Re: Digital camera blues - storage

Please excuse the fuzzy logic in this post. I'm trying to
evaluate the storage cost between 35mm film and a
somewhat equivalent digital file. Camera equipment
costs are not considered here because of the wide
range of options available. Camera memory cards will
be considered part of the digital camera system. The
prices are roughly the middle pricing on the internet stores
at this moment. Editing images out isn't considered
because this can wildly vary.

Here are the assumptions:
(1) shooting just under one roll of color 35mm 36ex
per week for one year.
(2) cost of color film with "processing only" @ $12.25
(3) cost of storage binder with 50 pages @ $23.00
(4) uncompressed Tiff @ 360dpi to make a 11x14
print (scanned or upsampled to 57MB)

One safekeeper storage binder with 50 print file
pages (7 rows of 5 images) will hold the year's
film. Let's say 50 rolls were shot and 35 frames
per page are saved. The number of images is 1,750.
Total cost for the binder full of film : $636US

The common denominator for comparing the digital
storage is the 11x14 print size. This is arguably the
limit of useful information from common 35mm color film.
Larger sizes, as far as information is concerned, is
simply "empty magnification". On the digital side,
you would achieve similar results in larger prints by
upsampling the 57MB file.

By multiplying the number of images in the film binder
by 57MB, the total storage size is roughly 100GB.
(You can look at each film page of 35 images as
the equivalent of 2GB of storage)

Currently, a 120GB internal hard drive costs $100US
Mitsui 4x DVD-R discs can store approx. 4.3GB's
and cost about $4US each. so roughly 25 disks
are needed since each disk will not be filled completely.
So the cost for equivalent DVD-R storage is $100US

I doubt if anyone would have an inter positive "backup"
of their film made so great care is taken how the film is
stored. Again, total cost for the binder: $636US

Let's say you have a backup set(s) of DVD's
or hard drives. That's $200 or $300 total.
If you want the convenience of Firewire or USB2 drives,
add another 75% to the cost. ( it takes less than five
minutes to swap internal hard drives in my G4 so I can't
justify the added expense)

Tape, Magneto Optical drives, CD-R's, and blue-laser
DVD's are a consideration for storage, however, they
are either too expensive, too slow, or too incompatible
for general use. I enjoy the quick access to all of my
images that DVD-R and inexpensive hard drives provide.

I know this is all arbitrary in so many ways, but I think
that even a ball park figure might be useful to some.

all the best,

Phillip
Received on Sun Nov 9 11:46:43 2003