Lost Capa Negs Found - The Mexican Suitcase

[Bill Pierce]

A few days ago someone started a wonderful thread on the discovery of the Capa negs and referred back to the NYT article. The thread moved from my site and then disappeared, but I thought it was a good thread. I'm reposting the message I added after the thread had been up awhile. It's from an email that Dennis Brack sent to Dirck Halstead who forwarded it to me. So, these are not my thoughts. I'm not even sure I agree. But they are the thoughts of an accomplished, intelligent photographer (and an old friend).

"Subject: Re: Cache of Capa negs found after 70 years...

I love the photo that accompanies the article--that paper box with the
grid listing the contents of each role. Not to be a Luddite, but you
have to love that low-tech aspect. The negatives and the box have
their own jewel-like quality outside of the actual pictures they
contain. And now I should read the article . . .

Its a valid point about the "stability" of digital images, and for
digital information in general. How will today's info be retrieved
when nobody uses hard drives or flash drives? A big concern for the
likes of Citibank etc. One of the only solutions is to continually
upgrade your gear or risk losing your work. Ah yes, the continual
upgrade--buy more or perish. Corporate America's dream come true has
invaded photography, vis a vis the planned obsolescence invented by
the auto industry.

Yes, I'm about to rant, the only time you will hear me argue against
digital photography, because, even though I use film, I like digital
and think they both have their purpose.

HOWEVER, once you "go digital" (whatever that means) you are caught in
an endless need to keep buying expensive stuff. For example, with
film, when film technology improves you go out an buy a new 4 dollar
roll of film and hold on to your current camera and get better images.
You an do this for many many years. With digital, when sensors
improve and megapixels get bigger you get shafted and have to drop
another 800 bucks to get better images, while last year's 800 bucks
becomes a paper weight. The same logic applies to scanners, printers
and, unfortunately, computers and their storage media because even if
it is not about upgrading to keep abreast of quality, you simply have
to upgrade in order for things to work because this years camera and
scanner will not work with last year's operating system etc. etc. etc.
etc. Of course, Canon, Nikon et al could just make cameras where you
replace the sensor, like film, but where's the money in that?

My M4-2 was made in the 70's. If, forty years from now, you can go to
a flee market and buy a digital camera made in 2008 and actually
connect it to something and print pics I will, of course, eat these
words."

[Bill Pierce]

Couldn't agree more. I am a huge Henry Wilhelm fan. Have been for decades since Henry really taught my generation how to wash our film and prints. And he was one of the first to address inkjet permanence e.t.c..

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

[Chuck Albertson]

I'm with Dennis. I don't have to shoot digital (I don't shoot photos for a living), and a big reason I haven't started is the issue of archiving stuff and being able to retrieve it at a later time. I've used word-processing software since the late 1970's, and trying to open some of the older files (even if they're on media that can still be read) is a real pain and often can't be done. I don't want to go through the same drill with my pictures. Constantly renewing hardware is another consideration, although those costs are dropping---the Thinkpad I just bought for work was half the price of the 5-year-old Toshiba ultraportable it replaced, and is a big improvement in performance and features.

The New York Times ran a piece just before Christmas on the high costs that Hollywood studios are looking at for archiving digital copies of movies; you can read it here http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/21/business/STEAL.php if you don't want to register at the Times site. Scale down those costs to those of a stills archive, and there's still a big disparity between digital and film.

[Tom A]

Since the dawn of Digital I have been questioning the manufacturers about this subject. They are not very interested in anwering truthfully! In the 80's I asked one of the biggest makers of CD's "What is the realistic lifespan of a CD". They hummed and hawed for a while and said " If it is a "laser" burned CD -10 years and if it is a CD using the cyanotype coating for storage - 5 years!". Of course, they all say that you should upgrade as new media becomes available. One experiment you can try is to make a sleeve of alu-foil, covering 1/2 the diameter of the CD and leave it on your desk for a couple of weeks and then try to retrieve the material! I haven't tried it with DVD's yet, but 2-3 week will scramble a regular CD.
The Capa negs are 60+years old and even though they have been stored in less than perfect conditions (non acid proof box) and rolled up, they can be straightened out and printed with conventional enlargers (or even scanned digitally). The Nitrite base is fragile but it can be transfered to other material.
What I fear is the loss of a generation of pictures. I am not taking about the pro's picture libraries as they are usually well kept and organized, but all the family shots, the "snap-shots" that shows an era through the eye of the amateur.
In the next LHSA Viewfinder there is a story, by a friend of ours, who had emigrated to the US in 1963. His english was minimal at the time and wandering around DC one sunday, he comes upon a mass of people at the Lincoln Memorial. He did recognize some faces, including Dr Martin Luther King, but the pretty lady who shared her sandwich with him, he did not figure until later that it was Joan Baez. These are 45 year old slides and once scanned they printed very well! There are 1000's of shots from the Freedom March of 63, but these are shot by someone who had no preconcieved concept of what was going on and the "innocence" of the viewpoint gives a different sense.
With the generational development of digital - 45 years would have meant re-formatting at least 10-12 times over that time - and how many of us would do that with our personal pictures? Also, if you go to Flicke and tag "Leica8" you will see a series of pictures taken in Italy in 1944-45. They are exceptional, not only for the timeframe, but also for the quality of the images! Again, stored in a box somewhere and retrieved in 2007, they show us life in Naples in 1945 as well as military life in the US Air Force at that time.
I can only hope that the pressure from the consumer ultimately will dictate to the manufacturers that "longevity" of the media is critical and failure to respond could be disastrous to them. Law-suits for lost wedding pictures, vacation shots, family pictures etc. I hate frivolous law-suits (spilled coffee at Mc Donalds etc) but this could the an instance when I support it!

[Tuolumne]

I feel a flame war coming on. :angel:

/T

[xayraa33]

I am still searching to find these Italy photos from 1944-45.

[nikola]

Tom could you please provide a link to that "Leica8" photos on flickr, I can't find them and they sound interesting! :)

Thanks

[RML]

I inherited a suitcase from my late grandmother full of photos and negs shot by my grandfather (most of them , that is). But even my dad knows only a handful of the people in the photos. Yes, it's fun to see my dad in the 50's (when he wasn't even of high school age) but I'm wondering about the "added value". How truly important are these photos to the future, to me, to my child? Mankind has survived for millennia without a record of its ancestors, and is none the worst for it. And even in our modern day there are millions upon millions of people who don't have a "permanent" record of their ancestors. Are they worse off then we are, who have? I'm really struggling with this as I don't see how a "permanent" record of our ancestors is important in any way.

[Doctor Zero]

I'm always confused by these kinds of arguments. I mean - it isn't as if you can 'just' pick up a glass plate and print pictures from it. You need a suitably equipped dark room, which one could argue is old fashioned equipment. Or what about looking at a reel of 8 mm film? Unless you have the right projector, it's going to be hard. Not impossible, but hard.

To some extent I think that applies to digital. It is still possible to read floppy disks. You may need to look for a computer with a disk drive, but you can. I think there will always be enough old equipment around to read these things (probably on a skip in China, since that's where the rich West sends their stuff in). Of course, if things physically decline, that is the end of that. But that applies to negatives as well.

Lastly - I am a film convert. I have no digital camera (well, that I use, anyway) and have no interest in going the digital route. It's just that I am not entirely convinced that digital is necessarily that much more ephemeral than good ol' silver halide.

Doctor Zero

[Bill Pierce]

Perhaps a brief summary of digital archiving for still images...

Currently, most folks use hard discs rather than CDs or DVDs. They fail rather than degrade.

Everything is duplicated. 2 hard discs next to the computer and one hard disc in another physical location. Then when one office hard disc fails, you take the information on the remaining one and transfer it to a new disc. When your office burns down, you go to the remote location and hope it hasn't burned down, too.

When a raw image is turned into a tiff or a jpg, you put it on the disc. When you make a duplicate when you are about to do some fancy Photoshopping, it goes on the disc. Everything goes on the disc and you hope most of the formats survive. Anyone who has tried to print a negative made for the platinum process or printing out paper on current silver enlarging papers knows that lack of compatability is not just a digital problem.

You pray to the god of your choice.

So far this seems to have worked fairly well. I haven't lost anything yet and most photojournalists had to involve themselves with digital fairly early. But three individual hard discs very quickly get replaced by a lot of expensive RAID arrays, and that isn't cheap.

[furcafe]

Does history have no value?

Mankind survived for millennia without many good things, like the wheel, writing, & indoor plumbing, but we weren't necessarily better off for lacking those things. I believe records, including photos, are important because history is important & you can get a better picture, pardon the pun, of the past when you have more material to work with. And while you may not see much value in photos of your grandparents or parents, your children might.

I inherited a suitcase from my late grandmother full of photos and negs shot by my grandfather (most of them , that is). But even my dad knows only a handful of the people in the photos. Yes, it's fun to see my dad in the 50's (when he wasn't even of high school age) but I'm wondering about the "added value". How truly important are these photos to the future, to me, to my child? Mankind has survived for millennia without a record of its ancestors, and is none the worst for it. And even in our modern day there are millions upon millions of people who don't have a "permanent" record of their ancestors. Are they worse off then we are, who have? I'm really struggling with this as I don't see how a "permanent" record of our ancestors is important in any way.

[Nando]

This discovery is the photography equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If there is a God, she is giving us a sign and conserving the film medium. :D

I was studying computer science at university when Window95 came out. A good number of professors took this opportunity to make us aware of the constant upkeep when it comes to dealing with changes in computer technologies. One of the things I had to do was code new compilers. Compilers are programs that translate computer code written in a readable computer language (like Pascal, C, Java, etc.) to a digital machine-level form that can be understood and executed by a computer. Because of the big change with Win95, some older compilers for a few obscure languages wouldn't work anymore. Man, what a drag that was! Coding compilers was the most boring thing imaginable. I remember thinking then how wasteful this sort of upkeep was. I found it amazing and frightening that a change in a popular operating system could have so many repercussions. So many things, all of a sudden, didn't work anymore.

There are other digitized things besides photographs and movies that are worth preserving. Wouldn't it be great if our children and grandchildren could visit a museum and play the original Pac Man game or fiddle around in VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet program. These historically valuable computer programs may perish someday. Even NASA can't read the digital data it compiled in early space flights anymore.

The best thing to do is to make people aware of this digital storage problem. The second best thing is to make copies like there is no tomorrow. Fortunately, computers are great copying machines - copying is on the most fundamental things that computers must do. When it comes to copying, digital medium has a clear advantage over analogue. I feel the chances of a digital file surviving depends mainly on how many copies are made throughout the years.

[fotorr]

Today my daughter asked me to reprint an digital image I took of her daughter in 2000. I found the CD and put it in the computer. The response was that the disc was damaged and could not be open. No image-no record. Two days ago I put a twenty year old scanned from film image on my blog. No problems. the negative was as good as the day it way processed.
fotorr

[kipkeston]

Strange that such a thread arises just as I began scanning and viewing my great grandfather's kodachrome, anscochrome and ektachromes from over 50 years ago. Nobody in my family cared about them and they were stored away in a closet. It made me realize that I want some relative of mine to find mine, absolutely.

I can't think of a good way of backing up digital images short of continually copying them to new equipment over the years. If I saved them on a HDD, threw it in a closet, in 50 years nothing will be able to read an SATA drive! "USB2.0? Nobody's used that in 40 years!" is what they'll say. brilliant.

I'll have to stick to b&w or koda if I want anything to stay fresh.

Oh, and I saw the website of the WWII photos from his father, really beautiful photos. I hope my tri-x looks that good someday.

[Dogman]

I'm not real interested in what happens to my own personal photos after I'm gone. I do worry about lost history, in that other people's photographs will not be available to future generations--lost in a digital meltdown somewhere. The loss of simplicity in storing images seems to me to work against there being anything like a Eugene Atget equivalent in the year 2108.

I bought my first computer in 1999. I'm on my third computer. The previous two crashed and burned with everything in them lost. Because of that, I have exactly zero faith in any type of electronic storage of important information. And while I don't think any of my photos would be of any interest to anyone a hundred years from now, I don't shoot anything digitally that I don't consider to be disposable.

[Uncle Bill]

I am going to come down on Tom A.'s side of the argument on this one, I have friends and colleagues wondering why I don't shoot digital and the main reason is I want my pictures to outlast me. I don't think the Camera, Computer and accessory companies want to answer this question because you just know there will be a huge collective scream from soccer mom's everywhere when they realize their kids photos are on an old hard drive in a landfill somewhere.

I don't think the archiving issue has been solved by a long shot and I highly doubt an external harddrive full of TIFFs are going to be compatable with the computer technology 10, 20 or 50 years from now. There is a price to be paid for convience and it's going to get ugly. Especially for future historians trying to figure out what happend in the early 21st Century.

[Eryximachos]

nikola: the Flickr member you asked about is leicar8.

[sjw617]

I believe records, including photos, are important because history is important & you can get a better picture, pardon the pun, of the past when you have more material to work with. And while you may not see much value in photos of your grandparents or parents, your children might.

When my Dad's parents died he inherited some picture albums. They were pictures of people in their finest having a professional portrait done. There are rubber stamped photographers name and addresses (Edinburgh or Glasgow) on the backs. These were photos from the 1880's to early 1900's. They were the people who came over, family and friends who did not make the trip and people who died very young. Some you can see are family by the resemblance, my Dad recognized some, but most of them... we have no idea who they are.
The pictures survived (pretty well) but the story is lost.

Steve

[Nando]

Tom could you please provide a link to that "Leica8" photos on flickr, I can't find them and they sound interesting! :)

Thanks

Here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/

[dannynono]

I worked for a commercial studio back in the mid 90's. They had an intern talk them into going digital with a Leaf DCB and a couple 1st Gen powermacs, a couple 9Gig harddrives (a $3k apiece then) and a cd-burner and a tape drive for larger back-ups. I inherited the upkeep and troubleshooting when the intern departed. Within 3 years time, both of the 9 Gig drives had tanked, any archive CD older than 2 years was suspect (randomly corrupt files) and only the tape drive had any reliability.

I've got some glass negs from the early 1900s, they're not in great shape, but there's still a latent image than can be printed. unlike most corrupt files pulled from a cd.

so does anyone by the hype with the archival gold dvd-r/cd-r, or are you, like me, shooting both film and digital to cover your bases.

oh and why can't we get affordable film recorders?

[jlw]

Sorry to be, um, negative, but was the reason Bill Pierce was asked onboard really to host Resurrection MCMLXXVII of the "Film Is Eternal and Digital Is Evil" thread-from-hell? Pfft...

[amateriat]

In my work as a freelance computer tech, I've had to deal with a lot of fried hard disks of data, including digital snaps, that weren't backed up, and are not coming back (unless the client pops for sending the HD to DriveSavers or the like for a "CSI"-style forensic recovery job...and you don't want to know what the tab for that can come to).

I've also had some "name-brand" CD-Rs flame-out on me after three years or so, even when stored in darkness (never, ever, leave a recodrable CD/DVD exposed to sunlight for any extended period). I've now standardized on Verbatim DataLifePlus CD/DVD media for this very reason: short of blowing lots of cash for gold-media CD/DVDs, these help cut my potential losses.

Redundant storage (multiple HDs) is certainly better than nothing, but when we're in an age where we're talking terabytes, not even gigabytes any more, things can get unweildy awfully fast:

Little boxes
On my workdesk
Little boxes
Filled with terabytes
Little boxes, techy boxes
Wired boxes, in a row
There's a Maxtor, and a Quantum
And a bunch of Western Digitials
And they're al filled up with terabytes
And I pray one doesn't blow

(With apologies to Malvina Reynolds)

And, yes, perhaps the planet gets hammered by a decent-sized asteroid some time off in the future and all of this becomes moot. But I'd still like my images to hang around a bit, whether anyone's interested in them or not.

Film ain't perfect in this regard, either, of course, but it's easier for me to keep under wraps, so it remains my principal medium, both for work and personal stuff.

Whatever your views on film vs. digital, trust me on the CD/DVD issue.


- Barrett

[amateriat]

And we do hear stories like the one posted here where a CD written is then not readable, either because the CD burner was off spec, or the reader is off -spec. Usually these CDs can be read, but sometimes it can take trying them on several drives.
SO glad you brought this up. One of my older CDs (from 1999) wouldn't read on either the internal combo drive or SuperDrive on my new (to me) Power Mac G4 MDD, but did read on the external CD burner (a LaCie) that I was planning to get rid of on account of it being redundant. Obviously, I'm keeping it now, but, of course, I copied that disk to a HD and burned a fresh copy.

The only person that could change this would be, of course, Dick Cheney. Yeah, it figures. :rolleyes:


- Barrett

[Dogman]

"If digital is worthless as an archival medium, then the history of photography of the 21st century and future centuries will be lost. Because digital is the future and film is the past."

What was that quote about those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it? The future is looking pretty bleak.

[RML]

Does history have no value?

Mankind survived for millennia without many good things, like the wheel, writing, & indoor plumbing, but we weren't necessarily better off for lacking those things. I believe records, including photos, are important because history is important & you can get a better picture, pardon the pun, of the past when you have more material to work with. And while you may not see much value in photos of your grandparents or parents, your children might.

Well, we have centuries of history but we learn exactly nothing from it. Wars, hunger, violence, abuse, etc. are still rampant. So, if history is so important because we learn from it, why don't we learn from it. Reality contradicts the statement.

Is that we find history important because we're told it is, or because it really is so? If the latter, why is it important?

[varjag]

Frankly it is getting too philosophical. In essence though it seems yet another case of downplaying a problem that one can't (or unwilling) to fix.

I am happy that Capa negs were found and looking forward to seeing "new" images from the rolls. The finds like this are rare but they highlight the importance of archival qualities of a medium.

[Sparrow]

LBJ, of all people, observed “We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it” and the present is digital whether we like it or not. When my daughter fills the memory card on her little P&S she just deletes some shots that are old or unwanted, very few even get as far as a hard-drive, times change

[rxmd]

Well, we have centuries of history but we learn exactly nothing from it. Wars, hunger, violence, abuse, etc. are still rampant. So, if history is so important because we learn from it, why don't we learn from it. Reality contradicts the statement.

Is that we find history important because we're told it is, or because it really is so? If the latter, why is it important?
I think we are all familiar with the phenomenon of human ignorance.

"Lots of people go to school and don't learn anything, so why are schools important?"

They are important because they provide the possibility to learn something. Lots of people learn something from it. Others don't, but those don't invalidate the institution as such. Same thing with history and the study of it.

Philipp

[RML]

I think we are all familiar with the phenomenon of human ignorance.

"Lots of people go to school and don't learn anything, so why are schools important?"

They are important because they provide the possibility to learn something. Lots of people learn something from it. Others don't, but those don't invalidate the institution as such. Same thing with history and the study of it.

Philipp

Philipp, I don't disagree with you but still the argument sounds like circular reasoning: it's important because we can learn from/we find it important, so it's important. I find history interesting but to say that that makes it important is too pretentious, especially seen on a larger scale on a larger time frame.

That history is little or not taken as a base for learning is not ignorance. It's because the circumstances are different and no old lessons learned can be applied to these new circumstances.

I'm just a bumpkin; never studied history or philosophy, so what do I know I'm talking about? :)

[dannynono]

That history is little or not taken as a base for learning is not ignorance. It's because the circumstances are different and no old lessons learned can be applied to these new circumstances.

I can't help but think that our current U.S. administration subscribes to this belief.

[Sparrow]

So would you say the one thing we do learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history?

:)

[furcafe]

True, photos alone aren't enough. I regret that I didn't know my grandfathers better before they died; I'm sure both had some great stories to tell that I never got to hear.

When my Dad's parents died he inherited some picture albums. They were pictures of people in their finest having a professional portrait done. There are rubber stamped photographers name and addresses (Edinburgh or Glasgow) on the backs. These were photos from the 1880's to early 1900's. They were the people who came over, family and friends who did not make the trip and people who died very young. Some you can see are family by the resemblance, my Dad recognized some, but most of them... we have no idea who they are.
The pictures survived (pretty well) but the story is lost.

Steve

[MikeL]

That history is little or not taken as a base for learning is not ignorance. It's because the circumstances are different and no old lessons learned can be applied to these new circumstances.


If you are going to bring up scale RML, I'd say it is ignorant to assume circumstances are that different and old lessons can't be applied. Yes, maybe on a small scale you can no longer apply the specific lessons for a product or medium that no longer exists. But when you study history it is obvious what the suppression of learning and understanding, the ignorance of history and it's lessons, has had on human societies.

[Tuolumne]

Ok, I am a time traveller from the future and I want you all to know that all of your tiff and jpg, yes and even raw files, are still readable or convertible on your CDs, DVDs and USB 2.0 peripherals in the year 3000. Since in 3000 we are all immortal and do time travel in our spare time when we are not vacationing, we have no need of recorded images any longer. We are capable of travleing anywhere in time to see any event as it unfolds. :D

/T

[Tuolumne]

Sorry to be, um, negative, but was the reason Bill Pierce was asked onboard really to host Resurrection MCMLXXVII of the "Film Is Eternal and Digital Is Evil" thread-from-hell? Pfft...

Told you there was a flame war brewing. :)

/T

[Sparrow]

Ok, I am a time traveller from the future and I want you all to know that all of your tiff and jpg, yes and even raw files, are still readable or convertible on your CDs, DVDs and USB 2.0 peripherals in the year 3000. Since in 3000 we are all immortal and do time travel in our spare time when we are not vacationing, we have no need of recorded images any longer. We are capable of travleing anywhere in time to see any event as it unfolds. :D

/T

is film dead yet??

we need to know

(joke sorry)

[Tuolumne]

is film dead yet??

we need to know

(joke sorry)

ROFL. :D

I won't tell. :p

/T

[IGMeanwell]

Frankly it is getting too philosophical. In essence though it seems yet another case of downplaying a problem that one can't (or unwilling) to fix.

I am happy that Capa negs were found and looking forward to seeing "new" images from the rolls. The finds like this are rare but they highlight the importance of archival qualities of a medium.

Wasn't Nitrate negatives replaced with cellulose due to its instability? :p

Honestly there is alot of doom and gloom in this thread

Who is to say that along the line a company will develop not only software that can read any format from the past, but perhaps even develop a storage medium for digital files that will prove to be 99% stable and accurate?

My parents have negatives that have lasted and some that are completely useless ... they have slides are as pristine as the day they were developed and ones that haven't quite made it

Seems like that tends to be the case with harddrives, CDs, DVDs, Tape Drives, Flash Media, glass plates, film stock, and every other recording media developed in the past century

So you need to have copies of the original, copies of that, and then it would help to have a print of that... just in case

[Sparrow]

Giving up on hieroglyphics was where we really went wrong if you ask me

[MartinP]

Ahhh, everyone says hieroglyphics last well - but have you seen the wind erosion after only four millenia or so ? I think we need to come up with something better than stone as a base material. They do need a strong light source too, to keep the printing times down.

[RML]

If you are going to bring up scale RML, I'd say it is ignorant to assume circumstances are that different and old lessons can't be applied. Yes, maybe on a small scale you can no longer apply the specific lessons for a product or medium that no longer exists. But when you study history it is obvious what the suppression of learning and understanding, the ignorance of history and it's lessons, has had on human societies.

Ignorant? Even with full blown educational systems we haven't taken to heart any lesson history might have taught us. Like I said, I never studied history, but if the history of the past 100 years is anything to go by we learned squat from it.

But what is so special about history and relics from the past? I hear a lot of how important history is but no-one is actually explaining the why. My statement that history is rather unimportant is as valid as the opposite statement, and thus the importance of this Capa trove is limited. Probably 99% of the world pop. doesn't even know Capa, let alone care enough about his photos to be mildly interested in these negs. Had we not found the Rosetta stone, we'd still be mostly ignorant about the Egyptians. Had we not found these negs, we'd still be mostly ignorant about Capa during the Spanish Civil War (which most people here, I included, are totally ignorant about anyway). History only serves (poorly) to make us feel good about how "well" we progressed, how civilised we have become, but we haven't learned anything from it. Rather, we've forgotten more than we care to admit. And we're non the worse for it.

[MikeL]

My statement that history is rather unimportant is as valid as the opposite statement, and thus the importance of this Capa trove is limited.

History only serves (poorly) to make us feel good about how "well" we progressed, how civilised we have become, but we haven't learned anything from it. Rather, we've forgotten more than we care to admit. And we're non the worse for it.

My point was that the scale, whether the experience of one person, or a whole society, has value to those who care to remember. Yeah, not everyone gives a hoot, and some repeat mistakes, but that does not mean the information is not useful to others.

As for the last part, we can sit here and make these kinds of statements since we have benefited from this learning and understanding of what happened in the past. Of course we've forgotten a lot, but how can you make statement like we're non the worse for it? To put too much weight in it or being dismissive seems just as wrong.

[RML]

Of course we've forgotten a lot, but how can you make statement like we're non the worse for it? To put too much weight in it or being dismissive seems just as wrong.

The "days of yore" are the "bad old days", except when we remember it fondly and consider them the "good old days". This ambiguity alone is enough to realise that today isn't better or worse than yesterday; just different. None of us knows how the day before we were born actually was, so we can only assume we understand it from what we're told by parents and teachers. Yet we don't truly understand, as we don't know the whole picture and never will. We've never smelled the smells, heard the sounds, tasted the flavours, loved the loves, hated the hates of that day. All we do is assume we understand that day, and we assume we understand it better the more information we can lay hands on.

Still it's a futile exercise. The past is what it was, today is what it is, and tomorrow is what it will be. There's no going back to understand the full story. That's why, though I find the Capa negs really interesting (yes, I too want more information to make better sense of the past, or just to satisfy my curiosity), I believe that history has limited importance to our daily life, whether on a grand global scale or in the micro cosmos that is our private lives.

The few lessons that might be gleaned from history hardly apply to our lives today. Only in the broadest, vaguest terms, these lessons apply to today. We are formed by the day before we were born but we can never be part of that day. One may try. I rather stick to today and look at the future. It's brighter over there. I assume. :)

[furcafe]

But it's not a futile enterprise. I believe we (humanity) have learned a great deal from history & will continue to do so in the future. If history tells us only 1 thing, it's that some days are actually worse than others, much worse in fact, & that they can be prevented. Have we totally solved every problem? Of course not, but I would modestly suggest that many things have gotten better. Much better.

Yes, we will continue to make mistakes, but @ least they should be new mistakes; indeed it seems it would be criminal to make the exact same ones. And the value of history is not simply in practical damage control or prevention, it's not medicine or spinach, after all. The fact that you find it "interesting" because of your curiosity is your clue: History helps us appreciate, if not wholly understand, who we are & where we came from. It reminds you that whatever life you're leading right now isn't just about you, it's also about those who came before you & their lives. So I would say that the past is as important, albeit just as unknowable, as the future, particularly a future that, to allude to sitemistic's post that started much of this discussion, will most likely forget about all of us individually. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The "days of yore" are the "bad old days", except when we remember it fondly and consider them the "good old days". This ambiguity alone is enough to realise that today isn't better or worse than yesterday; just different. None of us knows how the day before we were born actually was, so we can only assume we understand it from what we're told by parents and teachers. Yet we don't truly understand, as we don't know the whole picture and never will. We've never smelled the smells, heard the sounds, tasted the flavours, loved the loves, hated the hates of that day. All we do is assume we understand that day, and we assume we understand it better the more information we can lay hands on.

Still it's a futile exercise. The past is what it was, today is what it is, and tomorrow is what it will be. There's no going back to understand the full story. That's why, though I find the Capa negs really interesting (yes, I too want more information to make better sense of the past, or just to satisfy my curiosity), I believe that history has limited importance to our daily life, whether on a grand global scale or in the micro cosmos that is our private lives.

The few lessons that might be gleaned from history hardly apply to our lives today. Only in the broadest, vaguest terms, these lessons apply to today. We are formed by the day before we were born but we can never be part of that day. One may try. I rather stick to today and look at the future. It's brighter over there. I assume. :)

[dannynono]

RML,

Reading a lot of Buddhist lit lately?

I applaud the thought of focusing on the current day, but you are a summation of your own personal history. From day 1 to now, your experiences and how you processed those experiences helped to form who you are, now. To separate yourself from your own past history is to not have gained (or rather retained) any knowledge at all.

The same logic scales up and applies to societal levels. no?

[RML]

RML,

Reading a lot of Buddhist lit lately?

I applaud the thought of focusing on the current day, but you are a summation of your own personal history. From day 1 to now, your experiences and how you processed those experiences helped to form who you are, now. To separate yourself from your own past history is to not have gained (or rather retained) any knowledge at all.

No Buddhism in sight right now. I'm more inclined in the very basics of it: release from lust, to increase peace of mind and happiness.

The same logic scales up and applies to societal levels. no?

I think that may be stretching things too much. Even individuals often don't learn from their own (gross) mistakes. And societies don't either. Prisons are full of repeat offenders. Spousal abuse is rampant in much of this world, and yet these women (it's mostly women who are the victims) in many cases keep coming back to their abusive husband, repeating to themselves "things will get better someday". War is waged over futilities and lies over and over again. And in the past 4000 years we've never taken the lessons from any major religion to heart, or else this world would be a much more peaceful place. History is what we left behind, discarded like an old rag. Do we need to keep coming back to the rag?

[dannynono]

And all the knowledge of all the good and bad decisions you made over a lifetime will make no difference to the future.

applying this thought to your photographic skills, you've not improved?

In a very literal sense of the above, you would display no cognitive development if you were unable to make better decisions based on your past experience. no?

[Dogman]

"History" includes more than just the events that took place at a given time. History encompasses how cultures came about and evolved and how we got to where we are. Pictures are pieces of the puzzle. We sent pictures into space to let potential other cultures have some visual knowledge of our own. It's good to see images...it helps to understand and appreciate.

Knowing stuff is better than not knowing.

I believe those who would deny the past has any influence on the present or that the present will not influence the future have failed to understand that we are all totally products of the past. The future will be whatever we make it.

[Tuolumne]

See what I told you...not only a flame war..an off-topic flame war. Some topics are just destined for that fate.

/T

[Dogman]

I don't think it's off topic. Yet. The original post concerned Capa's negatives and the archiving of pictures. Archiving, or preservation, is done for historical purposes. So the conversation took a little tangent but it's still on topic.

The flames haven't even gotten warm yet either. Just a few minor disagreements.:)

[amateriat]

"History" includes more than just the events that took place at a given time. History encompasses how cultures came about and evolved and how we got to where we are. Pictures are pieces of the puzzle. We sent pictures into space to let potential other cultures have some visual knowledge of our own. It's good to see images...it helps to understand and appreciate.

Knowing stuff is better than not knowing.

I believe those who would deny the past has any influence on the present or that the present will not influence the future have failed to understand that we are all totally products of the past. The future will be whatever we make it.
You put it better than I could at the moment...:)


- Barrett

[Tuolumne]

I don't think it's off topic. Yet. The original post concerned Capa's negatives and the archiving of pictures. Archiving, or preservation, is done for historical purposes. So the conversation took a little tangent but it's still on topic.

The flames haven't even gotten warm yet either. Just a few minor disagreements.:)

Dogman,
Speaking of minor, have you shot any sky photos of Ursa Minor lately?

/T

[Tom A]

I am still searching to find these Italy photos from 1944-45.

Go to Flickr and on the search function type in Leica8 and that should do it. Being analog I have no bloody idea how to connect it otherwise!

[Tom A]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/2222885991/

With the benign (somewhat benign) help of Tuulikki I managed to cut/paste this access! This is a series of wonderful shots from Italy 1945. Mostly done with an old Elmar 35/3.5 with a variety of films. Goes to prove one thing, all these newfangled lenses are fun to play with, but a 60+ year lens in the hand of someone who knows what he/she is doing is just as good!

[Nando]

Tom,
I hope you remain analog. :)

I gave a direct link to LeicaR8's photos in an earlier post in the thread.

Here it is...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/

Watch out the Mussolini photos... they are a bit gruesome.

Edit: ooops. For someone who's analog, you're quite a quick learner Tom. You beat me to it.

[nikola]

Thanks Tom and Nando! Great.

[Chuck Albertson]

See what I told you...not only a flame war..an off-topic flame war. Some topics are just destined for that fate.

/T

This is not a flame war--I've seen plenty, and they're not a pretty sight. This is a reasoned discussion about the need to store and retrieve images, and folks have legitimate differences about the need to do so with theirs , nothing more. If some people aren't that concerned about the longevity of their images, so be it, that's their business.

Could say more, but I'm in the midst of a severe windstorm in southern Ireland and about to lose power, so I'll let it go at that.

[Steve Litt]

Thanks for the link Tom well worth bookmarking.In regards to the Capa Lost Negative I see that on the Magnum site they are,in fact, not only Capa"s work but also negatives belonging to Gerda Taro and David Seymour.
Interesting!

Regards
Steve

[jan normandale]

Interesting thread about everything but what Bill hoped to pass on. FWIW here's a link to the NY Times piece, also a video link to a CNN piece. I expect this digital material to disappear so I've made a copy for that eventuality. I'm assuming you're here because you're interested.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/01/mexico.lost.suitcase.cnn

Art
The Capa Cache
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: January 27, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/arts/design/27kenn.html?


TO the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.


The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.

Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so. But in 1995 word began to spread that the negatives had somehow survived, after taking a journey worthy of a John le Carré novel: Paris to Marseille and then, in the hands of a Mexican general and diplomat who had served under Pancho Villa, to Mexico City.

And that is where they remained hidden for more than half a century until last month, when they made what will most likely be their final trip, to the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, founded by Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell. After years of quiet, fitful negotiations over what should be their proper home, legal title to the negatives was recently transferred to the Capa estate by descendants of the general, including a Mexican filmmaker who first saw them in the 1990s and soon realized the historical importance of what his family had.

“This really is the holy grail of Capa work,” said Brian Wallis, the center’s chief curator, who added that besides the Capa negatives, the cracked, dust-covered boxes had also been found to contain Spanish Civil War images by Gerda Taro, Robert Capa’s partner professionally and at one time personally, and by David Seymour, known as Chim, who went on to found the influential Magnum photo agency with Capa.

The discovery has sent shock waves through the photography world, not least because it is hoped that the negatives could settle once and for all a question that has dogged Capa’s legacy: whether what may be his most famous picture — and one of the most famous war photographs of all time — was staged. Known as “The Falling Soldier,” it shows a Spanish Republican militiaman reeling backward at what appears to be the instant a bullet strikes his chest or head on a hillside near Córdoba in 1936. When the picture was first published in the French magazine Vu, it created a sensation and helped crystallize support for the Republican cause.

Though the Capa biographer Richard Whelan made a persuasive case that the photograph was not faked, doubts have persisted. In part this is because Capa and Taro made no pretense of journalistic detachment during the war — they were Communist partisans of the loyalist cause — and were known to photograph staged maneuvers, a common practice at the time. A negative of the shot has never been found (it has long been reproduced from a vintage print), and the discovery of one, especially in the original sequence showing all the images taken before and after the shot, could end the debate.

But the discovery is being hailed as a huge event for more than forensic reasons. This is the formative work of a photographer who, in a century defined by warfare, played a pivotal role in defining how war was seen, bringing its horrors nearer than ever — “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” was his mantra — yet in the process rendering it more cinematic and unreal. (Capa, not surprisingly, later served a stint in Hollywood, befriending directors like Howard Hawks and romancing Ingrid Bergman.)

Capa practically invented the image of the globe-trotting war photographer, with a cigarette appended to the corner of his mouth and cameras slung over his fatigues. His fearlessness awed even his soldier subjects, and between battles he hung out with Hemingway and Steinbeck and usually drank too much, seeming to pull everything off with panache. William Saroyan wrote that he thought of Capa as “a poker player whose sideline was picture-taking.”

In a Warholian way that seems only to increase his contemporary allure, he also more or less invented himself. Born Endre Friedmann in Hungary, he and Taro, whom he met in Paris, cooked up the persona of Robert Capa — they billed him as “a famous American photographer” — to help them get assignments. He then proceeded to embody the fiction and make it true. (Taro, a German whose real name was Gerta Pohorylle, died in Spain in 1937 in a tank accident while taking pictures.)

Curators at the International Center of Photography, who have begun a months-long effort to conserve and catalog the newly discovered work, say the full story of how the negatives, some 3,500 of them, made their way to Mexico may never be known.

In 1995 Jerald R. Green, a professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York, received a letter from a Mexico City filmmaker who had just seen an exhibition of Spanish Civil War photographs sponsored in part by the college. He wrote that he had recently come into possession of an archive of nitrate negatives that had been his aunt’s, inherited from her father, Gen. Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez, who died in 1967. The general had been stationed as a diplomat in the late 1930s in Marseille, where the Mexican government, a supporter of the Republican cause, had begun helping antifascist refugees from Spain immigrate to Mexico.

From what experts have been able to piece together from archives and the research of Mr. Whelan, the biographer (who died last year), Capa apparently asked his darkroom manager, a Hungarian friend and photographer named Imre Weisz, known as Cziki, to save his negatives in 1939 or 1940, when Capa was in New York and feared his work would be destroyed.

Mr. Weisz is believed to have taken the valises to Marseille, but was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Algiers. At some point the negatives ended up with General Aguilar Gonzalez, who carried them to Mexico, where he died in 1967. It is unclear whether the general knew who had taken the pictures or what they showed; but if he did, he appears never to have tried to contact Capa or Mr. Weisz, who coincidentally ended up living the rest of his life in Mexico City, where he married the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. (Mr. Weisz died recently, in his 90s; Mr. Whelan interviewed him for his 1985 biography of Capa but did not elicit any information about the lost negatives.)

“It does seem strange in retrospect that there weren’t more efforts to locate these things,” Mr. Wallis said. “But I think they just gave them up. They were lost in the war, like so many things.”

When the photography center learned that the work might exist, it contacted the Mexican filmmaker and requested their return. But letters and phone conversations ended with no commitments, said Phillip S. Block, the center’s deputy director for programs, who added that he and others were not even sure at the beginning if the filmmaker’s claims were true, because no one had been shown the negatives. (Saying that the return of the negatives was a collective decision of the Aguilar Gonzalez family, the filmmaker asked not to be identified in this article and declined to be interviewed for it.)

Meetings with the man were scheduled, but he would fail to appear. “And then communications broke off completely for who knows what reason,” Mr. Block said. Efforts were made from time to time, unsuccessfully, to re-establish contact. But when the center began to organize new shows of Capa and Taro’s war photography, which opened last September, it decided to try again, hoping that images from the early negatives could be incorporated into the shows.

“He was never seeking money,” Mr. Wallis said of the filmmaker. “He just seemed to really want to make sure that these went to the right place.”

Frustrated, the center enlisted the help of a curator and scholar, Trisha Ziff, who has lived in Mexico City for many years. After working for weeks simply to track down the reclusive man, she began what turned out to be almost a year of discussions about the negatives.

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t let go of this,” said Ms. Ziff, interviewed by phone from Los Angeles, where she is completing a documentary about the widely reproduced image of Che Guevara based on a photograph by Alberto Korda.

“I think it was that no one before me had thought this through in the way that something this sensitive needs to be thought through,” she said. The filmmaker worried in part that people in Mexico might be critical of the negatives’ departure to the United States, regarding the images as part of their country’s deep historical connection to the Spanish Civil War. “One had to respect and honor the dilemma he was in,” she said.

In the end Ms. Ziff persuaded him to relinquish the work — “I suppose one could describe me as tenacious,” she said — while also securing a promise from the photography center to allow the filmmaker to use Capa images for a documentary he would like to make about the survival of the negatives, their journey to Mexico and his family’s role in saving them.

“I see him quite regularly,” Ms. Ziff said, “and I think he feels at peace about this now.”

In December, after two earlier good-faith deliveries of small numbers of negatives, the filmmaker finally handed Ms. Ziff the bulk of the work, and she carried it on a flight to New York herself.

“I wasn’t going to put it in a FedEx box,” she said.

“When I got these boxes it almost felt like they were vibrating in my hands,” she added. “That was the most amazing part for me.”

Mr. Wallis said that while conservation experts from the George Eastman House in Rochester are only now beginning to assess the condition of the film, it appears to be remarkably good for 70-year-old nitrate stock stored in what essentially looks like confectionery boxes.

“They seem like they were made yesterday,” he said. “They’re not brittle at all. They’re very fresh. We’ve sort of gingerly peeked at some of them just to get a sense of what’s on each roll.”

And discoveries have already been made from the boxes — one red, one green and one beige — whose contents appear to have been carefully labeled in hand-drawn grids made by Mr. Weisz or another studio assistant. Researchers have come across pictures of Hemingway and of Federico García Lorca.

The negative for one of Chim’s most famous Spanish Civil War photographs, showing a woman cradling a baby at her breast as she gazes up toward the speaker at a mass outdoor meeting in 1936, has also been found. “We were astonished to see it,” Mr. Wallis said. (The photograph, often seen as showing the woman worriedly scanning the skies for bombers, was mentioned by Susan Sontag in “Regarding the Pain of Others,” her 2003 reconsideration of ideas from her well-known treatise “On Photography,” a critical examination of images of war and suffering.)

The research could bring about a reassessment of the obscure career of Taro, one of the first female war photographers, and could lead to the determination that some pictures attributed to Capa are actually by her. The two worked closely together and labeled some of their early work with joint credit lines, sometimes making it difficult to establish authorship conclusively, Mr. Wallis said. He added that there was even a remote possibility that “The Falling Soldier” could be by Taro and not Capa.

“That’s another theory that’s been floated,” he said. “We just don’t know. To me that’s what’s so exciting about this material. There are so many questions and so many questions not even yet posed that they may answer.”

Ultimately, Mr. Wallis said, the discovery is momentous because it is the raw material from the birth of modern war photography itself.

“Capa established a mode and the method of depicting war in these photographs, of the photographer not being an observer but being in the battle, and that became the standard that audiences and editors from then on demanded,” he said. “Anything else, and it looked like you were just sitting on the sidelines. And that visual revolution he embodied took place right here, in these early pictures.”



http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/01/mexico.lost.suitcase.cnn

[PlantedTao]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/2222885991/

With the benign (somewhat benign) help of Tuulikki I managed to cut/paste this access! This is a series of wonderful shots from Italy 1945. Mostly done with an old Elmar 35/3.5 with a variety of films. Goes to prove one thing, all these newfangled lenses are fun to play with, but a 60+ year lens in the hand of someone who knows what he/she is doing is just as good!

good stuff...looking at those will keep me busy. I love film and everything about it...
especially after development, it's like I'm a kid again and it is Christmas morning. That has to be similar to the feeling of finding Capa's negs... the anticipation to see the image must of been immense. Digital has never provided that... too quick.

[neelin]

A few days ago someone started a wonderful thread on the discovery of the Capa negs and referred back to the NYT article. The thread moved from my site and then disappeared, but I thought it was a good thread.

http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/ziff/


Okay, let's see how long it takes this "Mexican Suitcase" to disappear. Here is more storey & some of THE photos.

Robert

[Nando]

That's wonderful Robert. Thanks for sharing the link.

[Chuck Albertson]

According to the British Journal of Photography, the Barbican Art Gallery (Silk Street, City of London) will have some of the "Lost Capas" on exhibit from October 17 through January 25. However, the musuem says it has been informed by ICP that the "Mexican Suitcase" collection does not contain any additional photos from the "falling soldier" series--so the debate can rage on, for those so inclined.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

[photovdz]

May be Leica should make a special edition of a IIIa for that occasion with red and black curtains ;-) instead of selling humidors ;-)... by the way... don't say "falling soldier" but "falling milician" as He (the guy on the picture and may be Robert Capa too... ) would have felt insulted to be called soldier...

Being serious for a while, one of the bad point of digital archives (except their volatility in time) is that usually only the best pictures are kept... I still have the negs of my early pictures ('72) and I 'm in the process of scanning them... and I find today gems, things I didn't thought interesting at that time...
I know that today when I shoot digital i don't keep record of the misses, the trial and errors... and that I make 10 times more pictures for the same results.... (but for ease, my little samsung NV10 is always in my pocket, where my rollei 35 was before... nice camera but very ugly flash)

[sonofdanang]

Backing up:
I burn CDs for jpg and DVDs only when necessary (RAW projects) and dup them. The CD spec seems to be a little more robust than DVDs. However, both of them should be considered short-term back-up, offsetting a card/computer failure/theft until more robust backups (HDD) are made.

Affordable RAID - a decent terabyte system can be had for around 400 dollars - might interest those who want to avoid the internet. I take one on the road as a back-up to my Macbook.

Finally I back up online. That way, I leave the management of technology to the hosting service. I periodically review the agreement with the hosting service to insure that they provide the necessary technology and upgrades to bridge developments in storage technology. I use a plain-vanilla hosting service that also hosts my website. Transfer is via ftp. I have experienced no problems so far. The annual cost is less than a week's budget of 35mm T-Max or roughly equivalent to two boxes of Velvia in 4x5.

As to the future readability of legacy formats, there is some-turning-to-plenty of software around that do conversions, though I anguish every once in a while over RAW formats from some of the non-mainstream cameras that I use. For those, I convert/print/scan etc and then archive as above.

Before I smartened up (I do this for part of my daily bread) and availed myself of proper online backup, in addition to the CD backup I would back up stuff to my gmail accounts. I had several of them. Searchable. Then file sizes got too big. Average size of a gmail account those days was around 2 gig. Realistically, it wasn't a solution when file sizes started climbing - it certainly wont work with anything other than jpg under 10 mb. But if you're outputting smallish jpg files, say under 2 mb and you're not doing this for a living it might be worth considering for those on a budget. You need a fast, stable connection, and even then the time it takes is brutal. And risky, trusting Google - it may violate the terms of service. The advantage is that you don't have to manage the hardware part of the tech. File re-sizing behind the scenes may be an issue too. As I say I don't do that anymore.

From time to time a couple of labs have offered a tailored-to-photog online backup service. I don't see the advantage in my case. Maybe others have more experience with this though. For now my ftp-accessible online solution works.

[Bill Pierce]

Thanks for that detailed information. I think it's exceptionally useful.

My own system is somewhat similar. It ends up with 2 hard disc copies of each image or variation on it (the RAID system) and a back up hard disc copy at the in-laws in case my house burns down (your internet storage). I'm also in the process of making as many prints as possible (silver from old negatives, black and white pigment from materials with a good rating from Henry Wilhelm) because the "archival" prints will always be available, even if slightly faded, if the digital ever becomes unretrievable. Besides, most people are not interested in looking at a stack of hard discs.

Bill

[sonofdanang]

Thanks for that detailed information. I think it's exceptionally useful.

My own system is somewhat similar. ....
Bill

My pleasure, Bill. And thank you for taking the time on this forum.

I've always felt that the data storage/retrieval issue was a lot like banking - we eventually outsourced the sock under the mattress.

There is a lot of hilarious prose written about sociological response to banks when they first appeared. Data is a form of wealth and to consign it to the ether is a leap of faith much like handing your money to a teller. Handing one's digitized works to an organization that you have no perceived control over is a challenge, despite, or perhaps because of, our experience with banks. I guess I see online back up as just another version of the safety-deposit box or storage locker.

I am not uninterested in the technology, but I am disinterested enough to know that I don't want to do things to the technology, I want to do things with the technology - where it's appropriate. While I can spend some time in fascination with shiny mechanical objects, marveling at the capabilities of, and indeed taking intrinsic pleasure in some of this stuff we use - cameras, computers, darkrooms, etc.. I find that when I spend too much time focussed on the technology rather than the work, I become anxious and distracted. I hate humping around that external hard drive when I'm on the road but it is roughly analogous to keeping film in a cooler. One of the easiest and most profitable off-loadings of technology-focussed tasks that I can think of is assigning the management of the hardware-upgrade-evaluation-acquisition aspect of digital negative and print storage to someone else.

For those of us who have 'less in front than behind', time is precious.

Not having owned a television for a very long time, I cannot speak with authority, but from what my friends tell me, online storage is cheaper than cable.

[Jim Evidon]

While cleaning out some cupboards the other day, I ran across some long forgotten K64 slides from 1967 (42 years ago) of my kids while we were vacationing in Yosemite. I picked out two slides of my son; one in front of a very bokeh'd waterfall and the other sitting in a mossy bough of a large tree with the light coming down from the upper right mainly illuminating him at age 5 in a pensive mood. I scanned them and found the color still pretty good even though they had not been in archival storage and required only minor CS2 adjustment.

So, this is right on point with the arguments made by Bill Pierce regarding archiving your photos. If it had been digital, how many times over the years would I had to have recopied to CD, DVD, or even hard disc to have any sort of an image, assuming that technology would have been available since 1967? Point made.

BTW, I am a heavy user of digital but at age 75 and a busy amateur photographer, I am really no longer as concerned about extended archival life of images as I used to be. Nevertheless, I am getting back into film if only to extend my photographic scope and skills. But to the younger user and to the professional, there is really no contest between film and digital if archiving is a priority.

[PMCC]

The Mexican Suitcase Method: a helluva a way to store and retrieve negatives, but whatever works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/arts/design/30capa.html?hp

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/04/29/arts/20090429_SUITCASE_SLIDESHOW_index.html

[CameraQuest]

The Mexican Suitcase Method: a helluva a way to store and retrieve negatives, but whatever works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/arts/design/30capa.html?hp

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/04/29/arts/20090429_SUITCASE_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Its a great article with great pics.

What works,works. I'm packing my Mexican Suitcase to be found in 50 years as you read this.

Stephen

[Bruin]

A quick note on external hard drives...

When you're not using it, turn it OFF. You might have to cut the power to it somehow (get a switch between the adapter and outlet). All hard disks have a MTBF (mean time between failures) rating, meaning on average it will fail once in so many thousands of hours. For a drive that's running 24/7 that might be a few years. Just turn the thing off when you're not using it, and you'll extend it's usable life by A LOT.

Not a perfect solution, but it helps :)

[amateriat]

Kevin: A lot depends on your total computer setup. In my case, all my external drives, except one, spin down after a given period of inactivity; they're still powered-up, just not spinning. (The exception is my network drive, which is linked to three computers, and needs to be available 24/7 for backup and remote file access. This is somewhat old-school in enterprise environments, but rather new frontier in home systems such as mine.)

There's also the ongoing argument over whether computers and related components suffer greater wear and tear being repeatedly switched on and off or simply left on. From an energy cost and environmental standpoint, the former is preferred, but this still leaves a few questions unanswered.

Also, there are hard drives, and there are hard drives. There is such a thing as a heavier-duty, "server-class" drive that's built to a somewhat tougher standard than the 1TB numbers on sale at Staples for just a C-note. Of course, they cost somewhat more, but are likely quite worth it.

By contrast, that Mexican Suitcase looks pretty damn good, eh?


- Barrett

[maddoc]

Three years ago my external backup hard-disk died exactly from this, keeping it switched off except for the backup procedure. Once, while switching it on, it hiccuped and the partition table got corrupted... :bang: It took me some time, effort and money to recover the data (well, most of them ...)

The Mexican suitcase sounds better to me ...

[peterm1]

There is an article in todays copy of the Melbourne Age about the suitcase and its contents for anyone in Oz or elsewhere who is interested in knowing more.

The link

http://www.theage.com.au/world/photo-find-gives-modern-edge-to-capas-images-20090430-aowk.html

[Harry Lime]

The Mexican suitcase sounds better to me ...

I primarily shoot film, but every once and a while I'll head out with the devil's tool for some color work. When I shoot digital, I don't take a gazillion photos, but tend to shoot as I do with film.

My friends laugh at me, because I'll head out with 2 x 2GB cards (144 shots) and barely fill one... Anyone ever hear stories about when the old Speed Graphic guys were forced to switch over to Nikons or similar? They would come back from a shoot with like 2 or 4 shots on a roll. 'Here kid, print both of em'!'

Anyhow, my number of digital keepers is relatively low. I back up the full days shoot on a small RAID, but the real winners end up on slow and therefore cheap memory cards from a reputable maker. Every once and while SANDISK or a similar company will discontinue a particular card and blow them out at rock bottom prices. I'll grab a few gigs, which will hold me for a good while.

I figure I'll toss the cards and a card reader in a shoe box and see what happens... Once I accidentally put a SD card though the washing machine and dryer and it still worked. Try that with a hard disk...

[Bill Pierce]

Anyone ever hear stories about when the old Speed Graphic guys were forced to switch over to Nikons or similar? They would come back from a shoot with like 2 or 4 shots on a roll. 'Here kid, print both of em'!'

When Dirck Halstead first started as a teen ager with UPI, he was sent to Dallas to work under Charlie McCarty, a picture editor who is a legend in our racket. Anyway, one of Dirck's first calls was a fire. Anxious to do a good job, he exposed between 15 and 20 holders in his Speed Graphic, each with two sheets of film.

When he got back to the office, McCarty took the holders and methodically pulled the dark slide and exposed the film in the first holder, the second holder and, finally, all the holders but one. He turned to Dirck and said, "Develop this one."

By the way, if you want to hear one of the old shooters who, indeed, did shoot only one or two frames on a roll of film in his Nikon when he set his Speed Graphic down go to

http://www.eddieadamsworkshop.com/info/?c=audio

and listen to the selection by Louie Liotta of the Daily News.

(As to the storage of digital images, that's almost worth its own thread.)