Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/17

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Subject: [Leica] Preserving Digital Information in Archives
From: kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:34:34 -0500
References: <C7C5E737.5F844%mark@rabinergroup.com>

On 3/17/2010 12:56 AM, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>> On 3/16/2010 4:40 PM, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>>      
>>>> Perhaps of interest to those on the list whose images are wholly 
>>>> digital:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?ref=books
>>>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?ref=books&pagewanted
>>>> =all>   &pagewanted=all
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>          
>>> I'm surprised this one slipped though the whole premise is fantasyland
>>> cherished in academia but in the real world people know better.
>>> I trust digital media far more than I do film or paper.
>>>
>>> " authors, are ultimately just a series of digits ? 0?s and 1?s ? 
>>> written on
>>> floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than
>>> old-fashioned acid-free paper. Even if those storage media do survive, 
>>> the
>>> relentless march of technology can mean that the older equipment "
>>>
>>> [Rabs]
>>> Mark William Rabiner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Leica Users Group.
>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>> My typical print file now is around 120mb. That is just the size of the
>> tif file opened from raw in a SLR. A scan of a 35mm slide is around
>> 100mb. So I would say that floppy disks, CD's and DVD's are out of the
>> equation, not that they are reliable anyway. (I wonder if the curator at
>> the Houghton Library really just stopped at storing John Updike's 5 1/4"
>> floppies in "climate controlled stacks".) Finding stuff is not that
>> difficult, though if you have a lot of images you may have to draw a
>> line in the sand and begin cataloging from that point forward, as I did.
>> If reliability of the digital media, or the lack of a migration path, is
>> really an issue, then business and scientific enterprises are in real
>> trouble.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>      
>
> We agree Ken.
> It will be interesting to see how long this cherished prejudice by the
> academic community and writers against digital is allowed to continue.
> Its nuts. People love to read that stuff for some reason.
> They think the weak points they get to attack without any backup is storage
> and the evil  "Photoshop". Its mindlessness.
> They just need to feel that digital photography is some kind of scam and 
> not
> "real" photography.
>
> [Rabs]
> Mark William Rabiner
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
Yes, it is a never-ending argument.  As has been noted many times 
before, probably someone long ago objected to dodging and burning.  In 
my own darkroom, I have been guilty of unsharp masking, intensifying 
negatives or portions thereof, and yes, even adjusting highlights in the 
print with much reduced Farmers reducer and a paintbrush.  That is even 
before I got to selenium or gold 231 toning.


Replies: Reply from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Preserving Digital Information in Archives)
In reply to: Message from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Preserving Digital Information in Archives)