| Digital Storage |
Images are converted to digital form by scanning. The scanning can be done by a service bureau (used to be lab). Or you can purchase your own scanner and digitize images for yourself. Either has its benefits and its disadvantages.
Having your scans done by a service bureau means letting someone else invest in the rapidly changing technology. You also leave it for them to commit the time and effort required to develop the necessary skills for creating high quality scans. The down side is much like having a lab printing your photographs; the results are subject to their interpretation of what you want and the delivery time is pretty much determined by their schedules.
To do it yourself means you need to buy a scanner that is likely to be old technology faster than many of your other computer components. Then you have to not only put in the time to learn and master the scanning process, but also the time to do each and every scan. Of course, you get your scans when you want them and looking the way you want them.
If you have scans done by a service bureau you need a medium to physically transport your digitized images. Even doing your own scans usually requires expandable storage to satisfy the voracious space appetite of images. Typically this is satisfied using "ejectable" media versus hard disks. Ejectable media refers to disks or cartridges that slip in and out of a special drive much like a floppy disk does, but with much greater capacities. A film quality scan of a 35mm image requires 60 megabytes of storage capacity so you can see that storage requirements mushroom as you accumulate digital images. (Which, by the way, also demonstrates the efficiency and the incredible amount of information stored on a piece of film.)
Ejectable media come in a few basic types; compact disks (CD's), magnetic cartridges and magneto optical disks. It's very important to talk to your service bureau, and anyone else with whom you expect to be exchanging files, to see what they're using. You can't trade files with them if you're not using compatible formats. It's worse than trying to print 4X5 negs using a 35mm carrier.
Many computers now come with CD drives built in and ready to read Kodak Photo CD and other compact disks. Usually Photo CD provides a very economical means of getting images scanned and into your computer. However getting them back out again in digital form requires a CD writer or one of the other types of ejectable media. Magnetic media are the most commonly used ejectables. They won widespread acceptance because they appeared first on the market with the most appealing prices for drives and cartridges. Magnetic disks come in a wide variety of sizes and capacities. Although well suited for transferring images from one place to another, they're relatively unstable, making them undesirable for long term storage. Magneto optical is considerably more stable, enjoying claims of 20 years or more. Optical disks and drives were originally much more expensive than their magnetic counterparts, but prices have come down sharply to the point that they're competitive and possibly preferable. These too come in an ever expanding variety of sizes and capacities.
And therein lies the final rub. No matter what you choose as your medium, it will be eventually replaced with another. Our information age is in jeopardy of becoming the lost information age as more and more information gets locked into past technologies. Have you ever tried to find a player for your old 8 track tapes? It's important to keep an eye on the changes and be sure your images don't get caught in an orphaned medium. Film may still be our best long term storage solution.
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