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[OM] Archivally safe?

Subject: [OM] Archivally safe?
From: Simon Evans <sje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 18:20:49 GMT
The British Journal of Photography (www.bjphoto.co.uk) this week has an
article on two concerns of mine regarding the use of digital imaging. The
picture editor of the Independent on Sunday newspaper (a broadsheet paper
with a reputation for uncommonly good b&w photography) expresses concern at
the pictures being lost with the move to digital imaging in place of film.

Digital editing, he says, is not editing in the traditional sense: that of
selecting the best images to use as illustration then keeping the rest. It
is the deletion of images which, while not essential for the immediate
purpose, may prove valuable in the future. He points out that the pressure
on space will change the nature of the material we archive. This will bias
the archive towards news, and more specifically images _used_ in the news,
while the others taken at the same time are erased. 

Though his emphasis is on the use of news photography, he also suggests that
the recording of everyday life by amateurs and snapshooters will also
suffer. This "unofficial archive", which should illustrate our history, will
be on PC hard drives, unseen except by those who are at the monitor, and
unretrievable if the hard drive crashes or when a component is no longer
supplied.

Alongside the article are images used to illustrate the corruption of JPEG
files saved on a CompactFlash card. This is something I have wondered about
before. Not only may digital storage media and file formats become obsolete,
but just how reliable is the storage medium in the short term?

Last weekend I was looking through my old Kodachrome slides of Christmas
dinners or seasonal visits to relatives. A number of the people in those
images are now dead, and the slides themselves have assumed an importance
that would not have concerned me at the time. I'm very glad they're still
viewable. As Christmas comes, I suggest everyone tries to photograph their
nearest and dearest (preferably with your OMs, of course), I know I
certainly will. Next year might be too late, carpe diem...

Simon E.


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