Mick, Herein lies the issue: We all keep talking about Joe Public (Sixpack) and his issues with archiving. The reality is that whether he is shooting film or digital, he isn't archiving in any manner that will provide longevity.
With film, if he isn't throwing his negs away, he is just throwing them in a drawer or box. Not caring about heat or humidity or having them processed in good chemicals. Nope, cheapest, quickest way possible. Then forget about it. Probably can't even find them, especially a specific frame if the need ever arises. Not to mention how much he damages them just looking at them (handling them with bare hands, scratching them by sliding them across the table, etc). With digital, if he is having a cd made, more than likely it will be thrown into the same drawer or box, with equal care about environmental issues. Time will do it's work on the cd's as you suggest. In the end, not much archiving really happened. He might get lucky and be able to use his pictures down the road, but don't count on it. The reality is that archiving takes some thought, planning and caring whether you are shooting film or digital. Those that really care about the longevity of their photos will learn proper methods and the rest will reap what they sow. For those on this list, I suspect that by and large archives are reasonable no matter medium they are using. I can say that I have some negatives my wife shot on cheap film that are fading badly and some of my slides shot back in the 70's and 80's are starting to show some problems. My only recourse with those is to scan them and fix and preserve them digitally. -- Best regards, Bruce Thursday, August 26, 2004, 6:46:33 AM, you wrote: >>I'll bet my digital archives out last my film archives long term however >>since I treat each media type with equal respect I guess I'll be fine in >>the next 10 years, I already have reliable 10 year old CD archives and I've >>just successfully migrated it all to DVD. MM> You may not have the problems so much (as you are prepared to look after the MM> output carefully) however, I am finding increasingly that my old music CDs MM> (some go back to the mid 80's) are degrading - sound quality is impaired but MM> some have even started skipping and a few are unplayable. This isn't due to MM> dirt or scratches (I am extremely careful with them), it's down to MM> oxidation. The same is going to happen to CDRs and DVDs and when it does the MM> likelyhood of getting the data off of them may be very slim. I think this MM> will be more of a problem for Joe Public digi-snappers (as we have been MM> talkign about). I think serious amateurs and pros will be better able to MM> deal with it. MM> Mick...
