[Leica] Photography and its digital future

[John Collier <jbcollier@home.com>]

The big problem with an all digital system is the lack of a safe long term
storage standard. I just cleaned out my wife's grandmother's house and found
quite a number of old pictures in various states of deterioration but all
the black and white negatives and Kodachrome slides were just fine. I can
easily scan them and produce new prints. I also expect that in fifty years,
as I slowly return from whence I came, my children's children will still be
able to do the same. I cannot speak with the same hope about past or present
electronic media. The technology to read older formats has been past by and
the machines to do the work are failing and being scrapped. Most people on
this list are like me in that we will not go to the extraordinary efforts
necessary to keep our digital storage safe, stable or current. The
intermediate step of producing an analogue negative or positive will ensure
that our pictures will be easily accessible to future generations.

John Collier

> From: "Dan Honemann" <danh@selectsa.com>
> 
> There is one other hope--a compromise, to be sure: that the film scanners
> will keep pace with the digital CCD's.  It's a silly middle step to have to
> make, however.