Why store images?
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March 29, 2008, 09:15 AM
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I have started this new conversation rather than tacking it on to the conversation about storing digital images. The reason for storing images could, of course, affect the way the images are stored so what choices do we have and why? I will leave others to fill in the gaps and write just for myself. In the old days I kept negative film in a folder and colour transparencies in a box. Then there were the black and white prints which were made for all to see (holidays, places of interest, significant events) and prints made for other reasons. Nowadays, I make images to satisfy my own interests as well as for the same reasons as in the old days but, they are all prepared digitally.
Those for my own interest are stored on the hard drive and eventually transferred onto a CD. Some images I print for others who have an interest in them and I share images either by thumbnails on various sites or full images on my own web site. I would add that there are lots of images which I discard as not having any value or interest to myself or anyone else.
Enough of my ramblings and I would be very interested to read the views of others.
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March 29, 2008, 12:44 PM
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You are correct in that your reason for storing would be a determining factor in how you store your photos. If you only take photographs for your own pleasure and your family's pleasure then storing them as smaller Jpeg images on your computer or on cds would be fine but, if you want to use them in a commercial manner at some point, then smaller jpeg images would not do as many photo editors would not accept them for publishing purposes. For that you will need much larger TIFF or PNG files. Those will take up much more space and you will want to keep the original RAW image (also very large) taking up even more space. That is where the need for much more storage space as well as backup space comes into play. The verdict is still out on the longevity of CDs as storage units. That is why I was asking in the other thread about the other possibilities for storing photos.
This is one area that you guys from the film era may have really had an advantage over the digital age is in storage. As you said, you were able to store the negatives in folders and the images (slides) in boxes. Storage problem solved, as long as nothing happened to your home or the location they were stored, they were safe forever. Now, with so much that can happen to the digital storage media I am not sure you can have enough redundancy to your backing up of the data.
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March 29, 2008, 11:41 PM
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I cannot help but wonder with the technology moving the way it is (very fast) that someday all photo editors might just accept jpegs as editorial and commercial usage. Someone may soon come up with ways to create large very high resolution images starting with a low resolution jpeg. Does anyone see that as a possibility?
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March 30, 2008, 12:40 AM
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I think a more likely scenario is that images will be created in formats and resolutions universally acceptable for editorial and commercial usage, and things like storage size will not matter because costs for storage and transmittal will become negligable.
Creating hi-res out of lo-res is ..ummm, wishful thinking, sorta like turning lead into gold. ;-)
..jim
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March 30, 2008, 09:04 AM
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creating hi-res from lo-res isn't wishful thinking: isn't possible. It is what your scanner try to do when saving with a resolution higer than its sensor capability: it makes an educated guess based upon local "continuity" (tech term: interpolation). Sometimes it gives good results, sometimes not: it depends on the regularity of the image.
Additionally: Jpeg isn't only lo-res, is also lossy, i.e. it makes a compressione of the original image that doesn't guarantee to preserve the original data; it's a quality vs. quantity tradeoff: higher the compression, higher the risk of losing image quality.
Last but not least: JPG isn't a format, but a family of formats, with different features.
I hope it can clarify the discussion.
As jgsack said: the solution is the falling price of storage.The second solution is the introduction of some standard RAW format, whose reader could be integrated in the browsers.
My 2 cents
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March 30, 2008, 09:21 AM
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Your last comment is very true but whether it will ever happen is, I suppose, a matter of competition between the different camera manufacturers.
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plus
March 30, 2008, 09:22 AM
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I remember seeing a plugin for a large non-free graphics program that used fractals to enlarge a small phorograph ( http://www.amazon.com/Onone-Software-GFS-50211-Genuine-Fractals/dp/B000QXD2TC?tag=particculturf-20). Of course, this method does seem to have some downfalls. And we do have the liquid rescale plugin, so there may be ways that are discovered to do some decent resizing from small photographs. It would also make a lot more sense if storage became larger and less expensive (i.e. 500 MegaPixel cameras).
Computer, green tea, hot...
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March 30, 2008, 10:01 AM
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Probably you should differ. Private photos, just taken with a "small" DigiCam might fit for normal print-outs as pictures. Sometimes the jpgs don't not meet the quality as expected, but they are quite okay.
Not only the quality of the lenses built in the cameras but also the chip inside and the "digital zoom" have an deep influence on the quality. I call it "Rauschen", even some of you understand something else.
In my opinion only high quality Digital Mirror Reflex Cameras meet the requirements of journal printing. The same is with the "old fashioned" analog Cameras bought for a few Euro.
It's just a question of the price. Do you wish to have better chips and lenses inside your digital Cam, then you must spend more for them. Therefor I don't see it as a "matter of competition between the different camera manufactures" as littletank wrote.
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March 30, 2008, 10:42 AM
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I was simply referring to the idea that RAW should be standardised not anything else. As far as sizes of chips and so on is concerned, consider how much information is stored an a single piece of 35mm film. Achieve that digitally at a reasonable price, couple it with good quality optics and an accurate camera body and all the other bits and pieces necessary to convert and record the bits and bytes and you are well on your way to catching up with the how things were not so long ago.
However, what is wrong with shooting on 35mm colour reversal film, professionally processing the film and then scanning into your computer, apart from a relatively short delay in getting the result? Quality for quality the camera would be cheaper and the results far superior to those from many an expensive, digital camera. No need for RAW and storage is very simple.
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March 30, 2008, 12:17 PM
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I am not arguing with anyones comments here. When I said that someday maybe the technology would be there to change low resolution into a high resolution shot, I was just meaning that technology changes so much so fast that one should never rule out possibilities.
I remember when I was a teenager transistor circuits were the big thing and everything was transistor. On the television show "Star Trek" they find this ship dead in space and the character Spock makes this observation that the ship had outdated "bulky" transistor circuits. At that time I had to laugh because transistors were so much the thing at that time and so much advanced from the vacuum tubes they replaced I couldn't see how they could be replaced with newer smaller technology at the time. Fast forward to today, if we were still using transistors for everything today, my computer and yours would take up an entire room in your house to be able to do what these little boxes do now.
Maybe there will come a standard raw format to use- which would be nice. Perhaps the storage and transportation of images electronically will be so fast and cheap that size doesn't matter. I don't know what the answers will be but, it will be very interesting to see where it goes from here.
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March 30, 2008, 05:52 PM
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On the resolution matter, there are indeed plenty of examples of interpolation --some "smarter" than others-- that do good-to-astounding jobs.
What I would like to emphasize, though, is that these processes are approximating the information that would have existed in a higher resolution source.
Future-guessing is stimulating and fun, but I wanted to suggest that speculations which seem to violate some fundamental principle are less worthy of dreaming about.
Cheers,
..jim
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March 30, 2008, 06:21 PM
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I hope to never see 500MP cameras!!! Given the dimensions of a "portable" camera, there is a phisical limit on sensor size. More pixels means they have to be more little and this adds to noise. If noone finds a way to 3D-packing pixels, adding more pixels will diminuish pics quality. There are indeed studies that demonstrate that we already surpassed the peak limit on lots of P&S cameras.
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March 30, 2008, 07:52 PM
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I make no apologies for coming back to what I have already written or implied. Can anyone show me an image produced from a digital camera without enhancement or manipulation which is as sharp,and accurate as that from 35mm film? Digitally, can you produce an acceptable print equivalent to enlarging a 35mm negative to 50cm X 40cm without highly specialised equipment? Film stores the information and film is easy to store.
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April 02, 2008, 08:11 PM
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Mainly for comment, I have posted an image which I have copied from an old colour transparency. I accept that photographically it is just a record shot but I am interested in the amount of detail that can be seen. Look carefully in front of the church you can see cars and at least one person. As for the chimneys, I think they are fantastic. I may have another slide somewhere of chimneys, I must look it out.
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April 02, 2008, 08:53 PM
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Indisputably, film has been the standard setter for a long time and arguably continues to outperform digital on a quality per cost basis.
Now this is not the forum for a film vs digital debate, but there seem to be many who say the achievable quality championship has already passed over to digital and the final tipping point for quality/cost is at most dependent on time (improving economies of scale).
For example, there is a nice book "Stephan Johnson on Digital Photography" (2006, O'Reilly ISBN 0-596-52370-X) with a whole Chapter 4: "New Heights of Image Quality" on the subject.
It's possible there are some examples on his website,
http://www.sjphoto.com/index.shtml
but even if not, he has some real nice pictures! :-)
Now that I have had my $.02 worth of course ;-) ..
.. I would suggest the topic probably doesn't merit arguing _here_.
Regards,
..jim
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April 02, 2008, 09:04 PM
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On the subject of stable (and compact, convenient) storage, littletank has a good point that film seems to offer benefits compared to digital archiving techniques so far developed. Perhaps if/when film cameras are ever (mostly) displaced by digital, we may see a resurrection of computer-output-microfilm for storage?
Still, film media has some finite lifetime (unknown?), and there does not exist a lossless copying process. I would bet that technology will ultimately find a commonplace digital solution, but there's no denying that depending on technology for retrieval is somewhat disturbing -- compared to being able to view analog images directly. Everything has its tradeoffs, I guess.
Regards,
..jim
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