Digital Questions That Need Some Answers
While we plunge ahead into the digital world, and continue to buy cameras,
printers, and scanners at record pace, there remain some issues that need resolution
before everyone can feel comfortable with the digital thing. We do get letters,
and your concerns are of paramount interest to us, that raise issues we have
often addressed. But the tone of many letters express doubts about the viability
of what we're being offered now in the years ahead. There is some history
that underlies these doubts, especially with the constant changes we've
seen over the past few years and how digital might have been oversold.
One of the chief concerns we hear in your letters is the stability of digital
media. Right now CDs are the main storage medium, soon to be replaced by DVDs.
But there remain questions about the long-term viability of CDs, in terms of
both the media itself and the possible abandonment of readers and reader repair
by manufacturers. Those who have more faith should look at the SyQuest format
and, in film, the discontinuance of the manufacture of slide projectors. True,
you can look at a slide without a projector, and that's what has everyone
worried about the virtual medium of digital on CDs.
What about hard drive storage? How long will files last there, especially if
we treat the hard drive as a passive storage device, protected from potential
viruses and kept offline? Are there archival concerns we should be more aware
of? And what of memory cards? Some are being marketed now as "shoot and
store" media, to be kept like film negatives with images upon them even
after downloading. Just how long will images sit there, and what type of storage
conditions should we use to protect them?
Prints are a very good way to save images, witness the old albums containing
family memories where negatives are long lost. But as of today there is no industry
standard for judging and identifying the archival keeping quality of digital
ink jet prints. Yes, there are independent and manufacturer tests and claims,
but in truth there is no universal standard that allows you to truly compare
one ink/paper combination to another. Many are pressing for this accepted standard
(testing method) but the issue raised last year has still yet to be resolved.
How about the printers themselves? Unless you run prints through at least once
a month you are in danger of getting clogged nozzles and might have to dump
inks, not a cheap item. Enlargers bought in the 1940s can still be used to make
prints today. Can we say with certainty that ink jet printers today will have
ink supplies available five, or even three, years down the road? And if we put
the printer away for an extended period of time, what maintenance will we have
to use to make sure it even will work without a major cleanout six months down
the road? Leave chemistry in a processor for a few weeks and you'll be
growing things in there you never imagined existed. It seems the same might
go for ink jets.
What about all those proprietary raw formats? Why isn't there a universal
raw that all could use, and will the raw of today be readable in tomorrow's
browsers and image-editing programs from both third party and manufacturer software
companies?
I could go on and on about reader's concerns about digital, but space
here limits this to a few of the consistent themes. And true, film had, and
has, some problems. Indeed, the color dye instability of many films was the
dirty little secret of the film industry way back that a few brave souls uncovered.
But digital has become such a powerful part of photography that many concerns
seem to get washed away by the force of the tide.
I welcome your comments and suggestions on all this, and would like to invite
manufacturers and researchers to contact us to address some of these and other
issues of concern. By now we all understand the benefits the digital form of
photography brings to us. Now we want to be able to move ahead to expand our
creative options with eyes wide-open.
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