Digital cameras: the future of photography?

Factual Questions
1

Ever wonder what GaWd thinks about all day long?

Well, the above question has been bugging me for about a week now. Digital photography is without a doubt the future of photography, both consumer and pro. The pics are great, for the most part, and it’s convenient as ever to send to friends via E-mail. The units are smaller and more efficient.

**Here’s what troubles me: **

What do you do with them after you’ve shown all your partners and E-mailed them out? Print them out? Keep them on your hard drive to get dumped or deleted? Put them on Floppies that you KNOW will get lost and confused?

All of the above options are lame, IMO. Todays consumer level printers(in the $200 range, say), aren’t of high enough quality to produce decent pics, the paper and inks cost a bundle, and the pictures won’t last nearly as long. Maybe an HP laserjet(the office-type), will have available to it a more photo-paper type of material and high enough resolution to almost be picture-perfect(pun intended :)), but for the wee little consumer there’s nothing.

The other 2 storage options I listed above(please include all removable media, Zip disks, Jaz, Etc.), have their obvious flaws.

Where are we going with this???

-Sam

2

I agree, it is a problem and it will get more and more serious since digital camera resolution (and thus file size) seems to be improving faster than the storage. But you seem to be saying all removable media are problematic - why is that? Keeping track of disks is at least as easy as keeping track of negatives and prints, if each disk contains a reasonably large number of images.

The problem with current removable media is that none of them are suitable for long-term storage. I think MO drives and CD-R are the best right now, but I wouldn’t count on one to last 20 years. 10 if you just store it anywhere, instead of the recommended “cool dark place.” The best option seems to be to copy them to the current best storage medium every 5 years. Which is probably easy, since data from a dozen old disks usually fit in a single new disk.

If you don’t care quite that much about your images, I think the best bet is to have the images printed on a professional printer. There are already printing services for digital photos, and their printouts should last a lot longer than inkjet printouts. I think they will get cheaper and more convenient in time.

3

I’m not saying this is removeable-media specific, however, I’m a frickin mess. I’ve got disks EVERYWHERE. 65-80% of them have NO labels. I know I’m worse than your common man, but even the most dilligent PC-user isn’t as organized as you appear to be.

Now, obviously CD-R and CD-RW are, for the time being, the best alternatives. They’ll last longer, they’re portable, useable on all systems, cross-platform. I’m going to stick with the 20-yr. figure that the industry has accepted as a standard.

Printing them proffersionally is obviously a good idea, but what does that cost per print? It’s gotta be outrageous!

-Sam

4

The Epson color stylus range of printers is quite amazing in their quality and price range. The key is you must you the rather expensive glossy paper made especially for printing photographs on.

The second thing is, I’ve printed these from 8 Meg files taken on a Nikon D1, and for printing on A3-sized paper (about 16 x 20) the results are AMAZING! I was really impressed by the quality of the digital photograph on basically a $500 or less color printer. You know how much hassle it saves when I have complete control over the printout and I don’t have to mess with printing in a color darkroom?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the old approach, but it will more-or-less die out.

I archive my photographs on a CD-R, as that is the most economical way for me. I find it much easier to deal with a stack of CDs than a stack of negs.

Unfortunately, the problem you get with this is the same problem you have will all computer storage devices. New technologies replace old ones in as little as 5 years. We used to file away digital images on SyQuest drives, and now God help me if I can find one. So you constantly have to recopy your data onto whatever the new medium of the day is. DVDs will be the next step, I gather, but CDs should stick around for at least 3-5 more years.

5

I’ve used digital exclusively for over a year and will never go back. Disk space is cheap and every day it gets cheaper. And it’s getting cheaper faster than pictures are getting bigger. I’ve got almost 2,000 pictures in well under a gig HD.

The storage is way better on disk than in an album. You can back it up quickly and cheaply. Try doing that with 35-mm film. When I upgrade computers, I copy a directory to the new HD and I’m done.

And storing them on the hard disk is scalable. I don’t have to manually thumb through boxes and boxes of old photos.
You can give each picture key words, so you can later look up all the pictures with Aunt Mathilda in them or all wedding pictures or pictures taken during Summer 1999. Try doing that with photo albums.

Oh, and you can get darn-good quality pictures on a $400 laser jet printer. Granted, they aren’t waterproof, and they aren’t 35-mm quality yet, but this stuff is moving quick and we’ll be there soon.

Nope. Don’t see the problems you’re talking about.

6

This is a problem with all electronic media nowadays. How are people 100 or 1000 years from now going to learn about our current “information age” when we can’t even read our own 5.25" floppy disks from a few years ago? This is also a problem with accessing audio from a several decades ago (wax spools, etc…even reel to reels are becoming harder to find). The machinery becomes obsolete so fast. It’s easier to read a paper copy of a Shakespearean sonnet from 400 years ago or a stone tablet from 3000 years ago than it is to read a computer disk from 20 years ago. Anyone have a Beta VCR that still works? Or an 8-track player?

I guess we’ll be constantly re-saving our information to whatever new media comes along.

7

If you’re really worried about it, go to Kodak.com and have them print your digital images on regualr photo paper. That way, instead of having easily stored digital files, you can pack around volumes of physical prints.

I hope that didn’t sound cranky…

8

Storage problems are going away too (even though it isn’t fast enough).

There are already data-storage services around that let you archive your files onto a remote system over the Internet, and DSL or cable connections that let you move stuff at a reasonable rate. The services take care of conversions to new equipment for you, as Bill H. does for himself, and most (if not all) do regular backups. (Of course, there are lots of free or cheap ISPs who include some Web page storage, if you don’t need too much space.)

There’s an article on storage providers here.

9

I wouldn’t trust inkjet printouts - they fade extremely fast. I know some companies are advertising more durable ink, but they haven’t been around long enough to prove the durability. Laser printer outputs last longer, but most of us want our photos in color. Color laser printers are still in the >$2000 range the last time I checked, and their output is not very impressive.

Hard drives are also dangerous, unless you keep regular backups. Even a disk array (RAID) can be wiped out by a virus, user error or a multiple disk failure caused by an external cause (e.g. lightning, failed cooling fan). And you need removable media for backups, so we’re back with the same problem - durability and capacity of removable media.

I think rjk has a good point - storage services seem to be an ideal solution. The only problems are bandwidth and cost - let’s hope they improve fast enough to overtake the increasing size of camera output files.

10

I doubt digital photos are the future of photography. Snapshots, maybe, but resolution problems make them difficult for fine art. They will just be another way to take a picture.

11

Reality Chuck – hate to burst your bubble, but I kind of misspoke when I said that digital photography is the wave of the future. Digital photography is here now. And not just snapshots.

More and more photojournalists are turning to digital for their main modus operandi. The New York Times, for instance, shoots all digital. Yes, all those NYT photographer pictures you see in the paper are taken on Canon digital cameras. Perhaps the food and fashion stuff is still taken normally, but even product photography is going the way of digital. When you do still lifes, you have all the time you want to take an exposure (more or less) and if you have a high-end digital camera made for this purpose, you can create poster-quality 50 Meg files.

On the more practical level, the Nikon D1 makes files which, full frame and uncompressed, equal about 7-8 megabytes. Canon has a new digicam coming out this fall which makes pictures in the range of 10 megs. On top of that, the Nikon D2 is supposed to come out sometime in the future, and I assume it will have a resolution in this range, if not surpassing it.

When I worked for the wires, the images we transmitted were in the range of 6-8 megs. This was more than sufficient for newspaper repro. The top-line pro digital cameras make images slightly surpassing this range. This is not to say that magazines don’t use digital photography as well. It’s not as good as shooting slides, but news magazines such as Time and Newsweek routinely use digital photos. For high-quality glossies and excellent image quality, an image size more in the range of 20 Megs would be preferable for a half to 3/4 page.

Fine art photography will continue using conventional means as well as digital means, IMHO. Hell, fine art photography still uses pinhole cameras, lithography techniques, toning, cross-processing, infrared film, etc, etc, etc, and a truckload of other techniques which have long been out of popular use. Hell, there was that Polaroid transfer fad in the 80s. These things will never die – however, it is my firm conviction that mainstream photography, including fashion and high-end glossy, will be all-digital within 5-10 years, and that’s a conservative estimate.

And the reasons are simple business. It is much cheaper to maintain. You save loads of money on film; it saves money on time; you don’t have to make Polaroid proofs as you can check your lighting in the LCD screen on the back; it performs better in low- and artificial-lighting situations than film. There is absolutely no reason on earth why photography will not be all-digital in the near future.

12

Realitychuck, let me take what pulyakamel(sic?) said and expand upon it.

Not only is Digital photography the wave of the future, and, here and now, but it is also the preferred motion picture medium these days.

Motion picture companies are digitizing their films in enormous Terabyte RAID systems for editing, refining and effects processing.

So digital photog. is crossing the entire spectrum of pictures. It will invade your home, youe wedding photog’s business, commercials on TV, the movies you watch. All old films are being remastered and brought back to life with digital technologies(some not so hot).

And, I’m still troubled by my OP, and the responses I’ve received. Inkjet printers will never do for photo printing. Floppies and CD’s aren’t what I’m looking for, and I certainly am not going to go the cost-prohibitive route of having Kodak print them on photo paper.

I’d say the digital photog. industry has a way to go yet. it’s good, but not good enough quite yet for me to invest in a separate D-camera. I already use my Digital Sony camera and it’s firewire port to pull still shots onto my computer, but I’m waiting for a printing/storage system that works a bit better.

-Sam

13

GaWd – so you’re not impressed with a Color Stylus’s performance on photo laserprinting paper? I haven’t had prints long enough to determine how it stands up to archiving, but for clients who demand to see a printed version of my portfolio (quite rare these days, actually) I zap it up on the Stylus, and it really is quite impressive. But only if you have a high-resolution file to work with. A Nikon CoolPix is not going to give you 8x10 quality, that is for sure, but an 8 Meg file will.

14

I think digital photography is the way of the future (I was even told this several years ago by a pro photographer). It’s faster, easier to “develop”, easier to store, easier to edit/crop/etc., easier to transmit, etc. etc. etc. There will probably be a nostalgia for regular film that keeps it going for quite a while. And film may also be kept a while for people who need high-resolution photos. Of course, the resolution of digital photos should improve.

Pro photographers may even move to digital video and just take out the best clips of that rather than snapping a bunch of stills and hoping that one of them comes out good.

15

I’m sorry Puly, did I really give the impression that I owned a Digital camera or a photo printer? :slight_smile:

Well, I’m sorry if I did, cause I don’t. I simply see some “chinks in the armor”, if you will. I will see if I can check out the Photo Stylus printer. If it’s of decent enough quality, I might even think of arming myself with a camera and printer.

If I do that, I’ll have to also FINALLY get my ass a CD-RW LoL. I was really just thinking things through with this OP, not really speaking from experience, but what I knew as fact. I use my digital camcorder for still flicks occasionally, but that’s it.

-Sam

16

One of the problems for the typical snapshot photographer, like me, will be maintaining diligence in keeping our digital pics on viable media.

I don’t currently own a digital camera (damn!) but as part of my genealogy project I’m scanning and digitally storing all of the old family photographs I can get my hands on. Currently they’re going on Zip disks. Having been in the computer biz since the 60’s, I’ve seen so many media formats come and go that I know this will be an issue for many of us. Good thing I don’t want to retrieve anything saved 20 years ago on 8-in floppies, huh? Even the 5.25 floppies of just a few years ago are now antiques.

Fine art photos are fine, but for most of us our family shapshots are priceless - they’re irreplaceable. I suspect that 20 years from now people will be frustrated that their parents and grandparents lost interest in making sure that “old” digital photos could alwyas be retrieved. Today’s good intentions will often go the way of good intentions in general. That’s the one value of hard copy - ignoring the deterioration issues there.

Any other snapshot photogs care to comment?

17

I have a low-res digital camera that I use for web work, but for portraits and family pics I still have my 35mm Canon T-1, with a set of lenses. To replace that camera with a digital that can accept standard Canon lenses is thousands of dollars. And then, when I have the images I still need to go through the hassle of printing them myself. Those cheap color printers are slow, and printing 24 images is expensive. Probably more expensive than what it costs me to get 24 prints at the photo place.

My photo place also now puts all prints in digital form on their website, so for $4.00 for film and $7.99 for processing I get 24 pictures on photo paper, AND 24 high-res stills on my computer. And I don’t have to go to any work to get all that.

Now, if I could use a digital camera, upload the pictures I want to a service bureau or photo-mat and get the photos back in the mail in a couple of days for a reasonable price, it would be awfully tempting to go completely digital. I don’t know if that service is available yet, but it’s sure to be within a year or two.

18

Since we’re mentioning on-line photo storage and printing, I’d like to pitch my friends comapany, ofoto.com. They have a deal where you get the first 100 photos printed free. And the quality is for my money as good as any 35 mm.

19

Kodak film fades. That’s why so many of the old films are faded. Even pictures fade. But digital pictures can never fade.

20

I would beg to differ. Newer polymers, and different grain structures make for a more stable base and image-capturing layer. Estar-based film, instead of traditional film for one thing. The stuff is WICKED strong, and is used for motion picture release print stock. Hence, MANY less splices needed. ( In fact, you can’t USE solvent-based splicing on Estar Film, it won’t make a splice. You have to use tape ). A useless slam at Kodak, by the by. ANY film will fade, the oxydation process will make certain colors fade first.

Kodachrome home movies shot in the 1940’s are, in fact, amazingly stable. Dig one out and project it. The FILM itself may have brittled, but the colors? Go, and look! Ditto for true older Technicolor three-strip negatives, the dye-transfer process was expensive, but yielded a VERY stable color base.

Digital pictures cannot fade because they are not pictures. They’re binary code. Woe to the artist who trusts a once-in-a-lifetime image to binary. It doesn’t fade, it loses bits and bytes…and then what? How does one replace lost bits? By doing a good approximation of missing information, and adding in what one thinks MIGHT have been there? I’ll take negative over that any time. I took out B&W negatives that were shot 20 years ago, just this spring. They’ve just sat in a binder, on the shelf. Normal summer heat, humidity, whatever. The prints rendered with those negatives are indistinguishable from the original prints. I’m not talking fancy-pants glass negatives, I’m talking boring old Tri-X negatives.

My two cents. Shoot film. Period. Binary will never replace silver halide. As for a storage medium once you have scanned them in? CD-R sounds most reasonable, and affordable. So, burn a new copy every 5 years, big deal. Until a monitor can perfectly duplicate, or surpass the resolution of a fine print, scanned in images are nothing more than documentation, not art.

Cartooniverse