28th February 2014, 01:06 PM
sorry prentice but I am not who ever you think I am.
I don't like this draft policy because I don't think that it is demand driven. I think archaeology got into a habit of producing lots of images that have no proven use and if anybody ever looks at them again they will have to be heavily subsidised. As it is the last centuries images will cost a fortune which we don't have to keep them for the next hundred years. All that can happen to those images is that the images will be transformed to digital and the arguments will be about who pays for these old pictures and what resolution scan will be employed.
[SIZE=2][SIZE=2] The thing is that unlike Fuji biting the bullet and announcing that as there was no demand for its film, and that it could see no way that it could provide film at an affordable polluter pays price for archaeologists, it was going to have to stop production whereas Wessex appears to have to live by a mantra to justify taking pictures. Which they get out of the way in their first line:
[/SIZE]
Wessex Archaeology (WA) acknowledges the need for a high standard of photographic imaging for all types of projects undertaken.
[SIZE=2]
Who are they acknowledginging to? (and what photographic process are they referring to)
[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[/SIZE] What it seems to me that digital storage and processing was always offering is more autonomy to the digger and their archive. I would say over the last ten years there has been a compulsion to maintain the viability of museums by insisting that archaeological archives were created to their standards with part of the tenant being that bw slide film was the most "stable" but we diggers ignored the viability bit. So we have all gone around looking for bw slide film and at the same time using it less and less for ordinary pictures of incidental features. Whats been happening is that we have been using all sorts of digital formats and resolutions and whats going to happen is that like evolution there will be a survival of the fittest and what ever this fittest is will inhabit a niche. Unfortunately the niche used to be a museum and if Fuji made museums they would have stopped making them years ago. I don't know what it will be I don't think that it will be ADS and I don't understand the cloud.
I don't like this draft policy because I don't think that it is demand driven. I think archaeology got into a habit of producing lots of images that have no proven use and if anybody ever looks at them again they will have to be heavily subsidised. As it is the last centuries images will cost a fortune which we don't have to keep them for the next hundred years. All that can happen to those images is that the images will be transformed to digital and the arguments will be about who pays for these old pictures and what resolution scan will be employed.
[SIZE=2][SIZE=2] The thing is that unlike Fuji biting the bullet and announcing that as there was no demand for its film, and that it could see no way that it could provide film at an affordable polluter pays price for archaeologists, it was going to have to stop production whereas Wessex appears to have to live by a mantra to justify taking pictures. Which they get out of the way in their first line:
[/SIZE]
Wessex Archaeology (WA) acknowledges the need for a high standard of photographic imaging for all types of projects undertaken.
[SIZE=2]
Who are they acknowledginging to? (and what photographic process are they referring to)
Quote: [SIZE=3]WA policy will be to rely on digital imaging to provide the sole photographic archive for any Terrestrial Fieldwork or Built Heritage project in England and Wales. This policy is in line with standards produced by English Heritage, the Institute for Archaeologists, the Archaeological Archives Forum and the London Archaeological Archive Research Centre.They make it sound like all these institutions have stopped using film?
[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[/SIZE] What it seems to me that digital storage and processing was always offering is more autonomy to the digger and their archive. I would say over the last ten years there has been a compulsion to maintain the viability of museums by insisting that archaeological archives were created to their standards with part of the tenant being that bw slide film was the most "stable" but we diggers ignored the viability bit. So we have all gone around looking for bw slide film and at the same time using it less and less for ordinary pictures of incidental features. Whats been happening is that we have been using all sorts of digital formats and resolutions and whats going to happen is that like evolution there will be a survival of the fittest and what ever this fittest is will inhabit a niche. Unfortunately the niche used to be a museum and if Fuji made museums they would have stopped making them years ago. I don't know what it will be I don't think that it will be ADS and I don't understand the cloud.