Digital SLR Photography & Superzooms

nice little plug for Olympus in the interview

interesting to hear.

Derek

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Derek,

Re: Olympus

Don't forget Lord Lichfield gets paid by them to advertise the brand

Andy

Unless you need the instant feedback that digital photography offers, then a film based solution plus scanner gives a far higher quality alternative to a small format digital body. You also avoid the archiving problems of digital images (how long will a CDR last, 10-15 years perhaps?) since you have the silver based original. 35mm film will not be obsolete in the foreseeable future due to its widespread use in the movie industry, though it is likely to become a niche product.

Nick

[This message was edited by Nick_S on Tue 26 October 2004 at 10:13.]

Andy - Re Lord L and Olympus - yes I know - Olympus presented him with an E1 shortly after they became available.

Nick_S

35mm film has deteriorated very badly over the last 50 years or so, colours have faded and in some cases the emulsion has been damaged by mould and by stripping away from the base.

One museum I visited (Museum of the Rockies) was lamenting the arrival of colour photography for the masses as it meant that "social history" was being lost as colour prints were fading and the negatives had long gone. Their collection of Black and White pictures from the age before mass colour was holding up well.

Storing the data in a digital format has the best chance of the data lasting as the bits do not change when the file is copied.

As for the life of CDR - - one has a responsibility of backing up and moving the data forward to the new media as it arrives - eg any images on 5.25 floppy diskettes may still be readable if you can find a diskette drive but I hope that you have moved the data forward onto more modern media several times (not that a digital image from the old floppy diskettes would not have had much detail)

I am reminded of the US Vet data that was written to and stored on old computer tapes (big open reels) that had not been carried forward and could no longer be read - nor were the programs around to actually read and decode the data - nor the computers.

It is the responsibilty of all data owners to move forward their data.

In the past the keeper of the family archves was a filing clerk - now that they have to take on the role of a DP manager. <g>

Derek

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Any photoes considered imporatant to me exist on a harddrive, On DVD and on various CDrs very important ones can land up on the web on various servers.

Sorry but the argument that CDrs could fade over time are at best poor, I have not lost a single photo in 4+ years. I have a CD burnt in 1998 that plays as good as before and its been battered as well.

Nagatives a lot lot more delicate, any hint of dust or a sratch and they are basically knackered.

One can envision that very shortly the use of film for general use will become uneconomic as film production is reduced to a niche activity in small batches and the film processing labs close down as the demand for D and P is reduced to supporting proffesionals - perhaps consumer D and P will be outsourced to Asia/Africa where the life of film based photography is expected to last for quite a while.

To compare look what has happened to 8mm or 9.5mm (RIP) film availability and pricing now that video has become the pervasive method of recording action, it is yet another situation in which social history is being lost as the trivia of life is being recorded over to save buying another tape.

Derek

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The archival qualities of different film types are discussed at length in the excellent book which is available to download at:
http://wilhelm-research.com/book.html

Silver based monochrome images stored correctly will last indefinitely. Colour images can be split optically into separate 'colour' layers onto silver based film (one early motion picture format did this). Kodachrome also held up well if dupes were projected rather than the original, but Kodak is winding down this emulsion.

Derek Wright wrote:
"Storing the data in a digital format has the best chance of the data lasting as the bits do not change when the file is copied."

This just propagates the errors from a deteriorated disk --- unless you propose that one makes initial backups onto multiple disks and combines these in some way across the random areas of degeneration.

garyi, I did mention 10-15 years as a typical estimate of the life expectancy of a CDR, so your figure of 4+ years is well within this.

Nick

I appriciate that Nick, in 10-15 years though, the photoes that are important to me will be in multiple formats and copied multiple times, and lets be honest there is likely to be movements towards a more stable storage medium in the interim.

You make the copies before the disk deteriorates
as a matter of good practice

you also do as Gary suggests place the file on several devices

Derek

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Gary,

Your comments about photoes and nagatives lead me to think you have little experience with silver halide–based photography -- or, somewhat less likely, that you're really Dan Quayle posting under a pseudonym. ;-)

By the way, the lack of CDRs longevity as an archival medium is well known as Nick points out. In practice it may not be an issue since you're bound to have a copy of your pictures across several media, so any given CDR failure may not be a disaster.

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Nagatives a lot lot more delicate, any hint of dust or a sratch and they are basically knackered.

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That's what digital ICE is for.

Joe

Joe I do have little experience of such things, luckily my wife works for Kodak!

However if we take the two as they are a negative could be considered the same as your back to disk of a photo.

In the real world unless you a super geek or a professional chances are the negatives will not be kept in the best possible situation, infact I am prepared to bet the majority of people store them in the cardboard sleeve they arrived in, granny goes to have a look, they are invariably the first thing to hit the deck.

For the average user and now more increasingly the professional user, the digital medium does represent the future and perhaps unlike CD replay vs record, can offer right now the quality demanded by the perfectionist and the back up for the day you need to print that photo again.

The real downside to all this is storage I must confess that although I know I have the photo somewhere, just where is a little hard unless I take the time to name and index every photo I take.

But presumably the same problems are encountered by film buffs as well.

Martin,

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to give you an idea of where this technology is going, a couple of satellites have been launched recently with some incredible digital sensors - 600MPixels & 1GPixel.

I'm sure the camera subsystems cost £millions each, but we'll be buying them for £500 within a decade.

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No doubt, NASA/military CCD and CMOS technology trickles down to the masses, but it still blows my mind that we might see a several hundred MP D-SLR in the coming years. At that point film/digital comparisons will be pointless as not even Kodak Tech Pan could complete with that kind of resolution, providing that the optics involved let you take advantage of it.

Incidentally, I found this rather interesting -- that the Cassini-Huygens probe, currently orbiting Saturn, has a measly 1024x1024 1 MP CCD in its main camera. Guess that was state of the art when the probe was being constructed in mid 1990s. But, technological limitations aside of such a small sensor, it does show that the photographer still determines the quality of the photo -- f/11 and be there, indeed.

Joe

Pah! If Cassini-Huygens was properly desinged it would have used K64 and had some mechanism for sending the process-paid envolope back to Hemel Hempstead.

Matthew

Matthew,

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If Cassini-Huygens was properly desinged it would have used K64 and had some mechanism for sending the process-paid envolope back to Hemel Hempstead.

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Maybe there's something to old film technology after all... the first Kodachrome 64 snaps of Titan have arrived.

Rather impressive.

Joe, wishing Carl S. were still here to appreciate the moment