1st July 2007, 02:12 PM
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
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