The Word "Archival" Seems to Have Vanished From Photographic Discussion

The word "archival" seems to have vanished from photographic discussion in the last few years.
Is is a problem that has been magically solved?
Or does it not matter to anyone anymore?

Well when we only shot film and had to store it in glassine or newer plastic sleeves we had to worry about degradation. Nowadays with images on hard drives the new buzz word is "backup." So few people print these days permanence isn't relevant to most.

Blind ignorance to the fact that

• magnetic media is known to deteriorate
  
• hardware may not plug into the latest PCs because the interfaces are not built in any longer
  

Yes I think flowrider has it, much of what we needed to worry about regarding the presivation of of the first generation copy of the image nolonger apply. It's now a matter of data backup, and replication. Unless you are still shooting on film.

I do actually print quite a lot of my images, and many of them are so cheap to have made that I'm quite happy using cheap basic frames etc to hang them. On the other hand when I have top quality prints done, well then I'll use quality wood (not MDF) frames with museum quality mat and backing etc, there is a big difference between paying £1.20 for a 16×12 and paying £30 for the same sized print. Of course I'm doing this for myself, not paying customers.

Alan

Wilt wrote in post #18131047
Blind ignorance to the fact that

• magnetic media is known to deteriorate
  
• hardware may not plug into the latest PCs because the interfaces are not built in any longer
  

...even if photo pigments are 'permanent'

Yes, all backups are temporary but can be regularly replicated and widely distributed. Even with only the technologies now widely available the archival problem is as solved as we are willing to take the effort to make it solved.

In digital media, the only products I recall being called archival were paper and inks for printing, and optical media.

I feel like the optical media was a bit of a joke, so that leaves paper and ink which have come a long way indeed. low or acid free papers and long lasting inks add up to archival prints.

It also used to mean pigment vs. dye, but that is no longer true as many dye inks are now rated for the century mark with the correct papers.

Oddly, I have seen a lot of use of the word "Archival" to mean simply "Giclee" which in itself is a really pretentious name for printing on canvas.

This is a terrible use of the word "archival" for a number of reasons, not least of which is what aspect of printing in a manner that will mush up every single fine detail during process is "archival"

Wilt wrote in post #18131047
Blind ignorance to the fact that

• magnetic media is known to deteriorate
  
• hardware may not plug into the latest PCs because the interfaces are not built in any longer
  

...even if photo pigments are 'permanent'

This is why you

• Backup early, often, and off-site
  
• Migrate data to newer storage systems before the old ones become unreadable. There's always a long overlap period.
  

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18131141
In digital media, the only products I recall being called archival were paper and inks for printing, and optical media.

I feel like the optical media was a bit of a joke, so that leaves paper and ink which have come a long way indeed. low or acid free papers and long lasting inks add up to archival prints.

It also used to mean pigment vs. dye, but that is no longer true as many dye inks are now rated for the century mark with the correct papers.

Oddly, I have seen a lot of use of the word "Archival" to mean simply "Giclee" which in itself is a really pretentious name for printing on canvas.

This is a terrible use of the word "archival" for a number of reasons, not least of which is what aspect of printing in a manner that will mush up every single fine detail during process is "archival"

Giclee is just a fancy way of saying "inkjet", because telling people you have a "Fine Art Giclee Print" sounds so much more sophisticated and exotic than saying you have a simple, blue collar "inkjet" print. Because hey, it sounds French so it must be expensive, right?

Yes, inkjet, but in the world of art galleries, it is specifically used for inkjet on canvas. Not paper.
But I do see that the internet appears to disagree with this assertion.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18131165
Yes, inkjet, but in the world of art galleries, it is specifically used for inkjet on canvas. Not paper.

Out here in the desert it's used to sell garishly over-saturated pictures of desert sunsets and rusty cars to unsuspecting tourists.

mike_d wrote in post #18131159
This is why you

• Backup early, often, and off-site
  
• Migrate data to newer storage systems before the old ones become unreadable. There's always a long overlap period.
  

...that second point can be very time intensive, especially in view of the fact that there are some pros on POTN who have proclaimed that they have 25000 shots from a single wedding.

Wilt wrote in post #18131219
...that second point can be very time intensive, especially in view of the fact that there are some pros on POTN who have proclaimed that they have 25000 shots from a single wedding.

and this is why I have given up on "Archival storage" and rely 100% on hard drives now.
I used to burn disc after disc, but stopped when I realized;

1- Optical media craps out before magnetic media (hard drive platters) do. (not including motors etc)

2- Copying Optical media takes FAR longer with more messing about in between than copying hard drives. Migrating from one HD to another is by far the fastest way of copying data available.

3- Magnetic media is on a continuous track of halving in cost per MB every few years. So as libraries increase in size, the cost remains fairly constant.

4- Hard drives remain accessible with fewer interface changes much longer than most other media.

Wilt wrote in post #18131219
...that second point can be very time intensive, especially in view of the fact that there are some pros on POTN who have proclaimed that they have 25000 shots from a single wedding.

Well hopefully they're not keeping 25,000 shots from a single wedding.

Yes, migrating data can take time, but its the price of not losing everything. Its also a good opportunity to clean house. The actual time consuming process of moving bits around doesn't require any human interaction so it can be run overnight or over a weekend.

<tinfoilhat>
I think the other point, is, though, that all of the optical/magnetic media in the world means absolutely nothing if the power is off, for some reason. Also, your hard drives formatted for modern OSes may not work with future PCs formatted for new tech, etc and finding something that will read that old drive, disc, etc may become more and more difficult the larger the gulf is between the tech in question and the tech being used.

Think if you found a 5.25 floppy from years ago in a box and don't have the computer that it went with in storage any longer. It could be quite difficult to retrieve data from it.

</tinfoilhat>

For the most part we aren't *likely*, as a society to get to that point any time soon; but with the death of physical, non-powered media we are definitely at a disadvantage for future rediscoveries of data, etc.

If we lost the ability to use our computer to read our hard drives I'd imagine we'd have larger issues than seeing out old photos.