.  You can't transfer that data to a newer more
advanced piece of celluloid.  As the number of darkrooms declines (this list
is a consistent testament to this trend) and as the percentage of new image
captures recorded on film declines then so too will demand for film and all
those products that have to do with its processing and storage.  Companies
will withdraw from making film and its processing chemicals. Darkroom
suppliers will withdraw products either by their own or via bankruptcy.
Scanner suppliers are at the end of this line of companies.  They make
devices used to take data from one old medium to a new medium.  As less and
less data is captured on film and more and more data on old film has already
been transferred to digital (the new medium), demand for scanners will
decline.  Manufacturers will stop manufacturing them.  They will become at
best specialist products, at worst antique items where one buys a few for
spare parts in order to keep one operating.  If by this stage I hadn't
transferred my precious data stored on celluloid (assuming of course that I
have managed to store my one and only copy of it for this time without loss
or damage) to the then current storage medium I would be very worried.

I wonder how many people have gone poking around their attic only to find
old 8mm home movies or even family video on VCR tape and wished they had
such data in today's storage mediums eg DVD?




> From: Bob Michaels <bob@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 03:09:33 -0000
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: how many REALLY do store digital copies elsewhere
> 
> 
> 
> 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