M8 Review by Tom Abrahamsson

[Tim Gray]

Originally Posted by Socke

Matthew, I wouldn`t bet on 30 years, but the CDs I burnt in 1994 are still readable in my dual layer DVD burner and the next generation of optical media drives will be compatible to those. I haven`t seen a blue ray or HD-DVD player yet, but compatibility to CDs and DVDs is built into these devices, so no problem for the next five years.

I've certainly lost data that was foolishly stored on 1 CD... I've also lost info that was on floppies and on hard drives, as I'm sure we all have. The nice thing about digital is obviously that you can make as many copies as you like and store them nilly-willy all over the place. The fact of the matter is that it takes a bit of follow through to actually make multiple copies and store them in different locations.

If most people did the digital equivalent of throwing their pictures in a shoe box in the closet, I don't think those images would survive 10 or 15 years. I know I burn my digital photos to 2 dvds (stored in separate locations) and have them stored on 2 hard drives, but do most casual photographers do that?

[EllitoGuy]

Originally Posted by Tim Gray

I've certainly lost data that was foolishly stored on 1 CD... I've also lost info that was on floppies and on hard drives, as I'm sure we all have. The nice thing about digital is obviously that you can make as many copies as you like and store them nilly-willy all over the place. The fact of the matter is that it takes a bit of follow through to actually make multiple copies and store them in different locations.

If most people did the digital equivalent of throwing their pictures in a shoe box in the closet, I don't think those images would survive 10 or 15 years. I know I burn my digital photos to 2 dvds (stored in separate locations) and have them stored on 2 hard drives, but do most casual photographers do that?

well they start to once they lose their stuff hehe

[rpsawin]

Originally Posted by Socke

Asus board from Ebay 25 Euro, Intel Celeron 1400 CPU from Ebay 60 Euro, big tower case salvaged from a defect computer in the office, silent powersupply 60 Euro, two 4 port S-ATA cards from a store nearby 35 Euro, LG dual layer DVD burner 60 Euro, 2 256MB SDRAM modules 75 Euro, ATI VGA card salvaged, 2 120GB drives 210 Euro and 2 240 GB drives 190 Euro.

RAM, powersupply and drives were new when bought, everything else was two to six years old. I could have used the old powersupply but I wanted a very silent one powerfull enough to feed eight harddisks and a DVD-RAM. Since I use it for storing all of my data I bought new drives 120 drives two years ago and new 240 drives this year, don't know what is current in 2008.

It doesn't need a monitor since it is hooked up to my TV and I have a TV card in it so it works as an harddiskrecorder, too.

So, let's look at it this way, Internetrouter, mailserver, fileserver, homeentertainment for a total of 715 Euro spent over two years and if it weren't for my videos I'd have saved the 190 Euro for the new drives this year.

A roll of slide film including processing costs somewhere between 5 and 15 Euros here, you wouldn't want to duplicate Velvia 50 on Senia 100 and Kodachrome 64 on Elitechrome 100, would you?

So for my use I come to an average of 8 Euro per roll, since I allways have two copies on DVD thats 16 Euro per set of duplicates.
1 roll of slides a week in a year is more expensive than my storage setup and there is enough money left to pay for the DVDs.

I scan with a Canon FS2710 scanner hooked up to a 2001 Fujitsu Siemens PC with 512MB RAM and a 1400MHz Athlon CPU, the scaner was made when a 233MHz Pentium II with 128 MB RAM and a 10GByte harddisk was considered a very fast mashine, so my vintage setup is certainly fast enough to scan my slides and I got the computer for free, I bought the Acer 17" TFT for 200 Euro in march to replace another 17" TFT from 2001 which shows some signs of use now.

I have all the programs and the operating system in sourcecode, in the more than unlikely case that nobody makes Linux distributions anymore, I just port the source to whatever mashine is available in 10 years.

There is just one small fault in my reasoning, I scan with 2720dpi on a very old scanner so I don't get the best out of my slides but good enough fior my needs. If you need more than that and you have to buy a drum scanner or an Imacon, slides may be cheaper.

So you agree that there is a cost associated with digital storage.

Bob

[Socke]

Originally Posted by rpsawin

So you agree that there is a cost associated with digital storage.

Bob

Sure, cheaper than duplicating slides or negs, but there are cost which rise with your expectations.

[jaapv]

Originally Posted by Socke

I don't think thats possible, I'd miss the developing at least

Three spray bottles, Volker, spray on your monitor during your workflow: developer at RAW conversion, stop-bath during PS and fixer for saving!

[Socke]

Originally Posted by jaapv

Three spray bottles, Volker, spray on your monitor during your workflow: developer at RAW conversion, stop-bath during PS and fixer for saving!

And I can use my lensbrush to clean my monitor, sounds convincing.

[NoTx]

Originally Posted by Socke

Matthew, I wouldn`t bet on 30 years, but the CDs I burnt in 1994 are still readable in my dual layer DVD burner and the next generation of optical media drives will be compatible to those. I haven`t seen a blue ray or HD-DVD player yet, but compatibility to CDs and DVDs is built into these devices, so no problem for the next five years.

Um... CD's are a huge crapshoot in longevity. Many will fail in a year, others in 5, 10 or maybe 20. BUt you often just don't know. Has to do with oxidation.

[wagman]

The Canon Pro 9500 13 x 19 with 10 Lucia inks coming in January might the printer of black and white to look at. Under $1000.

[pfogle]

Originally Posted by NoTx

Um... CD's are a huge crapshoot in longevity. Many will fail in a year, others in 5, 10 or maybe 20. BUt you often just don't know. Has to do with oxidation.

I wouldn't touch CDs - I thought about it, and even burned a hundred or so before I realised how nutty it is - suppose (as seems to be the case) that even with the best available CDs, two or three percent fail in the first five years - how the heck can you tell which are dud? You'd have to play them all to check them. And if you decide to dupe them, you have to play them all as well. Hopeless

So now I use multiple hard drives - dead easy to run disk check once in a while, and just ditch any drive that shows errors. I keep at least two identical drives, so I can just make a new copy, and making another backup copy is automatic - drag and drop or use RAID.

If you check them once every few years (the archive ones, that is, which are not online) you will automatically keep the format up to date, so hardware obsolescence isn't a problem either. And if it looks as though computers are going out of fashion, well, you could then have them all printed to film

[Magnus]

CD storage is crap ... I agree with that.

I store all my digital and scanned negative on harddiks, and at appr. 100$ for 250Gb this is quite an ok solution

[Socke]

Phil, I'll switch to external harddrives next weekend!

Just went through 68 DVDs and 51 CDs this weekend, checking the first and copying the latter to DVD.

The folders and sleeves I keep my DVDs in aren'T much cheaper than external harddisks, add the DVDs and harddisks are cheap.

I just realized that the 2GB CF cards for my Canon D60 are cheaper than the equivilant amount of slides, I could buy more cards and store those

[Bas]

I think there are a few more things to consider.

1) I live in Argentina -one of the so-called third world countries-. Here, only 25% percent of people have access to a computer (and that 25% percent includes the ones that may not have a personal computer but can access one in a cafe, etc). 70% of people have taken at least one picture in their lifes. Here, the result of the incoming digital era is that fewer people have access to photography. Digital cameras everywhere, while film cameras are getting scarce. There is a social issue with this... I don't think most people here know in person this regions, but you give a person who has no knowledge on computers a film camera and a nearby lab, and this person will show you some pictures next time you see him. At worst, will give you film with 36 exposures. Give him a computer and a digicam, and probably the computer will die in less than a year, and they won't use the digicam because most of the time they forgot to recharge the batteries or erased everything in the memory. Heck people, photography is a way to communicate things. Digital photography restricts the access to this kind of media. I still have to found a digital camera that renders the same image quality of a 30USD Olympus Stylus Epic P&S and a roll of Velvia or XP2 Super.

2) Not everyone makes backups often, not everyone even knows that oxidation can -and will- kill a CD or any metal-based storage (hard disks are supposedly vacuum closed, but the seals will eventually die). Even my girlfriend think that recording info in a CD is safe at long term (and when I say long term I mean, for example, that I will record the files I have got from my first semester at university and when I finish university that CD will be readable). If I take one seagate 256 MB 15 year old HD which hasn't been used in the last 12 years, and I'll be lucky if the MBR is readable. And I'm sorry, but all advances in HD technology have been related to their capacity and their data transfer speed. The magnets have remained the same.

3) Always remember to tell someone, of all your HDs, which one is the older one so who takes care of your stuff will back up that one first, then inform this person about the particularities of each one -different transfer speeds, different interfaces, etc (thinking a little, I better leave my girlfriend and start dating someone who's a computer enthusiast), then inform what the heck is in each one of those -let's assume, given the storage capacity increase in the last years- 5 Terabytes hard disks, and don't forget to explain the criteria you used to organize everything in those disks -date, topic, camera, etc-. Just in case everything goes wrong and you're not there to take care of your images. By far I prefer to get someone to look at my negs holders and have an idea of what the heck did I shot, with the security that, except a flood, a fire -which, by the way, would also kill my computer- they'll be fine in the holder. I just have to leave a little paper bag of silica gel and it's done. I'm pretty sure that if my father would have shot digital pictures of me when I was 2 years old, I wouln't be seeing those beautiful colors in very nice optical made copies with the negs just in the end of the album in perfect shape.

I'm not saying "hey, let's flame digital". Heck if I'd work at a newspaper, I'd have a digital for sure. I just think that there are some points off in this discussion -as the impact of the digital era in the access to photography, the storage longevity and the personal care you have to take-.

Sometimes, specially at forums, I ask myself "-really, everyone has a computer in those countries? but if poverty is killing everyone, not to talk about famine"... I know history tends to be eurocentric -yes, we all know who was the king of the German Empire in 1447, or that in 1648 the most important international fact was the Westfalia peace. But very few know the Chinese dinasties at those times, what was happening in Asia, the American civilizations (ok, by 1648 most american civilizations were converted to christianism and made slaves, but that's another story). But, do we still need to be so technology-centric? As I said... I prefer to get someone to look in my negs holder and know what did I shoot, instead of having someone to dig in my HD for a folder that, I forgot, was on the other HD... wait, which one? I also forgot to label them after the last backup...

Now... back to Tom's report.... No one sounds astonished by the quality of the M8. I think we all -and I include myself, even if I have no chance of spending 5000 USD AND a lens in the camera- expected that when Leica released their digital camera it would kick the ass of every other digital camera in the market and made a proper use of that 35mm f/2 summicron worth 2000 USD. And Erwin Puts said it clearly -in real life, it's the almost the same as a 5D, in numbers the 5D is better-. Considering what the camera is, I think it's awesome. A digital rangefinder with analog controls for shutter speed and aperture. Ok, we had that in the RD-1, but it was a 5MPixel camera, now outdated, with some issues. Leica must got it right. Heck, it's not full frame. Ok... half way between the 1.5 CF of the RD-1 and full frame, fair enough if you want to put 5000 USD in that.

Personally, I'll wait. If it was full frame, and if I only had the money, I'd go for it.

Cheers everyone,
Sebastian.