Saturday, January 29, 2005
Fry's Electronics has 100 packs of Fujifilm DVD-R's for fifty bucks. I don't usually bargain hunt, but this really makes the idea of keeping multiple copies of digital photographs economically feasable.
I often hear that digital storage medium is inferior to storing silver halide negatives. The image on a negative is right there - you can just look at it, while digital files, even versitile Raw files, must be translated from some more abstract medium before the image can be seen. Thus digital photos rely on a particular technology such as DVD-R to remain usable. Inevitably the example of the 51/4 floppy disk is produced and everybody (who can remember them) agrees that technologies have a short life.
This doesn't, however, concede the future to film images, with digital images being useful for only, say a decade of use after their taking. The same market forces that are made floppies obsolete are making DVD's obsolete as well, it is true, but they are also making film, and for the sake of you existing photos, printing paper and chemicals, as well as optics optomized for enlarging.
Scanning film yeilds no more resolution than the high end digital cameras. Scans also loose brightness range and do not produce Raw files, which may be manipulated, at least in the highlights and midtones, to a much larger degree than can the TIFFs, JPEGs and PSDs produced by scanners. Not to mention, good scanners cost as much as a really good high resolution digital camera, and maybe a lens or two.
The key, at least for the moment, is to re-record onto new media whenever the market changes. I am re-recording some of my images in NEF, DNG, 16 bit TIFF and minimum compression (quality 12), 8 bit JPEG, and a medium compression (quality 10), low rez (900X598 or 480X722 depending on orientation, for on-screen viewing) JPEG formats.
Cheap DVD media will help this, although I will need to batch them to run while I do something else, as it takes about an hour or so to convert, fill and burn a DVD. But that should keep me good for another decade, wouldn't you think?
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005
As promised, the long running photoblog, My Blue House is back after a brief hiatus last year.
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Monday, January 24, 2005
Msnbc reports on Cliff Arnall's assertion that today, the twenty fourth day of January, is the most depressing day of the year. He supports his hypothesis withe a formula: I don't know about the rest of the equation, but my denominator is huge. I should get motivated to clean the house and pay the bills. Or I could just take more pictures:
Sarah from Ghost Cow. D100 with 180mm f/2.8 @ f/3.2, 1/60 sec. flash bounced off a 9' white ceiling.[from Jarrett House North via Scripting News]
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Sunday, January 23, 2005
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Hey! - was it wet last week or what?
D100 with 12-24mm f/4 lens @ 12mm & f/4, iso 800 (composite of three images)
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Saturday, January 15, 2005
Winter's over. Now it's back to the office, but there's so much to do! Even though it's Saturday, I'm off to work. Hi ho!
D100 with 35mm f/2 lens @ f/2.8
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Thursday, January 13, 2005
Reed Hoffmann writes about his experience shooting digital at high ISO for reality TV stills. Sounds fun.
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Wednesday, January 12, 2005
A garden path undisturbed by the border of the garden:
D100 with 12-24DX lens, f/4, iso500(By the way, I have not been able to post for the last week, I must've messed up Radio's database, but I think it's ok now.)
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Monday, January 3, 2005
