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From: "Larry N. Bolch" 
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Subject: Re: Kodak processing machine
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:29:43 -0700
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Stu Turk wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Prentiss" 
>
>
>> This would be the system originally invented by
>> Applied Science Fiction, where the film is
>> chemically developed (not really dry) to
>> total completion, being scanned in IR with
>> enough resolution to separate the different
>> color layers. Wet processing, but no effluent
>> no need for a drain. The negatives are said
>> to be totally black, do you still want them?
>
>        I wouldn't want the film after it was process by this machine
> but if I shot anything I wanted to keep the negatives of I probably
> wouldn't go near this machine.  :-)Most people don't keep their
> negatives so it probably doesn't make any difference to them.  But as
> someone on the list I picked up that article on pointed out,
> equipment keeps changing and today's cd-rom disk may be unprintable
> due to lack of equipment  some years down the road. But we can still
> print negatives shot 50 or more years ago.

Both are dye images, and dyes fade. However, it is very easy to move digital
images to the next medium, while duplicating negatives without drastic loss of
quality is difficult. About the only way to make colour negative images anything
resembling permanent would be to reproduce them as silver-based images onto
glass plates using colour separation. Storing them in a deep freeze would be the
second best.

I have some 30,000 digital images now - all stored on two different computers
and on CD-ROMs - both for convenience and redundancy. Within a couple of weeks I
will also have a DVD burner. In less than 10 minutes all will have found another
home on the next medium - for another layer of redundancy and life far longer
than my own.

The Usual Argument.

Yes, there are tapes from early computers that are difficult or impossible to
access now nearly 50 years later. This is frequently quoted as an argument
against digital storage, but is a huge display of ignorant hand-wringing -
nothing more.

In the first three decades of computing, machines were extremely proprietary, as
were data formats. Honeywell made great effort to make sure that no IBM or
Burroughs perpherals would interface with their machines and vice versa.
Standardization across systems was anathema. Furthermore, relatively few
computers even existed through the mid 1970s. The chip in a musical greeting
card has many times the computing power of the most powerful of 1950s
mainframes.

Secondly data storage was incredibly expensive. Data was triaged and much was
deliberately abandoned, being too costly to store in relationship to its value
when equipment went from punch cards to magnetic storage. While legacy data WAS
inaccessible for a number of decades, there are companies now who CAN retrieve
it now that there are powerful and cheap desktop computers.

The situation is entirely different now. The same CD works on Macs, PCs, Linux
boxes and a bazillion consumer electronics appliances. While there may have been
less than 100,000 data tapes during all the mainframe period, there are CDs
beyond counting. People also point to the way that the CD
"killed" the LP as an
argument. Certainly the CD outsells the LP by a bazillion to one, but LPs are
still being pressed and there is a wealth of players still being sold.

Furthermore, just as one can easily transfer digital images from CD to DVD, one
can transfer the music from vinyl to CD or DVD and considerably improve the
reproduction quality while doing so. All it takes is a turntable - easily
obtained - a soundcard, CD-burner and some software.

With the huge heritage of information and entertainment stored on the CD, it
will be accessible indefinitely. Simply the sheer quantity in comparison to
mainframe data ensures that, but here is much more reason.

Data storage is incredibly cheap now. Hard drives for less than a dollar a
gigabyte, and optical storage for pennies. Cost of storage is no longer of any
relevance. Overnight, my computer recorded an hour long program of Monteverdi
songs, in VideoCD format, which I have just transferred onto a 32¢ CD. The
transfer took the computer seven minutes, since I asked the software to verify
the data - otherwise it would have taken about four minutes. It took me less
than a minute to get it going and it burned the CD while I was doing e-mail.

Now the CD is beginning its fade as DVD comes on strong. Know what? My DVD
player reads CDs just fine. Know what else? DVD burners will make BOTH CDs and
DVDs. Absolutely complete backward compatibility. Blue laser DVDs are a few
years away, increasing storage by six or seven times that of current DVDs.
Again, absolutely complete backward compatibility. Since it costs practically
nothing to build in legacy format compatibility, why not do it?

My colour negatives began fading the second they came out of the blix. Zeros and
ones don't fade. Negatives are a real problem to duplicate without loss of
quality, zeros and ones are a breeze. I have some of the first Kodak PhotoCDs
that are now a decade old. No problems whatever, but just to extend the life of
my images on them, I have made duplicates and retired the originals. Two minutes
of actual work to do so. They will also be compiled on a single DVD for further
convenience and redundancy.

There is no excuse for lost images in the digital world other than human
neglect.

Last year 50 million digital cameras sold as compared to 57 million analogue
cameras. However, the key is where they sold. In Europe, Japan and the Americas,
digital cameras substantially outsold film cameras. Outside of those regions,
film cameras outsold digital - 22 million to six million. Sales of digital
cameras increased in 2003 by 64% over 2002 world-wide.

The question is will there be film, any way to process it, access to chemicals
and colour printing paper even a decade from now, without migrating to third
world countries.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/

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