Digital Longevity

[Jesse17]

I just attended a short talk by the Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau program, called “Starting With Huffman: Photographers of Montana’s High Plains”. It was a presentation that showed the differences in styles of various photographers who have done work to showcase the plains/prairie side of Montana since the 1880s. It was quite interesting to see that some of these famed photographers were known for styles that directly violated many of the 'rules' of composition.

But something that really stuck with me was the fact that the presenter is a professional historic preservation photographer who takes photographs of old bridges for the Library of Congress. She said she uses a 4x5 (IIRC) black and white camera because the Library of Congress requires a 500 year archive life of photograph media. She said B&W negatives, if stored correctly, are suppose to have a 500 year life, but there is no means of storing a digital photo that will last 500 years.

She didn't go into details, and it's something I've heard touched on before, but I thought it was something interesting to think about. Sure, we back up files but we store them on machines that WILL not last 500 years. So unless we're constantly moving the files to newer storage facilities, in only 100 years, where will we find a historic photo taken in 2015?

I took an online photography course a couple months ago and it talked about exporting photos to .jpg simply because it's mainstream and you may wake up in 20 years and find out no editing programs support the proprietary RAW format your camera used when you took the photo.

I'm sure there will be conversion programs when that happens, but will you have time and the desire to buy software and dedicate a week to converting files? What if you'll just 'get to it later' until the external hard drive you store them on is obsolete too?

I'm sure they will invent new technology, but I just thought it was interesting that there is no media (not even print) that will allow you to store your photos for 100 years, or pass them on to the next generation, without a proactive approach to actively preserving them. There's no locking them in a trunk for 50 years for someone else to find, because that someone else won't have any equipment to read the files, assuming the media you used even lasted 50 years. (not likely)

 

[480sparky]

Yep. We are living in the Digital Dark Ages right now.

 

[ClickAddict]

The key point is "unless we're constantly moving files to newer storage facilities". in this day and age any important data has the appropriate level of backups and as the systems get upgraded, the data is passed along.

Is it possible your PC crashes and you lose everything? Yes, but if it was important enough you would have backups on another PC / Hard Drive. If it's business related photos, you should also have them offsite. Prior to Digital, you could lose your negatives just as easily as losing a PC. (House fire, lost box during move.....)
With only one copy, I would argue you were more likely to lose them than today. (Any of your good family photos you've shared with family and friends. Your PC dies, they may still have copies.)

As for business, any place like an official Gov Archive will not lose digital files short of a nuclear apocalyptic future with no PCs. (And do you think if such an event occurred, all those negatives would still be around?) (Yes there's the "incompetent people" factor that someone could delete them, but that same person could end up throwing a box of negatives to the curb along with garbage, so it's not a risk only seen in Digital Storage)

I still have photos on my PC that are from when my son was born. (1997) So that's nearly 20 years ago. I can pull it up in minutes if I had to. I don't honestly think I could find any negatives of photos taken back then.

 

[Ysarex]

You need to separate out practice from physical reality. This topic is constantly confused when someone takes a physical feature of film and then equates that to practice in using digital photos. They are different concerns.

Joe

 

[robbins.photo]

The key point is "unless we're constantly moving files to newer storage facilities". in this day and age any important data has the appropriate level of backups and as the systems get upgraded, the data is passed along.

It's also interesting to note that the film negatives are simply given the benefit of the doubt, whereas digital media isn't.

Well of course 500 years from now we'll still have working equipment on hand to create a print from a negative! But we'll never be able to read a floppy disk again, that would be completely impossible..

And for the record, I still have stuff from the golden oldy days of computing - I have programs that were written in basic for a an old Vic 20 - they were originally saved to a tape drive, later transferred to a floppy, from a floppy to a zip disk and eventually moved to the archives storage of my network. But even now, decades later, if I wanted to access the original code I could quite easily.. even though the tape drive on which they were originally stored hasn't been used in a very, very long time indeed.

 

[fmw]

Strangely, nobody knows whether any kind of photographic medium will last for 500 years because we don't have any 500 year old media. B&W negatives are certainly stable but digital files are even more so. The requirement would require scheduled backups and movement to current media but bits are bits and if you can read them, you can construct an image from them.

 

[robbins.photo]

Strangely, nobody knows whether any kind of photographic medium will last for 500 years because we don't have any 500 year old media. B&W negatives are certainly stable but digital files are even more so. The requirement would require scheduled backups and movement to current media but bits are bits and if you can read them, you can construct an image from them.

Well I guess if someone were uber paranoid they could print out the hex code of the file as well as info on the file format, laminate those pages and store them properly and even 500 years from now they could be rebuilt and then converted to whatever format is the rage at that juncture

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[480sparky]

Well I guess if someone were uber paranoid they could print out the hex code of the file as well as info on the file format, laminate those pages and store them properly and even 500 years from now they could be rebuilt and then converted to whatever format is the rage at that juncture

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I actually converted a .NEF file to text. I stopped it once the file reached 9,200 pages of mostly random letters, numbers and characters.

 

[robbins.photo]

I actually converted a .NEF file to text. I stopped it once the file reached 9,200 pages of mostly random letters, numbers and characters.

Oh ya, lot of dead trees involved in the process, but you'd be sure to be able to create the file again at some point that way.

 

[480sparky]

I actually converted a .NEF file to text. I stopped it once the file reached 9,200 pages of mostly random letters, numbers and characters.

Oh ya, lot of dead trees involved in the process, but you'd be sure to be able to create the file again at some point that way.

I sure wouldn't want to be the poor schmuck that had to key in over 9,200 pages of characters into some computer. Make one mistake, and the recreated file is corrupt.

 

[robbins.photo]

I sure wouldn't want to be the poor schmuck that had to key in over 9,200 pages of characters into some computer. Make one mistake, and the recreated file is corrupt.

Well, counting heavily on the fact that even 500 years in the future you'll still be able to hire a temp.. of course.. lol

 

[Jesse17]

You guys make some good points. I was particularly thinking about the idea of the great grand kids finding an old hard drive of grandpas photos in a trunk in the attic and not having any way to see them (assuming the hard drive still worked). But I guess if you found a 50 year old negatives in the attic now it's not like you would just pop them in your computer. You'd have to take them somewhere that did that kind of work. So I guess that's no different than having to take a HDD to someone that could still work with the then obsolete technology.

The lady giving the presentation did say she loved her digital camera and checks all the time to see if the National Library of Congress will except digital yet.

 

[Watchful]

I actually converted a .NEF file to text. I stopped it once the file reached 9,200 pages of mostly random letters, numbers and characters.

Oh ya, lot of dead trees involved in the process, but you'd be sure to be able to create the file again at some point that way.

I sure wouldn't want to be the poor schmuck that had to key in over 9,200 pages of characters into some computer. Make one mistake, and the recreated file is corrupt.

Why wouldn't a person just use OCR to read it back?

Anyways there is already digital media that will last more than 1000 years that is commercially available today for very low cost.

There is also 5D data storage that uses a digital matrix etched into glass that can store incredibly vast amounts of data for perhaps many millennium in a very small size.

I save my digital photo archives with the former method. I'll decide in a thousand years if I want to try the latter.

 

[gsgary]

Strangely, nobody knows whether any kind of photographic medium will last for 500 years because we don't have any 500 year old media. B&W negatives are certainly stable but digital files are even more so. The requirement would require scheduled backups and movement to current media but bits are bits and if you can read them, you can construct an image from them.

This is where digital becomes more expensive and harder work than film

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[fmw]

Strangely, nobody knows whether any kind of photographic medium will last for 500 years because we don't have any 500 year old media. B&W negatives are certainly stable but digital files are even more so. The requirement would require scheduled backups and movement to current media but bits are bits and if you can read them, you can construct an image from them.

This is where digital becomes more expensive and harder work than film

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I agree but the point is to make the most archival photo. I would say the Library of Congress probably has the most practical policy. If color is important then the digital file would be the choice. I have Ektachromes from the 1960's that are washed out.