George Eastman Spinning In His Grave

[neil poulsen]

Shakespeare predicted the death of film even more eloquently then I can.

"This thought is as a death which cannot choose,
But weeps to have that which it fears to lose"

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

I dunno what this means. Can you splain it?

[skeporg]

I dunno what this means. Can you splain it?

Film [anthropomorphically] is going to die.
It knows this.
It cries in its beer...
For a life that was,
And is;
But won't be.

[Gordon Moat]

So oil paints must be really, really, really dead. Perhaps you can explain why I can still buy them?

[Mark Woods]

Although Kodak is getting out of the film business, Motion Picture Imaging has the highest profit ratio in the company and supports the company's forays into other areas that often fail. Eventually Kodak will spin it off, or it will be the only venture that is making money.

[Gordon Moat]

Kodak's commercial printing and graphics arts business does generate a profit. The only reason their 10-Q statements showed a loss was due to acquisition expenses, because they bought Creo and several other companies already in that business. Also, Kodak has never made any formal announcement about getting out of the film business, but if you have something more substantial, I would bet the SEC and Fujifilm would enjoy reading it.

I respect your opinions, and your accomplishments, but you should be careful when making statements about future product availability. Conjecture in the current environment can only hurt those of us who would like to see certain products continue, at least in the short term. Personally I would be quite fine using only Fujifilm choices in 4x5, but I would greatly prefer having Kodak choices still available.

Disclosure: I do know very high up people at Eastman Kodak, but I am not at liberty to reveal those names. I do not currently own any EK stock.

Ciao!

[Mark Woods]

I should've said, "Kodak appears to be getting out of the film business." I also know some very "high up" people. And the only Kodak stock I own is film.

[rguinter]

Costs of archival be what they may... but what about hard drive crashes? Since 1988 when I bought my first PC I have averaged a minimum of one hard-drive crash per year... losing data every time no matter how careful I am about backups. Last year I lost 1-hard drive, 1-flash drive, and 1-backup external drive all in the same week. Are all of you archiving your precious digital photos with a medium that is going to last? I doubt it. I've also heard that average DVDs and CDs are rated for about a 10-year life expectancy. Now I've got Kodachrome and Fujichrome slides 1 - 4 decades old and they look as good today as the day they were processed. So even now I do all my snapshots with digital... but for my artistic work I'll be sticking with film. At least as long as I can get the film processed since I don't have space or time for a darkroom. Just some thoughts. Bob G.

[aphexafx]

Bob, I suggest you revaluate your choice in hard drives! I have seen one drive crash in my life, and I work with lots of computers every day (I am a programmer). And the crash was not a problem because it was part of a mirrored set. And even still, it was backed up daily to another desktop drive.

A simple backup system is cheap and priceless.

Archival DVD's are rated for much more than 10 years. But that doesn't matter because the beauty of data is that it is not static and can (will) be moved to your newer systems as you upgrade.

For hard archives (where no online version exists in your scheme) you should always move them to newer media as it becomes available.

The next step will be Blu-Ray discs, and when that technology is cheap enough it will be easy to move over to it and reset the archival clock, as it were.

Film will degrade, no matter what you do, but data, being digital, can be preserved to the last bit. That's the beauty of it. But like anything else, it must be maintained. And higher grade hardware will save you much trouble.

(I just remembered that I had another drive quite working some time ago, but still...)

[Merg Ross]

"Film will degrade, no matter what you do, but data, being digital can be preserved to the last bit."

Not so fast!

I was today printing from some of my early negatives, made in the 1950's. There was no degradation that I could discern. The only replacement necessary to the process in the intervening fifty-plus years, was a light bulb. Not a penny spent for upgrades.

Will you be able to replicate your digital output in fifty years for such a modest cost?

[Marko]

"Film will degrade, no matter what you do, but data, being digital can be preserved to the last bit."

Not so fast!

I was today printing from some of my early negatives, made in the 1950's. There was no degradation that I could discern. The only replacement necessary to the process in the intervening fifty-plus years, was a light bulb. Not a penny spent for upgrades.

Will you be able to replicate your digital output in fifty years for such a modest cost?

Merg, your negatives must be b&w, because I tried to scan some of my early color negatives from the '70s and lots of them were so faded that it simply wasn't worth the effort.

My digital images are all in color and should remain identical bit-for-bit for as long as I keep rotating them from the old to the new media and file formats. All three archival copies of them. Should one or even two copies get flooded, burned or physically destroyed in any other manner, there will still be another copy left from which the destroyed ones can be entirely replicated.

The beauty of it is that I can store one copy in the US, the other one in Brazil and the third one in, say China. Or any other place on Earth. I can both store and restore from those places without leaving my chair. All it takes is a little forethought and a periodical effort to maintain the copies.

In a word, it is a different medium with different methods and different set of strengths (and weaknesses).