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Is anyone else mourning the loss of this valuable archival medium? Kodak is going to discontinue manufacture after 74 years - nothing in my opinion has come as close to Kodachrome for offering vibrant colours and extremely good archival storage.
http://tinyurl.com/lyd58a
Am I the only one still using colour slide film as the only appropriate medium for long-term archival storage of site photos? Or has the world moved on?
Despite my initial scepticism about digital photography, we are now seeing quite affordable 10MP cameras which offer reasonable resolution (although still nothing like Ilford PanF on a 6x6 medium format) - but have we overcome the digital archiving nightmare?
Paul Belford
[url=\"http://www.paulbelford.blogspot.com/\"]Paul Belford[/url]
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Oh No...for years Kodachrome has been the industry best..all others judged against it. First the 25 and 200 went...and now the 64 ...a terrible loss
.....and also the subject of A Simon and garfunkel song.....
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They did take your Kodachrome!
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Mohandas Gandhi
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...indeed they did !!.............I left that one for the quickest reply !!!!
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Posted by Paul Belford:
Quote:quote:Am I the only one still using colour slide film as the only appropriate medium for long-term archival storage of site photos? Or has the world moved on?
Actually, I was under the impression that black-and-white negatives were the only appropriate medium for long-term archival storage. Colour slides are taken as a supplementary record, with an eye to illustration and to potential lectures/conference talks. I have always understood that slides are not archivally stable in the long term.
Presumably digital photography can now adequately address the purposes of slides, and is much easier to combine with Powerpoint for your worldwide lecture tour.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
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Colour slides are suitable for long term archival storage if archive is kept in correct controlled conditions. Unsure about digital in long term...anyone up to date on this ??
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There isn't any problem with the digital media. I think the problem is one of hardware comapatibility.
I will say this .... every national nespaper has now gone over to digital photography. These are businesses that make lots of dosh out of selling on and maintaining commercially viable photgraphic archives. It strikes me that if professional archive services are happy with digital media then archaeologists need to bite the bullet...but having attended the digital media session at TAG last year and raised this point, I know that aint gonna happen soon.
So whilst I regret losing kodachrome, I hope its demise will push archaeology closer to accepting digital photgraphs for archive purposes....
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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In reply to 1man I meant of course "the only appropriate medium for long-term archival storage of COLOUR site photos".
In reply to Kevin... I think that this is probably inevitable, but we do need to ensure migratability between hardware of the image files. So far no-one has bitten the bullet - TIFFS are the closest thing to the digital equivalent of a negative, and it is a shame that the various RAW formats are not compatible with eachother. Even the newspapers have notoriously short-term mindsets... they are not thinking 100 or 200 years as I am.
Has anyone arrived at a genuinely long-term solution? I would be very interested to hear about it.
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We seem to very concerned with the hardware commutability of digital media whilst maintaining archives of essentially obsolete technology. Tell me of anyone seriously manufacturing B&W or colour negative reproduction equipment at the moment.....Its not happening.
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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Frankly the 'indefinate' preservation of chemically based prints and negs is overrated in my opinion. A lot of the reconnaissance taken during and after the war has now deterioriated, and is some cases, the print is still pretty good while the neg has deteriorated beyond a point of no return...
However, reconnaissance is generally produced PDQ, without necessarily the right care and attention to the developing process. Silver nitrate on glass is more or less eternal, but medium format is a pain. Modern stuff is probably better, but its only as good as the conditions that its archived in.
I was under the impression that archivally stable ink is being developed, but like Kevin, I can't see archaeologists adopting 'new' digital technology any time soon.
