Hey, Rob, I wouldn't be so quick to say that what you shoot today might not be of
interest to someone in 50 years. Quite the contrary... one reason, I have seen
your web page, you have a lot of nice shots... I am sure some museum or historian
will want to get the rights to your archive.... I am into my hybrid digital
(shoot film, have a lab process the film, then I scan and work with Photoshop for
inkjet or tiff file output on CDR) because I don't want to set up a lab or have
to deal with labs for a lot of my work... I have three enlargers I haven't used
in years... won't sell 'em cuz I know when I do, I 'll need 'em the next day...
But my little Minolta Scan Elite allowed me to take a 30 year old neg I shot of a
rock guitar player in low light and coax enuf out of it to work it around in
Photoshop and come with an image I could only have dreamed of getting with a
regular darkroom... now the question is... how do I make it so it will last? I
will tiff it onto Photo CD, maybe shoot a film copy... but will it last as long
as one of my solarization prints on Agfa 6 of the same band that crawled out of
an art director's file after twenty-five years and ended up getting published in
a book?
Keep shooting, scanning and saving... and remember, always cover your posterity!
Mike
Rob Geraghty wrote:
> Mike wrote:
> > My point is that we are sitting on the leading edge of
> > technological developments that threaten to do away with
> > tried and proven (although not perfect) processes that
> > have allowed us to see what the last 170 years looked
> > like... We need to be very careful before we start to
> > believe everything the manufacturers tell us about
> > "archival" CD's, inks, etc...
>
> And painters panicked that photography would make them obsolete too. :)
> Any paradigm shift brings dangers. In reality, as long as we look after
> our negs and slides, it doesn't much matter whether CDR technology or inkjet
> technology is less than reliable. :)
>
> Those who can afford the "tried and proven" methods of photographic archiving
> will probably continue to use them for a long time yet. Many of us lesser
> mortals will have to take a risk that we can find ways of looking after
> our pictures in both film and electronic form.
>
> I don't necessarily believe anything companies tell me in their advertising
> material, but on the other hand thanks to Nikon making film scanners and
> Epson making photo quality inkjets, I can now make my own 10x8 colour and
> B&W prints at home without mixing up chemicals, building a darkroom, or
> buying an enlarger and photo paper etc (I still need paper for the printer
> of course :). I also make my own B&W prints by wet chemistry in the winter
> months when it's cool enough, but digital technology has made photographic
> things possible for me which would be much more expensive or impossible
> otherwise.
>
> I take your point about known versus unknown methods and their known or
> unknown longevity. It's certainly important enough to warrant the expense
> in time and money for some, but not for everyone.
>
> Going back to the archival nature of CDR, there just aren't any practical
> alternatives at the moment, so we just need to know how to make the best
> of what we have.
>
> Rob
>
> Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://wordweb.com
