Digital Camera are Dangerous!

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ABC News is tonight reporting that the use of digital film and media is threatening our photographic memories and photographic history.

Ok, so it was just a sensationalistic “headline” to get you to watch to the end of the news — I guess it worked, ’cause I stopped to watch.

As it ends up, they were really trying to get their hands around the issues of archiving digital images, especially given changing formats over time. The other issue they brought up was that of “on the spot” editing — deleting images at the time of shooting, and throwing away images that, at the time, seemed to have no value. With negatives, there’s less of a chance of a casual deletion, so it was reported, because the negatives were filed away in toto, so you kept the bad with the good, the valuable with those shots not quite so “on target”.

Myself, I save almost anything that is in focus and not terribly washed out or darkened. I have three copies of my archive on three different disks that live in three different devices, and I burn copies on DVD or CD. I guess that’s why I’ve got 30,000+ photos archived from the last year or two!

So, toss out your digital cameras! Crush your CF’s and SD’s beneath your heel, and move backward into the morass of film-only in the off chance that just might threaten history with your actions in the present! 🙂