Luca Logi

The Reid wrote:

    > How do people feel about the long term storage of treasured holiday snaps?
    > My prints and slides should with luck outlive me.
    >
    > But CDs seem to fail regularly and become totally unreadable, ditto
    > floppies. Hard disks sooner or later crash. What guarantee JPEG or other
    > formats will be around in 20 years.


This is a real problem with archives; often, even before the memory
support fails, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the hardware
necessary to read it (from 5" floppies to audio tape, etc.).

But about holiday snaps I have a different feeling. I recommend shooting
ordinary (analogue) photos of important, once-a-lifetime events (say, a
marriage or a baptism).

Holiday photos are a different thing. In the past years I shooted some
of them, and I ended with a lot of photos (I rarely watched them again)
taking a lot of space in my cramped home. Now that I have a digital
machine (and a laptop for immediate download, storage and watching) I
end up shooting something like 20-100 photos per day (I couldn't afford
the same numer of traditional photos), that end up stored in space
saving CDs and often are watched again with pleasure. If they get lost
in ten years, probably it won't be a big loss (they wouldn't even be
there if I had to print them on paper); but probably backing up or
converting something like 20 CDs won't be impossible (it wouldn't be so
with video tape, however).

--
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Luca Logi

R J Carpenter wrote:

    > Someone I know had a project (probably for the US National Archives [and
    > Records] Administration) on the archival properties of CDs. IIRC, people
    > lost interest in funding the project before there were any conclusive
    > results. I'll ask the next time I see him.


Not a scientific answer, but maybe interesting. My audio recording
department began recording on CDR in June 1992 (we had the first Studer
CDR audio recorder shipped to Italy, serial # 12). The CDRs play well
after 10 years.

I wouldn't be so sure about some CDR supports around now, however. Some
of them give compatibility problem just out of the cellophane.

--
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy e-mail: [email protected]

barney

In article , [email protected]
(Mxsmanic) wrote:

    > "The Reid" a écrit dans le message
    > > de
    > news: [email protected]...
    > > What guarantee JPEG or other formats will be
    > > around in 20 years.
    >
    > JPEG will outlive both today's film photos and today's digital media.
    > After
    > all, we can still read ancient Egyptian today, after many thousands of
    > years.
    >
    > This is another flawed argument against digital.

But isn't it the same argument you used just now in another post when you
pointed out that ancient Egyptian was unreadable before the discovery of
the Rosetta Stone?

Erilar

In article , "Owain" wrote:

    > I think the problem is going to be cataloguing images. My late father
    > left
    > thousands of slides which would have been of interest to at least one
    > university library if only my mother had not, at an earlier state of
    > clearing out, thrown away a notebook which constitutes the index and was
    > the
    > only way of relating slide 14425 to 32441. There are programs which will
    > catalogue photo collections, but what happens when the database gets
    > corrupted.

This, I think, is likely ALWAYS to be a problem. And once a collection
gets larger and larger withOUT being properly catalogued, the impulse to
do so gets weaker and weaker. My library is a prime example thereof 8-)

--
Mary Loomer Oliver(aka erilar)


Erilar's Cave Annex:
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

Mxsmanic

a écrit dans le message de news:
[email protected]...

    > But isn't it the same argument you used just
    > now in another post when you pointed out that
    > ancient Egyptian was unreadable before the
    > discovery of the Rosetta Stone?

JPEG may well be somewhat mysterious 6000 years from now, but not 20 years
from now, or even 100.

The Reid

Following up to Hatunen

    >I wouldn't count on it. I'm old enough to have color prints from
    >the 1950s and 1960s, and most have deteriorated badly, mostly by
    >the color fading. On the other hand, my Kodachrome slides and
    >prints are about as good as originally.

Obviously different materials last differently.
I have a couple of pre WW1 photos of grandparents which are fine, no
doubt they are fading, but still look OK after 90 years+. My own
photos, slides and prints, which date from the 60s to now are all
fine. some stored properly, others just chucked in a drawer. The worst
damage is to my b&w hand made prints from late sixties, the glue they
are mounted with has turned from invisible to dark brown. There are of
course as Mark says, the odd few stuck together with coffee, red wine,
creased etc etc etc. but they are still viewable -ish!
One big plus of digital is the risk of sending film through the post
for processing is eliminated.


First generation floppy floppy disks were failing fast before stiff
floppies came in, no doubt if I had a floppy floppy drive now that
would all be unreadable. I also have many failed stiff floppies and
I'm sure i'm not the only one to have had a hard drive crash. I'm not
sure when I started buying CDs but I now have a small pile of ones
that won't read.

All this raises another question in my mind, I wonder how the dyes in
photo quality PC printer setups compare with photos?
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

Mxsmanic

"The Reid" a écrit dans le message de
news: [email protected]...

    > All this raises another question in my mind,
    > I wonder how the dyes in photo quality PC
    > printer setups compare with photos?

Very poorly, as a general rule, except for special archival pigmented inks,
for which the jury is still out.

The Reid

Following up to BB

    >> Provided that you are going to a country with an electrical supply.
    >Seems like you could just use an auto adapter if you'll have a vehicle.
    >Aren't they all 12V?

an issue for wild camping mountaineers and walkers.
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

The Reid

Following up to Owain

    >In t'early days of computers there wasn't that much data, and everyone had
    >incompatable formats. Now we do have de facto standards, some like JPEG
    >which are open and some like MS .doc which are proprietary. Because of the
    >huge quantities of data existing in these formats, anything new is going to
    >have to be backwards-compatible at least one or two generations.
    >Word-processors still come with WordPerfect 5.1 import for example. If we
    >have open standard formats then there can be considerable overlap between
    >generations without reliance on one manufacturer. It's not like when Amstrad
    >PCWs died, and all the data was on manufacturer-specific disks in a
    >not-very-common file format. (Or my CDs of Corel clipart in a format
    >unreadable since Venturer 3. :-(

my current issue is what to do about my quite large collection of
video tape, not to mention vinyl records. Do I have it all copied or
hope video players will always be around?
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

The Reid

Following up to Mxsmanic

    >> yes, I like that definition, very good!
    >Thanks, but I didn't invent it.
    >> However when discussing a photograph its the
    >> digital of the digital computer that is relevant.
    >Same thing. Don't be fooled by superficial appearances.

Possibly, but anyway its not the central issue, which remains a fairly
technology free original v an encoded machine dependant copy (analogue
or digital isnt the point).
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

The Reid

Following up to Mxsmanic

    >JPEG may well be somewhat mysterious 6000 years from now, but not 20 years
    >from now, or even 100.

As an aside, JPEG of course isnt much of a way of storing important
photos anyway, you want a lossless form that doesnt introduce
"artifacts" and can be resaved without loss of quality. If you only
have a JPEG and you want to say, add a frame or resize, the resave
will reduce quality, you want to do that with the original lossless
photoshop format image or whatever.
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

Mxsmanic

JPEG is fine for archiving. It's not fine as an intermediate format.

"The Reid" a écrit dans le message de
news: [email protected]...
    > Following up to Mxsmanic
    > >JPEG may well be somewhat mysterious 6000 years from now, but not 20
years
    > >from now, or even 100.
    > As an aside, JPEG of course isnt much of a way of storing important
    > photos anyway, you want a lossless form that doesnt introduce
    > "artifacts" and can be resaved without loss of quality. If you only
    > have a JPEG and you want to say, add a frame or resize, the resave
    > will reduce quality, you want to do that with the original lossless
    > photoshop format image or whatever.
    > --
    > Mike Reid
    > "Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
    > London & the British hills "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk"
    > Spain, food and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" (see web for email)

Luca Logi

The Reid wrote:

    > my current issue is what to do about my quite large collection of
    > video tape, not to mention vinyl records. Do I have it all copied or
    > hope video players will always be around?


It depends on the value you give to your collection and how frequently
you need to access it. IMHO, I would expect a couple of years before
copying your videos to DVD (a format that still needs to be perfected,
especially in its "write" form). Probably this is the moment to back up
the vynils.

You can always expect to get video and vynil players(so many of them are
around) for a long (but not ethernal) time. What you will be lacking is
a supply of techs able to repair and fine tune the machines.

For example, I have in my office a fairly large library of analog audio
tapes, and I have a would bunch of problems with their conservation.
Till few years ago, I didn't really have problems with the machines
needed to read them (we hade five Revox recorders), but now even this
problem is coming out. Now that the older audio engineers are retired
and the Revoxes are out of daily use, it isn't easy to find one of them
in perfect shape, and the younger techs aren't so proficient in fine
tuning them - let alone repair them when they fail. And I am talking
about professional machines that were in daily use till few years ago.

As soon as I can gather some funds, I will have all the analogue library
transferred on CD. Of course, in twenty years from now I will be again
at the start and I expect having to backup everything in a future
format.

--
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Hatunen

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 17:44:04 +0100, The Reid
wrote:

    >Following up to Hatunen
    >>I wouldn't count on it. I'm old enough to have color prints from
    >>the 1950s and 1960s, and most have deteriorated badly, mostly by
    >>the color fading. On the other hand, my Kodachrome slides and
    >>prints are about as good as originally.
    >Obviously different materials last differently.
    >I have a couple of pre WW1 photos of grandparents which are fine, no
    >doubt they are fading, but still look OK after 90 years+.

The black in old black and white prints is made up of metallic
silver particles and silver never fades. The paper jsut gets
yellower.


************* DAVE HATUNEN ([email protected]) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 18:46:09 +0200, "Mxsmanic"
wrote:

    >"The Reid" a écrit dans le message de
    >news: [email protected]...
    >> All this raises another question in my mind,
    >> I wonder how the dyes in photo quality PC
    >> printer setups compare with photos?
    >Very poorly, as a general rule, except for special archival pigmented inks,
    >for which the jury is still out.

I have an Epson C82 printer, and I undertand that my color
cartridges are based on pigments instead of dyes and the colors
will last much longer. But one real advantage of digital is that
the digital color can never change; if a print fades print out
another one.


************* DAVE HATUNEN ([email protected]) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *