Re: Archival Quality: was benefit of digital camera

Bill,

> It has always been interesting to me how photographers frame the
> question of archival quality.
>
> When a CD or DVD approaches the end of its useful life and it becomes
> necessary to move the original digital informaton to some new media,
> the information itself does not change. Its integrity can remain
> completely unaltered. It is simply moved to other media. The container
> changes, but not the information.
>
> You cannot do the same thing with original information stored in
> either film or print media. You can copy it, but you cannot literally
> move the original information to another container.
>
Perhaps this is true, but the lifespan of CD-R and DVD-R is not what
folks would normally describe as "archival" e.g. they might only last a
couple of years or perhaps a decade. Now the disc *might* last longer,
but on the other hand it might get totally trashed after a short time
in which case *no* useful information can be recovered.

Film and prints degrade more gently. Archivally processed prints are
expected to have a lifespan > 100 years. AFAIK there is no digital
storage medium which approaches this (save microfilm which is err...
silver based :-)

Jonathan
Received on Tue Apr 13 19:06:44 2004