Photography Vs Digital

[Silent Bob]

Much as I like digital photographs, and black and white film is definitely becoming more dificult to source,how many of you offices have a corner filled with dusty floppy disks that only ever worked on horrible old types of machine (e.g. Amstrad) which now live in museums. I'm not saying that CDs are as bad but only having site photos archived on them is clearly a recipe for disaster, as several people have said. A fingerprint, if left on a CD for long enough after having noshed your way through enough crisps, could easily corrupt parts of a disc.

[Oxbeast]

"If in doubt about the carrier, isn't it possible to preserve the code sequence in some other form?"

I've got a mate who's a photographer. He uses a laser process to colour print onto 3 metre sheets of aluminium. Says they're totally archive stable. Same thing is on the cover of 'the significance of monuments' by Richard Bradley.

[Gog]

Aluminium sheets for archiving - With the added benefit of increased archaeological work required to mitigate the sudden increase in ore extraction!

Everyone's a winner, apart from the poor sod who has to stack them.

[Anna Stocks]

Geodan said:
"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."


In response to Geodan's comments, I don't believe most curators (I presume you are talking about those setting the briefs etc, not the archivists) are being ostrich like. I have spent a significant time myself researching archiving digital photography, going on digital archiving training courses etc etc, and I have heard/taken part in various discussions with other curators regarding this issue. I have also spent several hours on the phone to all of the local (and further afield) archives trying to discover one which has an appropriate strategy for dealing with data generated from digital photography. I didn’t find a single one, although they are all actively trying to resolve this.

I think you will find that it is not that most curators are unaware of the issues, it's more that they are very aware of the complexity of digital archiving, and that a lot of the issues have yet to be resolved.

Until some of the fundamental questions have been answered - the main one being will the record of this work that is being approved survive in the long term - we would not wish to take a risk by relying on storage mediums which have been proven to be unstable.

[Cautionary Tale]

Are we really going to be able to answer these questions in meaningful timescales though? If Moores Law is to be believed, the processing power of our technology will have sky-rocketed in 20 years making any solution put in place now hopelessly inadequate in the very short term; the real question therefore becomes can we keep pace with transferring achieves regularly (perhaps every five years?) to avoid obsolescence in storage medium – bang head here

[xx(]

I maiali sono alimentati e aspettano per volare

[geodan]

Curators may not currently wish to take the risk, but to repeat what I said - the choice will not exist in the very near future.

I would hope that that most curators would be pretty well informed about current issues and concerns about archive of digital images. However, the day draws nearer when the current required media will simply be unavailable.

Happiness depends on ourselves.

[drpeterwardle]

A few points:

1. B&W film is readily available and so is the processing. I buy it from and have it processed at a shop in my village.
2. Colour film has now been around for about 100 years.
3. The reason for preferring B&W for archiving is that it is proven to last a long time.
4. Many record offices will accept digital photographs.
5. Raw digital formats may change but some of the formats have now been around for 20 years. I have digital images this old.
6. These days the images will be required in a digital form in order to manipulate them and to include them in reports so the alternatives are digital photographs or have the film scanned when it is being processed this costs £1 per film.
7. There is no point in deleting a photo to create space on a card - a 2 gig costs £20 and an 8 gig card £69 which hold hundreds of photos.
8. A format must be used where the image does not degrade when saved.
9. There are issues in using digital photographs in court - but I would suggest this is not really relevant to virtually all archaeologists.
9. EH produced the standard for building recording earlier this year which restricts the use of digital photography. This is the standard for the time being.
10. There is a need for checking the archive periodically but this is quick and easy. I have just checked all the 212846 photographs on my computer in under an hour.
11. For site work the lens cannot be changed on site because the cameras are prone to getting dust on the sensor and thus have to be returned to the manufacturer for repair at £50 at a time if this happens.

I would suggest that digital photography has its advantages and disadvantages for building recording and it does not replace film photography. It does create massive data management problems and requires very fast computers with huge amounts of drive space. The introduction of PCs, which can have up to 32 gig of memory and hold on hard drives and process tetra bytes of data, last year (ie when the Dell precision came out)means that these problems can be overcome to a degree.

Here is not the place to discuss or list just what procedures are necessary.

As far as standards go what I find amazing is that is acceptable to use 4 mega pixel cameras - my phone has a camera of this size quality and/or compact cameras not SLRs.

I would therefore suggest given the problems with digital photography for the moment its application as a general routine thing is a few years off yet. I also think that while there are working film cameras and film available then these will have to be used. My own film cameras are 20 years old and I am sure they will last another 20 years.

There is also the issue of cost the one thing about digital photography is that it is not cheap and the cost continues because of the active data management.

The above is based on using digital photography to record buildings over the last 5 years.

Peter Wardle

[drpeterwardle]

A few points:

1. B&W film is readily available and so is the processing. I buy it from and have it processed at a shop in my village.
2. Colour film has now been around for about 100 years.
3. The reason for preferring B&W for archiving is that it is proven to last a long time.
4. Many record offices will accept digital photographs.
5. Raw digital formats may change but some of the formats have now been around for 20 years. I have digital images this old.
6. These days the images will be required in a digital form in order to manipulate them and to include them in reports so the alternatives are digital photographs or have the film scanned when it is being processed this costs £1 per film.
7. There is no point in deleting a photo to create space on a card - a 2 gig costs £20 and an 8 gig card £69 which hold hundreds of photos.
8. A format must be used where the image does not degrade when saved.
9. There are issues in using digital photographs in court - but I would suggest this is not really relevant to virtually all archaeologists.
9. EH produced the standard for building recording earlier this year which restricts the use of digital photography. This is the standard for the time being.
10. There is a need for checking the archive periodically but this is quick and easy. I have just checked all the 212846 photographs on my computer in under an hour.
11. For site work the lens cannot be changed on site because the cameras are prone to getting dust on the sensor and thus have to be returned to the manufacturer for repair at £50 at a time if this happens.

I would suggest that digital photography has its advantages and disadvantages for building recording and it does not replace film photography. It does create massive data management problems and requires very fast computers with huge amounts of drive space. The introduction of PCs, which can have up to 32 gig of memory and hold on hard drives and process tetra bytes of data, last year (ie when the Dell precision came out)means that these problems can be overcome to a degree.

Here is not the place to discuss or list just what procedures are necessary.

As far as standards go what I find amazing is that is acceptable to use 4 mega pixel cameras - my phone has a camera of this size quality and/or compact cameras not SLRs.

I would therefore suggest given the problems with digital photography for the moment its application as a general routine thing is a few years off yet. I also think that while there are working film cameras and film available then these will have to be used. My own film cameras are 20 years old and I am sure they will last another 20 years.

There is also the issue of cost the one thing about digital photography is that it is not cheap and the cost continues because of the active data management.

The above is based on using digital photography to record buildings over the last 5 years.

Peter Wardle

[historic building]

Personally I think a mix of formats is best ideally digital and silver-based B+W depending upon the requirements of the SMR/Archive. Throughout most of the country it will be necessary for there to be a massive investment in server space for digital archives to be rolled out in areas where currently there is no archaeological archive provision.

[the invisible man]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6265976.stm

Interesting.

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