Photography Vs Digital

[Shorty]

I think Anna is right. The other problem with digital photography is the ease with which images that are deemed 'wrong' or not relevant are simply deleted to make space on the memory card. From a historical perspective, those pictures often reveal other aspects of society that the photographer hadn't originally intended to capture. When we delete them, we may delete something that later proves to be valuable because the photo will be analysed in a different context. I'm not talking about the blurred, "I dropped the camera in a puddle" pics, of course...

[BAJR Host]

Anna is right here...
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/goodguides/excavation/
Digital Archives from Excavation and Fieldwork: Guide to Good Practice
Second Edition


and

An Introduction to Making Digital Image Archives
TASI's introductory information aims to provide an accessible and general introduction to the variety of tasks involved in a digitisation project and outlines some of the skills required to undertake them.

http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/overview.html

Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/tuto...index.html

Something to think about... but something to be embraced... have both I say ... a digital shot (hundreds of them , rich with metadata) and a lesser number of well composed, well taken slides/negatives. It also ensures you have taken a bit of time to think about what you are photographing, rather than jsut going all snapp happy...




"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[geodan]

I don't doubt that suitable B&W film is still readily available but this will shortly change.

The major camera manufacturers are phasing out production of film cameras and in 2 or 3 years they will be gone. No film cameras - no film. Unless we are expected to bid against each other on Ebay to procure antiquated equipment and film stock.

An ostrich like curatorial approach to a pressing issue can only result in confusion and dissent.

Stability of digital archives, migratability, suitable format, funding for storage media etc. - yes complex issues - but ignoring the inevitable won't make it go away and it's going to come around and bite us - maybe sooner than we think.

Happiness depends on ourselves.

[C41]

The problem of film against digital medium is not just a straightforward choice between the two mediums but rather how you treat them. Conventional film has a proven track record, images shot by Roger Fenton for the British Museum in the 1850’s can still be printed yet B&W film shot shot ten years ago and machine processed may be unuseable. The problem is most machine processing is designed for a rapid turnover, using high temperatures and shorter washing times but leaving traces of the processing chemicals in the film which eventually have a detrimental effect on the film. The soloution is hand processing to archival standards trouble is this will increase costs. The next major problem is storage if films are not stored in inert material and suitable conditions the film will deteriorate, this can even mean the cupboard the films are dumped in, wood can give off vapours which will affect film. Tempreature and humidity also need to be controlled to ensure archival permanence.

The B&W conventional Silver Halide film is the most stable photographic medium if treated properly this includes films such as Ilford delta 100, delta 400, FP4, HP5 , Fuji Neopan 100 asa and Kodaks Plus-X 100 asa, Tri-X 400asa still available from Jessops although for how much longer is not certain. As Historic Building mentioned there is another other type of B&W – this is a chromogenic film eg Ilford XP2 in reality a colour film with the colour layers removed that is machine processed using the same C41 chemicals as most colour negative films, as this has to be machine processed it again is not as suitable for archival use as conventional film.

As for slides most slides are processed using the E6 chemistry which is reasonably stable if processed properly and stored correctly but it is not archivally permanent it does deteriorate. Films such as Kodachrome that do not have colour couplers in the film are more suitable for archives but cost more. The main factor that affects slide film is the storage conditions if the slides start to deteriorate they can always be duped with only a slight loss in image quality if done professionally.

With the digital medium the problem is the file type many digital cameras produce JPEG images, a format that uses lossy compression meaning that some detail is sacrificed each time the image is saved to allow the compression of the file, the higher the compression the worse it gets – for archival purposes the files should be converted to a non lossy file type such as Tiffs, although the file sizes are larger and may create storage problems in that sense at least you don’t loose details, you do however need to back up several times to make sure you don’t loose any images as the result of a hard drive failure.

I doubt if this makes the choice any clearer, I’d suggest perhaps the easiest option is to shoot a B&W film for archival purposes and get it hand processed to archival standards – and shoot a digital image for the colour record and store in a TIFF format suitably backed up.

[kevin wooldridge]

I can't really understand one strand of this discussion which suggests that digital photographs are less stable than 'conventional' silver halide or colour-dye photographs. I mean that's just rubbish.

Digital photographs (as the name suggests) are created from a code sequence that once established is permanently stable. What is unstable (and untested) is the method of storage and display of photographs created from digital data. If in doubt about the carrier, isn't it possible to preserve the code sequence in some other form?

In the same way that archaeological archives have to protect their collections from insects, fungii, chemical and biological deterioration, what makes it so much more difficult (or expensive) to protect from technological obsolesence?

[the invisible man]

Watercolours???

Seriously, there could be legal issues if anything has to go to court for any reason. Unless things have changed in the last couple of years, as I understand it digital photos are not acceptable in a court of law, for obvious reaons.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

[Cautionary Tale]

quote:Originally posted by the invisible man

.. there could be legal issues if anything has to go to court for any reason..

As I understand it, in order to submit digital photograph in court you have to provide a auditable paper trial with it (i.e. when it was taken, who by, the fact that the camera was checked). Interestingly, deletion of images poses a problem in this context (which may cause problems for the snap happy amoungst us) because it leads to 'gaps' in the digital record. As archaeological photographs should have the majority of the required information recorded for them in any case we should be ok.

I maiali sono alimentati e aspettano per volare

[Oxbeast]

How archivally stable are digital prints? I've seen some that looked as good as chemical prints, done on a proper printer on proper paper. Maybe they haven't been around long enough to work out how colour fast they are.

[Sith]

quote:Originally posted by kevin wooldridge

I can't really understand one strand of this discussion which suggests that digital photographs are less stable than 'conventional' silver halide or colour-dye photographs. I mean that's just rubbish.

Digital photographs (as the name suggests) are created from a code sequence that once established is permanently stable. What is unstable (and untested) is the method of storage and display of photographs created from digital data. If in doubt about the carrier, isn't it possible to preserve the code sequence in some other form?

You mean by hard-copy printing the digital text? That's the only alternative I can think of. Have you got somewhere we could put it all?

As an example, Here at VMP we have the IT assets of a medium sized planet operated by teams of skilled IT drones. Yet all my digital archive reports from most of the last five years (including phgotographs etc.) have been put beyond use due to the failure of our regularly updated archive server.

Sadly no system is fallible. My lack of faith in digital archiving disapoints even myself.

D. Vader
Senior Consultant

Vader Maull & Palpatine
Archaeological Consultants

Your powers are weak, Curator

[Gog]

quote:Originally posted by Sith


You mean by hard-copy printing the digital text? That's the only alternative I can think of. Have you got somewhere we could put it all?

Yes - the O2 dome.