The “Shutterbug” editor, and apparently a number of readers, don’t understand the nature of digital. (originally posted 2/13/05.)
I’m in a unique position vis-a-vis digital photography, as I’ve been a photographer (with darkroom experience) for 46+ years, and have some nearly 30 years of detailed computer experience (I was a programmer) as well. I jumped on the digital photography bandwagon with the very first digital camera, and have long since abandoned film.
It is from this perspective that I’m making the following comments, and taking to task George Schaub, editiorial director of “Shutterbug” magazine.
George has been on a rant for the past two issues, complaining about the unknown longevity of digital media. “What ever will happen to our precious photos with this media?” he wonders. He seeks “… a viable medium the will not be lost to us later in our own lives, and to generations ahead.”
“…one of the main detriments folks see to digital is just that – that we have yet to be convinced that it’s a reliable keeper of memories. Digital memories, stored as bits and bytes are not, like a well-stored print or properly processed piece of film, hard -wired; they are virtual and sit on a medium that more often than not seems transitory.”
To his credit, George goes on to point out that, in fact, film and prints are -known- to fade over time, and to shift colors. “It took years for the photographic industry to first own up to, and then do something about creating more stable color images.”
“Perhaps it will take just as much time for the digital industry to own up to and do something about the reliability of the bits and bytes on which many of the memories we create today reside.”
This strikes me as not only silly, but a bit misinformed.
Current film and print technology (non-digital) is not permanent; in fact, it begins to change color and chemistry the instant it is removed from the bath… although it may take 20 years for the effect to be noticed by the human eye.
Yet he takes to task the digital industry because he “feels” insecure and things “seem” unreliable. He calls “bits and bytes” (they are the same thing: a byte is just 8 bits) “virtual” while lauding a print as “hard-wired.”
Well, I’m not sure what that means, if anything at all. Prints and film are molecules and grains of silver – molecues and grains are not photos. They change constantly and deteriorate. What is any more “virtual” about a bit? Once burned to a CD, that area of difference is just as “real” as a burned grain on a photo.
I suspect that it’s just ignorance at work here. It’s fear of the new. Photographers are not generally computer gurus and what they don’t understand, they fear. They may think it’s “virtual” because they can’t see it, but I assure you it’s as real as any negative.
And in terms of longevity, the irony of his recent editorial is underscored by an advertisement in the back of the same magazine for a CD with an expected life of 300 years! That’s 15 generations; twice as long as the current history of photography as a medium!
Let’s look at longevity of digital media. Unlike analog media (film) digital is simple: it’s either on or off. No gray areas: the bit is either there, or it isn’t. The CD is either burned or it’s not. This simplicity leads to reliability, as opposed to the infinite shades of gray in the analog world.
It further leads to 100% -perfect- duplication. Once you shoot on film, you cannot duplicate that negative or slide with 100% fidelity… but a digital photo you can, a thousand times over… and each one IS the original! Worried about storage? Why, with the ability to make an infinite number of perfect originals? Further, after storing that original for 20 years, if you’re worried about the medium itself beginning to deteriorate, just make a 100% perfect copy on a new CD, and you’re good to go for another 20 (or 300) years.
Try that with film.
The recording media industry doesn’t need to “own up” to anything. The details of what is known and what is not known are discussed ad-infinitum within the computer world. Maybe not the photo world, but the discussion is there, to be read by anyone who is interested.
The National Bureau of Standards has run longevity tests on CDs and is running them on DVDs now. That data is public knowledge: your tax-dollars at work.
Manufacturers are working diligently to make ever more durable and long-lasting media, just as they did with the quality of film and paper, evolving over the years.
There is no “dirty little secret” in the closet; nothing “the industry needs to acknowledge” nor anything it is hiding.
Media as it is now, properly stored, is perfectly stable: bits don’t change by themselves, like magic. They are not “virtual” (whatever that means) nor subject to alteration on a mysterious whim.
Can a digital media file be destroyed? Sure. So can a negative or a print… it’s just different things that destroy them.
Look: digital is not a panacea – it is just another medium. And as another medium, it is subject to the constraints of that medium, which are different from the constraints of film and chemicals.
So, if what George is complaining about is permanence, all I can say is “What? 300 years isn’t enough? What do you want? Isn’t that at least 250 years better than what you have now?”
Outside of the fact that you cannot hold them up to the light to see an image, I cannot think of a single way in which digital storage of files isn’t superior to film.
What is at work here is not media problems, but ignorance. It’s a case of “the devil you know, versus the devil you don’t.”
Ignorance isn’t bad: it’s simply the state before becoming informed. I’m immensly ignorant of thousands of subjects.
Here it is in a nutshell: take a photo in the analog world, and you are 100% guaranteed that it will eventually deteriorate and fade from human history. Store it as a digital file, and with a bit of human help copying it every 20-300 years, there’s no reason that original image, exactly as it came out of the camera, won’t be here at the time the universe ends.
You decide which one is “virtual.”