Which are better for archiving, digital or film cameras?

Question

A friend of mine will not purchase a digital camera since they believe that film is superior to digital for long-term storage. I assumed that film was just as susceptible, if not more, to damage as digital storage devices such as CDs, memory cards, computer hard drives, etc.. However, digital storage allows for redundancies in the your storage (eg. print images, store on CD, and store on computer).

Answer 1

Well, that's an ongoing argument.

The problems of long-term digital storage are only now beginning to be realized, since the technology hasn't existed for what we'd call "long-term".

The first issue with digital is the reliability of storage media- hard drives DO fail.

Backup tapes were the standard in corporate computing for many years, but every IT department has run across tapes that have become unreadable. Nowadays we have options like portable external hard drives, CD-R and DVD-R etc- but while these are convenient they haven't been around long enough for people to know how they'll hold up 20-30 years down the line. One of the very real issues facing consumers is that media recorded by a home computer CD/DVD burner isn't as permanent as a studio manufactured CD or DVD. Some people have found that their burned CDs and DVDs have become unreadable just 4-5 years down later! With digital, you absolutely MUST copy your images to more than one set of media.

The other issue is the rapid advance of technology- how quickly will their chosen storage format become obselete? If you archived a bunch of files to a Bernoulli Box back in 1984, you'd be in a tough spot now since I don't think any version of Windows, MacOS or Linux has drivers for those antiques. At least SCSI drive controllers still exist- but what if you'd saved a bunch of files onto an MFM disk drive? As hardware manufacturers and operating system move on to supporting newer and better data storage formats, what about the discontinued and obsolete ones?

Which brings us to a related issue for photographers- what happens when the RAW format for your particular camera is no longer supported by current digital-image editing software? How difficult will it be to find converters many years from now?

These are all issues for machine-readable data formats. The advantage of film is that it's human-readable. If something spills onto a priceless negative and leaves a stain, the image isn't entirely lost. The same if the negative fades a bit over 20 years. The image is still there, just not perfect. You may be able to rescan and clean it up- probably quite well since our scanning and editing capabilities improve greatly as time passes- just imagine what Photoshop will be capable of, 30 years from now?

The same isn't true of corrupted digital data- once information is lost, it's lost. Whatever was in those missing bits, they're still missing in the future.

I suppose this duty could fall to professional data storage companies (so THEY can worry about checking file integrity and ensuring that the underlying storage media is readable down the road) but companies go outta business. And the risk of a major photo storage site getting hacked and someone else having your RAW files...

Digital does offer many advantages (such as replication and redundancy. reprinting) but it requires periodic migration to newer formats to avoid potential disaster- which seems intuitively the opposite of "archiving".

Answer 2

If the film pictures are properly stored, like in a great photo safe album, then the pics will last for years and years. Same as the digital pictures if you get them printed on decent photo paper. With digital you can only show the pics when you are by a computer or DVD player. Or again have them printed out and in a photo safe album. Then you can share them a lot easier. That is the whole point of taking pictures isn't it? The sharing of them! So which ever you choose film or digital print them and enjoy them!

Answer 3

Digital is better than Film there is no doubt on that, heat will destroy film and not digital (as long as the heat is not able to melt the digital mem card computer ect ect) once the heat gets above a certain temp film pictures begin to break down.

As you said Archiving is much easier on a Digital also unless you friend does nothing but have theirs developed into slides which are handy but a PITA to use.

I have backed up all my pictures to CD/RW disks and just keep them handy not a problem and you can put 100s on those where as film/slides take up alot more space and require a climate controlled area for storage.

Hope this helps

Answer 4

I'm no expert with video cameras but some of these questions are just silly. I shoot mini-DV and notice no such hiss. The sound may be crap with consumer cams, but if you're not a big fan of audio distortion buy a nice digital voice recorder and mic and sync it up in PP, or plug it directly into the camera to replace it as the main mic. (many consumer and prosumer camcorders have the jack). There's a HUGE difference between making videos for an average television screen and a theater. You won't find any movie sets with consumer camcorders. With a $1,000 budget, you won't be making any huge production picture anytime soon. Semi-pro equipment goes upwards of 3x that. Start small and work your way up. Nearly any dedicated camcorder would work fine for a regular TV. High definition camcorders (almost all use hard drives, but not all not all hard drive camcorders are HD) would make nice videos for HDTVs.

Answer 5

This is a funny question and i dont mean haha!

Firstly film if stored at -8 celcius it is rated to 100 to 200 years (depending on film)

So film is seperior to digital in the following areas - colour rendition and overall latitude.

digital images are from two sources a digital camera or a scanner - once film is scanned its digital!

so is it harder to store film at a set temperate for year and years? or to store zeros and ones?

digital is zeros and ones, they can be coppied exactly everytime.


So the answer is if your friend scans the images (film) on a quality Professional scanner then makes copies on to DVD say than copies those every few years they will last forever, unlike the film


so i think your friend knows films better (as those who know photography know) and is proberly just telling you that because it works or for other purposes.


your right storage wise digi is less susceptible to damage,

the differnece between film and digital is only 1 scan! (oh and film is better)


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Answer 6

it depends on usage of cameras to know which to use. even negative films get faded if not stored properly. unused roll if kept in normal temparature for more than 6 months do not produce good pictures.
the question is usage and choice. like how many snaps you want to take in an particular occassion.
film its always limited. digital good the count can be taken.
-digital is flexibility you can store the snaps you want rest delete. you can reuse the chip clearing it. etc.

Answer 7

I don't know all the pros & cons, but when my brother passed-away, I took all the pictures of him & burned them onto a Kodak 'Archive-Quality' CD.
They are supposed to last for up to 100 years, & they can store quite a bit of information...
Here is an article that might help: http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/30/how-to-choose-cddvd-archival-media/

Answer 8

digital anyday, keep a copy in your harddisk, backup to a internet filestore ( even yahoo or gmail , maybe both) and a dvd!

nothing beats digital anyday. store in as many media as you can afford and or find .