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Ed Richards
16-Sep-2005, 07:18
This is another spin off from some work my wife is doing on a disaster survival guide. For film photographers, negatives are critical. It is pretty easy to protect them from flooding in Pelican cases or ammo boxes - stored in climate controlled spaces. Fire is a lot harder - as someone pointed out, fire safes are intended for paper, and media safes are dramatically bigger and more expensive.

Does this argue for even anti-digital folks to scan their negatives and put away copies in an off site location? While a good scan from a consumer scanner like a 9950 is not nearly as good a drum scan, it would be a lot better than an handful of ashes. This was not an option until recently, so it is not part of the usual workflow. While there is a lot of complaining about the changes in media formats, I have been managing digital data for 25 years now and it is not a big deal. You just have to shift to the new formats about every 5 years. This might mean no more than a day spent reburning disks. It is worth doing anyway to avoid deterioration of the media. You might not want to scan it all because of time, and you might want drum scans of the money shots.

Oren Grad
16-Sep-2005, 07:55
It depends why you're making the negatives in the first place. If an important part of the intention is documentary, and either achieving a particular print character is secondary or you're already committed to scanning and inkjet printing because you like it, that seems like a very good idea.

But I don't see much point in scanning my own big negatives. Most of them are of generic rocks 'n' trees stuff and have no particular documentary value. And for now, at least, I'm primarily interested in contact prints for their own sake, and there's nothing you can do with data from a scan that will replicate the look and feel that I want in my prints.

Brian C. Miller
16-Sep-2005, 08:08
You could contact print your negatives to make a duplicate negative. There's info on the Ilford site about the process, but its a bit involved.

Oren Grad
16-Sep-2005, 08:13
You could, but it would be huge hassle and you'd still pay a price in loss of quality. If I didn't mind that, I could get by with a scan, which would be much easier.

John_4185
16-Sep-2005, 08:27
For all the trouble and expense of having your own fireproof, theft-fire-flood-wind proof archive in your home or studio, you can rent a safety deposit box.

Digital scans just open up another pandora's box of liabilities. You know that digital maniacs are beginning to discuss film copies of their precious bits, right?

Sheesh. Why not take it a step further and discuss nuclear bomb-shelters?

Eric Rose
16-Sep-2005, 08:53
Anything that I feel might turn out to be "important" I take two photos of. One neg is stored at the darkroom, the other offsite.

Ed Richards
16-Sep-2005, 10:51
> you can rent a safety deposit box.

In the basement of a bank no doubt.:-)

> You know that digital maniacs are beginning to discuss film copies of their precious bits, right?

That is really about the same - I have the film copy, now I want a digital.

What I am thinking about is being able to have access to one's negatives to be able to work with them, while have some useful backup in case of disaster. Using them is the first priority, otherwise why bother?

As for Eric's commment - I am not good enough yet to know what is important, I just keep shooting.

paulr
16-Sep-2005, 13:26
Face it, this is all just about immortality. My personal cryogenics lab said they'll be willing to throw my negatives into the pod with my corpse for just a few more $million a millenium. Is that too much? What other gift can you give yourself that's guaranteed to last forever (or your money back ... )

jantman
16-Sep-2005, 15:12
There is a reason why I shoot 8x10 when I do, and why I contact print.

If I scanned the negs, that would be pointless. The reason why I bother with 8x10 in the first place is that for many things, I want, I need, the look of 8x10. If scanning would achieve the same result, I'd do that in the first place.

While it would be horribly depressing to lose negatives, I hope I will be able to continue to make good images.

You could store them in a safe deposit box, or a giant media safe. I had a whole stack of negs sitting on a shelf waiting to be printed when a pipe burst in my basement. Water all over the darkroom floor. And, due to travelling across the beams, all over my pile of negs. Some were able to be washed and are fine, some were lost. Oh well. I'll just have to pick up the camera, go out, and make new ones.

Mark_3632
16-Sep-2005, 15:38
Honestly, If I were in a disaster situation the last things I would worry about would be my negs. Family, animals, and nourishment are all I would be worried about. The rest is just a material object and in the grand scheme of things utterly meaningless.

Those few negs I like the most have a backup (a second exposed and developed neg) a couple hundred miles from where I live, so I guess those would not be lost.

John_4185
16-Sep-2005, 16:03
Ed: That is really about the same - I have the film copy, now I want a digital.

That's a topic in which my eyes glaze over and I move on to important things. Maybe you should, too. No offense, but digital is a black hole that sucks in time and arguments leaving a bigger black hole that sucks even more.

paulr
17-Sep-2005, 14:08
For what it's worth, I just made two negative-sized prints using piezography inks, made from scans of the negatives. I'm doing this for a book project. The negatives had previously been contact printed on silver paper. The digital prints, in this case, look better to me. One of them is an image that's in my print portfolio; the silver print is going to come out and the ink print is going in its place.

Two years ago I wouldn't have entertained the idea that this was possible.

At any rate, while I'd hate to lose my negs, I would absolutely consider an excellent scan to be a viable backup. Digital media has its own archival issues, but anything that would allow your work to be stored in more than one place could offer a lot of peace of mind. I'd suggest against calling a scan useless until you've seen what's possible (and keep in mind that what's possible down the road will be even better).

John_4185
17-Sep-2005, 19:04
paulr anything that would allow your work to be stored in more than one place could offer a lot of peace of mind.

There remain the issues concerning the integrity (in many forms) of a digital rendition. The original negative is authoritative.

BTW - I theorize that there is a mediating influence of the 'net' that guarantees that the most mediocre-to-poor photographs will live forever through copying, and the rest will evaporate into cyber-limbo.

Oren Grad
17-Sep-2005, 19:32
The original negative is authoritative.

With respect to the photons collected in the original exposure, but not with respect to what the print, in whatever print medium, is supposed to look like. The latter is never uniquely determined by the negative alone.

I'd suggest against calling a scan useless until you've seen what's possible (and keep in mind that what's possible down the road will be even better).

Paulr, my comment wasn't intended to reopen the analog-vs-digital war. Whatever happens to digital print media in the future, they're still going to look different from a contact print on silver paper from an original analog negative. Whether people will decide that they really like prints in digital media better once they get to know them is a separate question. My point was just that there are some ways of making a print whose essential attributes cannot be replicated from a scan. If those specific attributes are what matters to you, a scan is of no use, and thus scanning, although extremely valuable for many purposes, is not universally effective as a backup strategy.

John_4185
17-Sep-2005, 20:36
Oren: With respect to the photons collected in the original exposure, but not with respect to what the print, in whatever print medium, is supposed to look like. The latter is never uniquely determined by the negative alone.

True, very true, and to a great extent, IMHO, that is a virtue of hand-made prints; it is difficult to repeat the results on any print that is dodged, burned, and so-forth. A human printer is not a machine. One gets variations. Perhaps I am the only one who likes or appreciates the differences, largely because it shows the hand, intentions and variations, intentional or not. By comparing the final prints with the original negative one can recapitulate the printer/photographers interpretations. Finally, it's darned difficult if not impossible to fake a negative. The forensics are wel known.

I suppose someone will mention that some or all of a deceased photographic saint's work is made from copy negatives. To that I say, okay - not interested. But that's a personal take.