It appears that Fuji is closing its film
processing lab in Phoenix in a few weeks.
It is not yet known who will be handling E6
processing for them.
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00FIkh&tag=
With film pictures going the way of the steam loco,will today’s digital photos be around 100 years from now?
It is highly probable that most film shot in
1906 no longer exists.
Dave
As with film, with proper archive management, digital photos will be around at least 100 years from now. However, no single digital media should be considered permanent. Digital files will need to be refreshed from time to time. The longest lived media available right now in my opinion is the write-once CD. Rewritable CD’s have a much shorter life.
dd
Every roll of slides I’ve ever sent to Fujicolor Phoenix has come out great and scratch-free. It’s a shame that they’ll be closing.
I’ve got 5 rolls of E100G and 2 rolls of Velvia in the refrigerator. I’m definitely going to try and get those processed before they close for good.
That assumes, of course, that the hardware and software to read them will exist then. I take it what you mean by “refresh” is to periodically convert them to the new formats. For example, I have computer backup tapes, all perfectly good, made on tape drives that no longer exist and written in formats not compatible with current programs. “Refreshing” is no trivial task! So non-trivial that the great majority of files will be lost because people will not realize the significance of what they have and not undertake the conversion.
For several years I was reluctant to switch from film to digital for the very reasons mentioned - survivability of the images to the distant future. I have paper photos going back to the 1920’s - my father’s- and they are as crisp and clear as the day they came back from the drug store. I have recently gone digital but have decided to make paper copies of my good photos on archival paper and store them in acid free albums like my earler prints. I also give copies to rail fan friends for their albums. I know that some of these photos will be around 50 - 60 years from now. The stuff stored as digital files ? I don’t know.
…So…whom ever will be first to do so…bring on the digital cartridge to fit into the fiim camera…We’re about there…It’s time for it. Hate to through a good film camera away…!
Modelcar, we are there now. My first grandson was born ten weeks premature. I took photos of him in the incubator on a $400 APS film camera and dropped the cartridge off at a 1 hour photo lab. None of the pictures came out. This was all the excuse I needed to buy a digital camera. I did not like the Kodak Easyshare software system, so I removed the memory chip from the camera and inserted it into the flash reader of my computor, feeding the pictures into the Photoshop software that comes from Comcast which I found to be much more user friendly, allowing me to send the pictures to anyone in my E-mail Address book. The nice thing about didgaal cameras is that besides being able to manipulte the picture, you do not have to process or print out a bad picture.
I think if you have a web site & so long as you continue to pay the fees it is 4ever[:p]
[quote]
Originally posted by dldance
There seems to be a trend these days. The digital market has seen tremendous growth in the last few years and more and more people are switching to digital cameras. A number of old line 35 mm camera manufacturers are gradually discontinuing their line of 35 mm SLRs in favor of getting into the digital market. While right now I am something of an old fashioned 35mm film purist, I have seen enough reasons expressed by others to eventually switch to a digital format.
A lot of us who were very young several years ago had fathers who shot home movies on standard 8 or super 8 mm film. That fell by the wayside in favor of improved technology, such as video tape, which also by now is obsolete. And I could come up with countless other examples. I have my Dad’s old Bell & Howell standard 8 mm movie camera, and while I don’t know how much it would be worth to people who collect cameras, I am holding on to it simply for it’s sentimental value.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
Leon…I fully agree the digital is here NOW…and all kinds of them…Neighbors visited us last night and showed pic’s of their recent trip to the mid east…using their digital camera{s}, to take the shots of course and their 17" new aspect size screened laptop…They even had some video {with sound}, recorded on the digital camera…all possible because of current state of the art “digital” stuff…In my previous post I’m relating my wish {as another poster had put up some time ago}, that we need a “digital cartridge” to fit in our pretty good film cameras to convert them to digital use…
Hi -
Can I have a “go-back” to a couple of earlier comments in this string? Regarding old negatives, with proper care, there is no reason why glass plates from the 1890s (or older, for that matter) can’t exist for many years to come.
The biggest challenge with glass plates is the potential for cracking or breakage of the glass. Early film negatives (those with nitrate base) are not so lucky - have had to toss many from the 1920s as they deteriorated to the point where they could no longer be used to make a decent print. The successor “safety film” when properly stored and cared for should do just fine for years to come.
While Kodak will say that Kodachrome has a 50 year life, again, take good care of them, and they’ll be around for at least 60 years. Have many that were shot pre-WW II, and they have not faded one iota! The processing for Kodachrome changed during 1939, and those from before that change have faded over time.
There’s no question that Fuji makes decent color films, but even with all the problems in getting Kodachrome processed lately, I have stuck with that film. Too many faded Anscos and Agfas from post-WW II era, I guess!
Even though I haven’t used Fuji slide film, it is sad to see another film processing lab go down[V]. I’ve always been a fan of Kodak Kodachrome, perferably 64 speed on crisp bright sunny days[^]
My Canon Rebel, which is one of the original ones, now sits in its bag accumulating cobwebs. I now have a Canon Powershot A80 4MP that puts out great photos.
Sometimes I can hear my Rebel sob[:(]. I may have to load it with a roll of film on a railfanning trip just for old times sake.
Russell
I checked out the story about Fuji closing its Phoenix processing lab with its customer service, and I learned they will start to close their Phoenix processing lab on April 16. However, not to worry, since their slide processing line will be the last to be closed down. Fuji plans to transfer its slide processing to one of its other labs, but the customer service representative didn’t know to which lab it would be transferred. She also told me Fuji would continue to honor film processing mailers.
I recently switched to Fuji after many years of using Kodachrome I and II and Ektachrome, because i was not satisfied with the quality of recent rolls of Kodachrome II and its processing. I started using Kodachrome for photographing trains in 1951, and those slides still look like they just came out of the camera, mostly because they were processed by Kodak. I experimented with using other slide films, or having Ektachrome processed by Brand X processing labs, and many of those slides are fading, or changing color, especially my slides of N&W steam hualed freight trains climbing Blue Ridge Hill east of Roanoke that I took in 1957.
I agree, digital photography is in, and film based photography is on the way out. While slide film and its processing will still be available in the next few years it won’t be readily available. So if you are out photographing trains, and you run out of film you will only be able to buy film in a full-service camera store.