Am curious about the negative longevity of Ilford XP2 films as opposed to conventional black & white negatives. I suppose if longevity was a problem one could scan them to cd for longer life? Any comments? Thanks in advance!

GQR

-- Anonymous, May 30, 1997

Answers

Don't think that copying negatives onto electronic media will extend their lives. In fact, the real life of a CD Rom or other device may be much shorter. Assuming a color neg is good for 30+ years under proper care, it has been suggested that electronic media may be good for only 5-10 years due to changes in technology. Remember Beta tape? There's great article in Scientific American about this very matter. It is: Jeff Rothenberg, "Ensuring Longevity of Digital Documents", Scientific American, January, 1995, pp. 42-47. A very eye-opening article indeed!!

-- Anonymous, May 30, 1997

I was at a seminar with Kodaks scientific folks dealing with digital technology. They mentioned in response to this type of question to use traditional silver based images for anything important. We KNOW it will last with care. They stated that any digital anything right now is a gamble. The latest generation of Optical-magneto? storage media is "losing" bits within 5 years. Then, will we even be able to read the stuff in another 10 years or so? The analogy used was 8 track tapes. I tend to go with their assessment.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 1997