Gads, another book, mostly just random thoughts.
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 11:13 AM
Subject: Re: OT: Digital image volatility
> But...but, say you pick up a CD in 50-100 years, and
remembering 8-track
> tapes and vinyl records, how are you going to see the CD
images? What are you
> going to use to show them on?
There is no doubt that the way people are viewing images is
changing. The ones who are comfortable with computer technology
will tend to drift away from film and into the digital capture
realm, and quite likely viewing there "photographs" on a video
screen. While the ultimate image quality may not be as good,
most people are using pictures as visual reminders to stir
pleasant memories anyway.
Since the target group is already computer savvy (more or
less) they will, if they are smart, update the storage medium as
improvements come along.
There is also the distinct possibility that environmental
legislation will force the end of silver imaging anyway. At that
point, all those old negatives aren't going to be printed in a
traditional sense anyway, and we are back to scanning and inkjet
printing. Silver imaging, especially colour prints, are by no
means archival anyway. Wilhelm's research does place Fuji paper
at a pretty good life expectancy, but this in in ideal
processing conditions, which are rarely met by mini labs, where
most film is processed these days.
There is also problems cropping up from time to time with
image stability WRT defective products. Some of the older Agfa
prints had a life expectancy of just a few years, but no one
realized it until several hundred thousand school portraits had
been printed on the stuff, and the negatives destroyed by the
photo company. The original Kodak Ektacolour type 74 paper was
also pretty bad. Granted, this was early on in the colour print
technology stage, but this sort of mistake can happen anytime.
Anecdote time: When I was working in a wholesale lab in the
early 1980s, Kodak discovered they had a bad emulsion run with
very poor latent image stability. If the paper sat on the shelf
for a half hour after printing, it had a noticeable colour
shift. On busy days, we adjusted the master colour balance of
the printer to compensate for wait times from printer to
processor. Interestingly enough, Kodak decided this product was
not good enough for the home market, so Canada got stuck with
the entire lot of it, and there wasn't much we could do about
it. Kodak didn't admit the problem until well after they had
sold the last of it.
Now with minilabs. latent image stability is no longer a
concern, but we no longer wash the prints, per se. Now we use
chemical stabilizers for both film and paper. The machines I run
use about 1 litre of water for every 15 films processed, and
about the same for the prints to go along with them. This
includes the water used for the developer and the rinses. My
opinion is that this is leaving reactive silver halides in both
the film and the prints. Many labs don't change their rinse
tanks often enough, so they are building up bleach and fixer in
the rinse tanks, which just exacerbates the situation.
The storage medium is of concern to Henry Wilhelm (the
recognized expert WRT image preservation). He doesn't have a lot
of faith in digital storage, for the same reasons Mafud does,
which is hardware obsolescence. This is something that can be
overcome fairly easily, as digital files do copy readily from
one medium to the next. Of course, whether people do this or not
is the question, and I do suspect, and it pains me to agree with
Mafud <G> that there will be an incredible amount of lost images
caused by failure of people to jump ahead with their image
storage.
Now, it looks like Kodachrome is on it's way out, and then the
only truly archival colour film is history. Ilford has had major
problems with their multigrade paper bronzing when framed behind
glass. One would think framing a print would be the way to
protect it, but this is not the case with this product.
Hopefully, they have fixed it now, but there are about 10 years
worth of black and white images printed on Ilford Multigrade RC
paper of dubious life expectancy. Kodak has had problems with
emulsion delaminating and substrate yellowing in dark storage
with Polycontrast RC.
My own opinion? Why worry. As long as my work outlives my
interest in it, or outlives me, I'm not concerned. Others may
want to leave a visual legacy behind, I have a feeling that when
I go, there will be several hundred thousand negatives and
prints hitting a landfill somewhere north of town. I suspect
most of us are in the same position, whether we care to admit it
or not.
William Robb
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