Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/07/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I give up, I'm uninterested as to if or when Leica may or not develop/clone a digital product of quality sufficient to challenge the M or R systems. I have no control over their decision. Perhaps we should ask a slightly different question. Under what conditions would you be willing to save your prized images in a digital format ONLY? In my home office there are Kodachromes over 25 years old that still are as good as the day they came out of the soup. I also have a silver print of my Great Great Grandfather taken in 1884 (thats 117 years folks). It can now be seen via the digital revolution at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/o/h/John-Bohner/PHOTO/0001photo .html?Welcome=995856738 but don't expect me to throw out the original print anytime soon. I also admit to having some Ektachromes that are not storing as well. Surely, a digital image will out last film! I don't think we can say that, yet. Digital storage may be among the least permanent forms of storage. I have had a home computer since the 70's and I've seen lots of change and some of that change has been unrecoverable. Let us consider those wonderful 320X240 sixteen color images on 8 inch disks. Let us find a 5 inch floopy disk drive, they are already hard to find and we aren't talking 25 years yet. Let us consider that floopy disk media does not have an archival storage potential. Oh, we can go to CDs you argue. You are as much at risk from media and software obsolesence from them as any other media. Anyone remember "WORM" write once read many optical disks? FWIW the US National Archive is already struggeling with how to recast and resave digital data. Then there are those aspects of digital that we don't want to think about. Do you want to trust your family history pictures to CPM/DOS/MS-DOS/MS Windows 3.0/95/NT/98/98ME/2000/XP? What about the Amiga, Osborn and other wonders? How many of you have done what I have done already, unrecoverably erased images you truly miss? Never suffered a catastophic meltdown? Hard drive failure/FAT corruption/?Then you must be running UNIX. No my friends, going digital means more than megapixels, quantum efficiency and electron noise. It means being at the mercy of a technology which is at once both wonderful and wicked. John Bohner I follow the digest and so any necessary response may be slow. Feel free to email me direct at johnbohner@earthlink.net I feel free to not answer every question leveled. You may feel free to visit my leica paw page at: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnbohner/analog/paw/index.htm or look at my computer generated alternate realities at http://home.earthlink.net/~johnbohner/dtg/dtgtop.html or not.