[filmscanners] Re: Scanning old Lantern Slides (Off Topic)

["John Prokos" <jprokos@attbi.com>]

Art,

I know I asked for opinions and I am truly grateful for yours! However I
have to respond to your statements. How much has film changed since the time
people used 8" floppies and 12" Bernoulli disk? Digital moves on and film
moves on and people update their tools. I am sounding very pro digital here
but my feelings are more centered around the benefits of digital for this
particular purpose.
The process of storage and reproduction you mention are very expensive and
time consuming. I think digital is the way to go. From what I have read
about CDR longevity it's best to stay away from the cheap discs that use
cyan dyes and go with the gold disks i.e. Kodak Ultima brand - these are
reported to last a minimum of 100 years in archival conditions. Sorry to
move this discussion off topic. Again, thanks for your input. And I like
your idea of using tricolor filters and black and white film, but how to do
it with a coated glass transparency?

Regards,

John


on 02/05/02 11:36 PM, Arthur Entlich at artistic-1@shaw.ca wrote:

> Regarding archiving... I don't wish to open the can of worms up fully,
> but there is a good question as to if digital is a better method of
> archiving than film.
>
> Current film dyes are quite stable, especially if care is taken during
> processing with archiving in mind.  After that, keep the film in an
> acid-free, dark, low humidity and cool temperature, away from abnormal
> gases (ozone, CO, hydrocarbons) will keep the film safe for many years
> to come.
>
> No standard currently available digital storage system is truly
> archival.  Not MO, not PD, and certainly not CDR.  They all are damaged
> by some environmental influence.  CDR uses dyes, not so dissimilar to
> film.
>
> Further, small damage can make a file completely useless, and also, file
> types change and storage media changes every two weeks.  Try finding a
> drive to read a 8" floppy or a 10 meg 12" Bernoulli disk.  Heck, it's
> hard to find a Syquest 44 drive these days, and that was a "standard".
>
> Actually, one of the best methods of storage is using true black and
> white (silver based) color separations.  But this requires 3 frames of
> black and white per image and someone good at recreating color from B&W
> color separations.
>
> Art
>
>
> John Prokos wrote:
>
>> Charles,
>>
>> The problem with that approach right now is that they want to archive the
>> images, and the dyes in color negative film are relatively unstable. A
>> digital file is good for a lot longer - as long as it is stored on good
>> media like MO disks or high quality CDR. Thank you for your suggestion.


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