Digital images will not "get old"...

Karl vd Berg

Super Member
Look at these images below:

New York City in the 70s, old print
Edited (featured picture is now gone)
Another one: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbapj7PLUH1qiibi6o1_1280.jpg

Toronto today, digital picture
torontot.jpg


The first picture is an original print which was scanned into a digital file showing clearly physical aging...

The second was taken recently and directly into digital and so will remain with "same pixels arrangement" forever. Will not "physically" age...

Now, the photographs we took years and years ago are not the same today. They got true sepia tones even if we digitize them.

The digital ones we are taking NOW will remain the SAME tomorrow and after...

So, have you ever thought how you'll see yourself how young, fresh, beautiful you were now, within 30 years when you'll see in your hard disk those pictures you took from your holidays this or last year???

couple_on_beach.jpg
 
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Longevity varies depending on the printing technology. Some new prints don't last very long at all.

If you're comparing an old print to a new digital file, it's apples and oranges. It would be more fair to compare the digital file to the old film. I have digital media that has gone bad in under ten years, and I have Kodachrome transparencies that are still beautiful after 35 years.
 
Printed photographs on photographic paper last much longer than inkjet printed pictures. You can even wash photographs if they get dirty or stained and they clean up nicely.

I've seen some of the inkjet printed pictures start to lose red tones and turn into a blueish hue.

A digital file doesn't degrade with age. If you scan a film, the digital version freezes. A BIG difference between material form and digital images is that films and papers will age and slowly degrade but will be there for you unless you burn them. Digital files can evaporate in a split second.
 
Longevity varies depending on the printing technology. Some new prints don't last very long at all.

If you're comparing an old print to a new digital file, it's apples and oranges. It would be more fair to compare the digital file to the old film. I have digital media that has gone bad in under ten years, and I have Kodachrome transparencies that are still beautiful after 35 years.
Ok, but I'm not talking about the technology behind quality print papers from the past and today. I'm recalling that a digital file does not degrade over the time. You can have bad quality store media, but essentially the digital file will remain unchanged, even if you copy it a billion times...

...

A digital file doesn't degrade with age. If you scan a film, the digital version freezes.
That's my point!

A BIG difference between material form and digital images is that films and papers will age and slowly degrade but will be there for you unless you burn them. Digital files can evaporate in a split second.
Ok, that's true. Maybe if we talk about private use, that's fine.
But photo agencies that will publish a picture taken today in Times Square will still be available in exactly the same image quality in 35 or in a 100 years...

THAT'S impressive!

Bit rot is passive of degradation if it's not copied to another media over and over...
 
Printed photographs on photographic paper last much longer than inkjet printed pictures...

Maybe still true for silver monochrome prints, this is no longer true for color with the best archival quality inkjet prints, which have surpassed most photographic processes. And for color it was only true for certain types of photographic prints, like Cibachrome or dye transfer. There are lousy color prints from mid-century that are all turned pink now.

In transparencies, Kodachrome generally had excellent dark storage life (though some people have examples that did not store well), but Kodachrome had poor projection life.

As for digital files, they are perfect until failure of the media; and if the history of digital media so far is any indication, obsolescence is just as big a problem as failure. The only safe thing to keep them for posterity is to recopy to fresh media periodically.
 
My fear is a great number of these digital files will be lost forever. No, they don't fade like some mid century color prints but will future generations have access to them? Will my kids or grandkids know where they are stored and will they be able to open the media they are stored on? Biographer's in the past would dig through boxes of letters from important historical figures for source material. Now people text or email. That source is gone. I have boxes of black and white photos that my parents and grand parents took most of which look like they were printed a few months ago. I hope I'm wrong but I fear we may lose some of our history. I make enough archival quality images that I am at least fairly confident that some will survive me.
 
I think in a private way of storing our stuff ourselves, it can be pretty easy to loose the best pictures (files). Even if we put them in various on-line storage banks like Photobuck or even Facebook, they can be lost. Professional photographers, agencies, National Geographic, etc, have their own secure way to save these digital images.

But modern hard disks ($$$) come out better built quality. You still can have them destroyed or stolen. Like your printed old photos...
 
My fear is a great number of these digital files will be lost forever. No, they don't fade like some mid century color prints but will future generations have access to them? Will my kids or grandkids know where they are stored and will they be able to open the media they are stored on? Biographer's in the past would dig through boxes of letters from important historical figures for source material. Now people text or email. That source is gone. I have boxes of black and white photos that my parents and grand parents took most of which look like they were printed a few months ago. I hope I'm wrong but I fear we may lose some of our history. I make enough archival quality images that I am at least fairly confident that some will survive me.

Michael. This is an excellent point, and one that I'd not considered. But then I can get off onto the philosophical musing about the human/digital merge and the "computational human" (Borg)... and I don't want to do that right now! :eek:
 
My fear is a great number of these digital files will be lost forever. No, they don't fade like some mid century color prints but will future generations have access to them? Will my kids or grandkids know where they are stored and will they be able to open the media they are stored on? Biographer's in the past would dig through boxes of letters from important historical figures for source material. Now people text or email. That source is gone. I have boxes of black and white photos that my parents and grand parents took most of which look like they were printed a few months ago. I hope I'm wrong but I fear we may lose some of our history. I make enough archival quality images that I am at least fairly confident that some will survive me.

I've already lost digital picture files. Had them stored on a computer that crashed and that I no longer have. Hopefully, if cloud computing improves and becomes universal, all files will be stored in a safe location that will last longer than current files.
 
Preserving images as an individual is fraught with difficulties and bad luck, be they digital or traditional. Fire, floods, hosting crashes, drive failures or mistakes get them every time. But, put just one embarrassing or compromising shot on-line and it will exist forever.
 
I sometimes lay awake at night and think of the billions of images that have been uploaded just to Flickr in the last few years (short amount of time)....not to mention all the images that are shot each day on phones and don't even go anywhere. The sheer number of images out there is mind boggling for a medium (digital) that is only in it's second decade. Project into the next twenty or fifty years and imagine what's going to happen to all these images. Will they still be stored someplace (on Flickr)? Will people preserve, catalog and caption all these images for future family members? Will the media formats be updated and old material transferred? (remember floppy disks and zip drives?) Will people become so saturated and inundated with still and video images that they will lose their historical significance and just be trashed? Something to ponder.
 
The number of cameras today (including the mobiles) is something no one could imagine in the 70s. Everything everyday is recorded. The amount of images and short movies will tell almost everything about us in the next century. No need of archeology or paleontology. Everyhing today is being recorded somewhere, anywhere...

Impressive!!
 
Of course that's true but what I am referring to is Micro Level: Personal Family Histories. There will be plenty of images of Honey Boo Boo. I believe it's a legitimate concern. Time will tell.
 
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People lose more and more digital files every day. We are literally creating a "lost generation". Everything even down to home movies and photos are disposable now even if we don't mean them to be. In 30 years that sepia picture of New York will still be around in a box of negatives somewhere and that photo of a building in Toronto will be long forgotten and probably lost to all but the edges of the internet.
 
The image below is from the NBA Finals 2008 taken almost 5 years ago...

No sepia tonality within 35 years, no degradation within 40 years...
This picture will remain like this in 100 years...

8152177810.jpg


You can find it anywhere, anytime...

The question is not about if we can safely store our/the digital images, but it's about that IF the pixels will get "sepia" tones over the times...

I don't think so...

nba_g_oneal_580.jpg
 
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Yet another proto-Luddite mewling. It gets so old, and yet it is funny at the same time.

Let me get this straight. Things are so good, that they're bad.

We take so many photographs, that we devalue the art of photography.

We have so many photographers that nothing will be remembered in the future because we'll be awash in the photos they produced.

Oh, please.

Anyone who prefers film is free to use it. Anyone who wants to limit their own photography is free to do so. None of YOUR choices are going to affect ME even slightly.

Ponder all you want. Worry all you feel is appropriate. I don't care and I won't stop taking (and uploading to Flickr) thousands and thousands of photographs.

When times are bad, people complain. When times are good, people complain that they're too good, and that's somehow bad.

Ye gods.
 
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