Interesting, but I'm still wondering about the storage technology. Nothing
has come close yet to the ability of film to inexpensively and so compactly
store the image data. Furthermore, some films (transparency) have an
archival life for that information spanning into two centuries from now.
Digital still scares me in that respect.
The half-life of storage format and/or media is about 7 years or so. We
had to tackle this very problem at my previous job in designing a huge
system, the system life for which was specified to be at least 30 years.
There were quite a few people in traumatic shock when we presented the
study about digital technology lifespans from sunrise to sunset.
Furthermore there is an immutable law in digital technologies: lifespans
will never increase, they will only decrease. My fear is our "throw-away"
society is going to overtake those things that can preserve what we are for
those that wonder about us generations from now. Paintings used to be the
method for preserving portraits and significant events. They have a very
long archival life if stored or displayed in a reasonably controlled
environment. Now we have films that have archival much less than
paintings, and we are moving toward digital storage with an "archival" of
under a decade before something *must* be done with it to preserve it.
Of note: the U.S. 1960 Census was very nearly lost in its entirety; first
due to how it was physically stored, and second due to the file format and
storage media. It is quite fortunate that *someone* took note of this just
before the tape drive technology completely sunset and scrounged up the
necessary hardware and software to transfer it to newer technology media.
With digital images, translation from one file structure to another *can*
lose information in the process; it *will* lose information between certain
specific file types using some software. I've already encountered this at
work.
As you might guess, I'm not ready to give up film, or my OM's that use it yet!
-- John
At 22:17 9/13/00 , Tom Scales wrote:
>Hmm, now that is interesting. I freely admit digital is coming, in fact, I
>own a nice digital camera and use it often. It's my P&S camera and the
>instantaneous results are great.
>
>I just want it in an OM mount <pout>.
>
>Tom
>
>> I'm not one to join in this conversation too often, but I have the article
>here
>> in front of me. Taken from the New York Times, it states that a camera
>> containing this new chip was given to a professional photographer in L.A.
>to
>> make a test portrait of a cowboy. In that image, no pixels or dots were
>> visible to the human eye when enlarged to a size of 8 feet by 4 feet. The
>> article goes on to say that this chip is the first to threaten 4x5
>cameras
>> such as Hasselblad. The article goes into tremendous detail of how this
>new
>> chip will have an enormous impact on other electronic devices as well.
>Kodak
>> has developed a similar though more expensive chip with the same
>resolution.
>> Kodak's announcement came out two weeks ago.
>>
>> As we all know, but are afraid to admit, its just a matter of time.
>>
>> Mark Jennings
>>
>
>
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