[Leica] Brian's Presentation

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Brian I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your presentation I was under the
impression that you were on the side of digital and backing up to simple
hard drives over analog. Maybe you still are when we see the notes.
Inkjet technology we are only guessing what its longitiviity might be at
this point. It puts us back to analog. Not sure how serious  you were being
when saying the best way to preserve an image is by printing it.

In analog a negative was always way more archival than a print. The reason.
No paper.
I for one I I've thought for years that we shared the same position that
digital is a boom for archival issues not the opposite.
The minute you make a negative or a print it starts to fade. Deteriorate.
That very second its dry.
But if your digital information is intact than it has not faded one small
bit in one, 10, 100, 1ooo, one million days or years.
I love that about digital. I don't think most the digital stuff people are
making is going to be lost to their families or the serious photo collector
world and I got that strong opinion over the years on the lug very much from
your your input on the issue was it comes up cyclically  on the lug.

In my previous life when I shot color neg sometimes trying to make a print
only a month later led to crossover which could not be dealt with. You could
not make a matching print. The experts who custom printed in or worked at
the color rental lab would warn you about that.
Now of course we have complete control over our color and printing a file
either to paper or disk later is  more likely to make en even better image
as our technology keeps advancing... The adobe camera raw interface keeps
getting better.

It may be out only real and minor disagreement is the glossy Baryta paper
which is not the meat of your study anyway.
But its a big deal for me.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/baryta.shtml
In this article you can see the industry has settled on matt rag over the
past decade but this Baryta according to the writer gives a serious printer
an option to have his prints have the same feel, or old fashioned "punch" of
the old darkroom prints. My words. Punch means demax.
Its a nice way of saying we are getting our inkjet prints to look like
darkroom prints. 
" Baryta is barium-sulphate, a clay-like material" I don't think we need
this in our prints so we can get them to emulate what collectors have long
known is not the way prints look like now. Darkroom glossy prints.
The reason being the prints are not darkroom glossy prints. But inkjets.

As I experience it the key to realistic archivalness on top of backing up is
accessibility.
Do you know where your body of work is tonight?
 is it happy? Is it damp? Is it wet in the basement or drying out in the
attract being attacked by raccoons for their lunch?

All my work from 2002 to 2011 is right here on my separate hard drive where
I can find any image usually pretty quickly if not sooner as in now. In a
few months I'll put it on a two tet drive its now on a one as are the
backups. My back up drives are right here too even though I should have them
put away somewhere safe where I'll forgot where they are. I used to send
stuff aback to Portland but they got sick of it. Then their hard drive
crashed wiping out all their own stuff. So they see my point now.

My body of work from 1965 on fills a small room and it sits there slowly
fading every day. The heat and humidity is not perfect. It never will be.
There is not person in a white coat who comes in and checks the readings.
The stuff I have done since 2002 is a mainly digital and right here where I
can look at them. I open a file up and it has not faced one millionth of a
percent.
Accessibility may be an odd issue in this archival thing which really has
meaning. I think I helps to be on top of your work.  Have it right there. At
least one set of it.


-- 
Mark R.



> From: Brian Keith Reid <reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:16:10 -0400
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Brian's Presentation
> 
> Maybe I should make a version that has notes on it, and upload that 
> instead.
> I put that file there for the benefit of the people who heard what I had to
> say at NYLUG, and there are some important facts missing from the slide 
> deck.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information