Rob Studdert wrote:
On 30 Nov 2005 at 20:24, Toralf Lund wrote:
Actually, I don't believe for one moment that digital photos are
generally free, either (as I've mentioned before.) I just have too much
experience with management of large amounts of data for that. What can
be said, is that what you decide to throw away, is free. So like I said
(more or less), if I had thought that I would want to delete a lot of
images, I would have got a digital camera a long time ago...
This argument is moot, who says all files need to be maintained on-line, that;s
the only way that cost of storage could become significant. The price of good
quality DVD media is less than US$0.50 per disc so each RAW image (using the
bloated *ist D files) costs less than US$0.0015, so it costs US$15 to store
10,000 RAW files, hardly bank breaking.
There is also the "cost" of doing the storage job. Moving files around
or writing them to DVD takes time - probably more than handling the negs
in my experience. Then it is a question of how paranoid you are. Should
you trust the DVD media (which does not really have a proven track
record)? Do you want redundancy, and how much? At work, we use tape
media with quite a bit of overlap, and trust me, this will be a lot more
expensive than film. But it's a lot safer, too (I mean, I'd probably
trust one negative more than one DVD or tape, but not more than 3 or 4
copies on different tapes stored at different locations....) Still, it's
the time taken to handle the data that's the main issue, not the media
cost. And yes, this increases a lot when you keep data on-line instead
of archiving the data directly.
Of course, I do some of the same things for a living so it's tempting to
estimate the cost of e.g. writing the files to a DVD from what I get
paid to do the same job at work. Which is probably more than the film
cost of the same images...
Another thing is that when people talk about how much cheaper digital
is, they seem to be comparing with the price of developing *and
printing* from film, which does not seem fair...
We've discussed this before, of course...
I think digital will *really* make a difference as and when the actual
media used in the camera becomes so low-cost and reliable that you won't
have to copy the data at all. (But I've probably mentioned that earlier,
too.)
As has been pointed out by other people on this list earlier, some
experience with the more careful planning normally associated with film,
is probably good for most photographers...
Careful planning or not I usually come away from any photo opportunity with
more usable images shooting digital than I did film because I'm no longer
constrained by the cost of film.
You have probably learned to think about what you are doing, rather than
shooting uncritically and hoping some of the pictures will be good like
many DSLR users who haven't photographed a lot earlier, seem to be
doing. But you don't have to use film to learn that, of course...
- T
