Digital or Analog? - Photography Forum Page 3

Deleted user 23.07.08, 01:19 Post 31 of 40

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@ Don ... do you know what it cost me to transfer my files from floppy to CD then from CD to DVD .. a few pence really ... and it took minutes, with each copy as good as the last ... with my old negatives and slides - well .. fungal damage, dust, scratches, warping and lost negatives resulting in me hardly having a thing from anything more than a few years ago still available from which to take a copy. Backing up digital is easy, cheap and a perfect copying solution and storage is simple and consumes almost no space at all whereas storing negatives is far more difficult and a lost or damaged negative will always remain so. Of course I love film as well as digital and it is each to their own but I don't buy this argument about film being forever and digital becoming a lost generation of images. I am able to backup every image 3 or 4 times but what few negatives I still have are now well past their best and still my only copy and to get a single print from them is a labour I can hardly be bothered to go through ... agree with andy P here because backing up legacy data is not restricted to government departments .. I do it all the time :0)

Deleted user 24.07.08, 03:38 Post 32 of 40

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Hi Don,

time for you to come out of the dark ages. High capacity hard-drives are cheap! I've transferred most of my analogue efforts to digital by scanning them at home, using an Epson scanner, and all my new analogue photos arrive on one of those nice shiny things called CDs. I only started using digital last year, files are kept on a hard-drive along with my scanned files, and an automatic backup saves them to two separate backup drives at least once a day; along with weekly and monthly backups, all automatic. Anarchistic tendencies mean I don't like governments, and, apart from wine and ale, I've never touched drugs.

So where's the problem with backing up your files? Is it possible that you are suffering from oxygen deprivation from your head being stuck in the sand? ;-D

Kindest regards,
John.

Don Satalic 03.09.08, 05:44 Post 33 of 40

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Paul, the reason you don't have your negatives today is pure negligence. If you treat your digital files ANYTHING like you've treated your film, disaster is right around the corner.

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Don Satalic 03.09.08, 05:47 Post 34 of 40

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Ya...right, John! Everyone is doing what you're doing with their digital files. Sure...they are. That's why pundits are saying this may be the first generation that loses their entire cultural identity.

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Don Satalic 03.09.08, 05:59 Post 35 of 40

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OK...whoever reads this (if anyone)--Photograph your kids and relatives and the things that are important to you on film and store your negatives in a dry dark place. That's it.
That's all you have to do.

Use digital for anything else, if you must. Then if your drive fails and you forgot to back it up, you won't lose anything too precious.

Remember when Katrina hit, or tornadoes in the Midwest? What do people regret losing the most after their loved ones? Right...their photographs. They are precious. Don't trust digital to be there for you even 5 years from now, because it won't.

Deleted user 03.09.08, 06:06 Post 36 of 40

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Hi Don,

I take it you have never heard of online backups either? It's not only my digital photos on disk, it's my 35mm and medium format photographs too. Stop maligning the equipment and try taking some photos instead!

Kindest regards,
John.

Fernand Dollenz 06.09.08, 04:32 Post 37 of 40

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I've been shooting analog for 40 years. I'm not about to change.

John Sampson 11.11.09, 12:28 Post 38 of 40

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Ruud is not absolutely correct nor is he wrong. You have to compare apples with apples. A Hasselblad(6 x 6cm) with the fantastic Zeiss Planar lenses will give most digital 35mm comparables a run for their money, but when you compare 35mm analogue with a comparable 35mm digital the landscape begins to change and depending on the sensors and lenses in the digital they could and do produce better pictures than the older 35mm analogue cameras.
I use a Canon A1, a Canon AE, and a Canon TLb analogue camera(s) in 35mm. I also use a Mamaiya 645(6 x 4,5cm) amalogue camera.
I also have a Kodak Retina 1b(35mm) from the 1950's with a Schneider-Kreutznach lens in it, and a Panasonic Lumix FZ50 digital camera with a Leica lens.
At the moment the Mamiya is king of the heap, so, while film is still available you should try out a few analogue cameras. And if you know how to process black & white film, that will get you hooked. Working with analogue and digital is probably the ideal way to enjoy photography.

Perdos 01.03.11, 12:53 Post 39 of 40

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I am confused choosing a good camera for beginners,
please find suggestions for me ... DSLR cameras are suitable for beginners?
Perdosign
http://perdosign.wordpress.com/

Theo05 23.10.11, 13:07 Post 40 of 40

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To Don Satalic regarding how easy it is to keep filmnegatives for a long time and how difficult this is with digital:

Correct! Correct! Correct!

I was doing a backup from older harddisks and it took me over two weeks to complete that job. And that's just photo's from 2003 - 2008.

Older pictures I made as a pro photographer are still filmnegatives thank god. But the familystuf I shot digitally from 1997 to 2002 are still on CD's...hope they are alright.

At some point I will have backup them as well...not a pleasant task as there must be a at least a thousand of them little disks :-(

The main problem with digital is: you shoot far more images, thus creating a huge problem regarding their long term storage.

Nowadays I save everything to DVD (at least 4 or 5 DVD's per wedding and 1 or two for a portrait session) as well as to two external harddisks.

I have to buy 2 TB harddisks every year now!!! I'm practically swamped with these things.

Keeping hundreds of thousands of digital images backed up correctly is far from easy, as I found out the hard way.

I started going 100% digital in 2003 and now I'm rethinking my earlier choice. One of the reasons being that I have to rely on a computer 100% of the time and with the numbers involved in my case, that's not a pretty picture. I'm actually quite fed up with it after 8 years.

At the moment I have done a few tests with digital alongside analog and the results are promising...for film.

Post Edited (13:24)