Feature: Despite their popularity, Digital Photos have 5 big strikes against them
Motivation: The industry has recently moved to fix three of the problems

There is no denying the features and attractions of digital photos - they allow photographers instant feedback on their shots which time and again is invaluable in getting the image right and improving one's photography over time. In addition the operational costs of taking pictures relative to film is reduced substantially and camera makers now charge a premium for their digital cameras as can be seen across the line but particularly for digital SLRs which typically cost 2-5 times their film camera equivalents. Finally, digital post-processing of images in photo editors like Corel PaintShop Pro and Adobe Photoshop allow users to manipulate images in ways that are either tedious or nigh-impossible to do in wet film darkroom labs.

So there should be no surprise that wet film photography is quickly becoming a niche category - truly serving some specialized markets well; but rapidly falling out of the mainstream. However, Digital Photos do have four major strikes against them and potentially harmful Achilles heals. Fortunately, within the last year, the digital camera industry is starting to address all of the problems and has effectively neutralized two.

The Five Strikes Against Digital Photos

1 - The first and major problem is that digital photos do not have an archival means of storage to match color slides 100 years life or black and white negatives 150++ years of life. Digital image files on CDs last between 3-8 years of shelf life before starting to drop images even in the best of storage conditions; the results on DVDs are mixed but not substantially better. Disk hard drives have MTBF-mean time between failures reaching 100,000 hours which is equivalent to 10 years of continuous uptime. But with targeted power-up/power-down, it is estimated that disk storage can be brought up effectively to 30-50 years storage life. Ditto for tape drives.

However, there is one fly in the ointment. Both disk and tape technology plus supporting operating systems are moving so rapidly that it is impossible for me to find a PC that can read my 12 year old Compaq disk drives with all their images locked (forever ?) on them. In effect electronic obsolescence can shorten the life of storage media as effectively and sometimes more surely than bugs, crashes, or material deterioration.

2 - Poor shelf-life of color and B+W prints has been the second strike against digital images. In the rush to market, the issue of long-lasting prints was effectively ignored. Digital print manufacturers and suppliers and their customers had to relearn the lessons of using stable dyes, acid-free papers, and/or uv-diminishing coatings in digital prints which had been garnered over a long period in the film printing world. So it is no surprise that Kodak is fast becoming a major power in digital image printing.

3 - Dependence on all-electronics in camera systems is the third strike against digital images. These electronics are not only dependent on maintaining battery power but also have tighter operating ranges. Now naturally occurring high and low temperatures or humidity, dust, plus exposure to water and other chemical contaminants can restrict where and how digital images can be taken. This photographer continues to use the Nikon FM1 camera precisely because its only dependence on electronics is for the meter readings which act as a guide to manual shutter and aperture settings.

4 - Rapid obsolescence of electronic technologies is the fourth strike against digital images. Right now in digital images there are at least a dozen RAW file image formats plus at least 30 image standards with JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, TIFF, and GIF among the leading standards. Likewise for camera image sensors there is CCD and CMOS leading the way. However, at least a dozen technologies are wending their way to commercialization.

Also Microsoft is proposing a new alternative to JPEG and rumors of new electronic sensors have been rippling constantly through the digital camera industry for the past 3-5 years. We have already seen the problem that obsolescence poses simply for the storage of images. Consider the whole digital camera system open to profound change within 5 years. My bet is that movie cameras will displace digital cameras in major image-taking segments in about 3-5 years time. A second possible future change - new highly compressed storage formats and/or media because a good JPEG image takes 2-4MB to store; a good written 2000-4000 word story with DTP formatting including vector-based images takes 1/10th the storage.

5-Digital introduces its own micro deviations. All enthusiasts who worked in dakrooms became familair with reciprocity, buffering solutions plus a thousand and one film+chemical processing idiosyncracies. Well digital has its own "delights". Moire patterns, edge vignetting, low luminance noise, gamut cuttoff are just a few. But perhaps more insidious is the phenomenon of digital drifting. When an edited image file is saved there are many very small shifts, unnoticed by the editor, that get can carried onto the newly saved original. After 10 or or more edits and saves, the changed image can look distinctly "drifted" from the original - even with very high rsolution images.

So these are the 5 disruptors or Achilles Heels that can adversely effect digital photography over the next 5-10 years. However, the industry has already recognized and reacted with varying degrees of effectiveness to all of them. We examine the industry's response in the order of effectiveness.

Patching up Achilles Heels

The problem that the digital camera vendors have achieved the greatest success in solving is digital print quality. Over the past 16-20 months, vendors such as Canon, Epson, Kodak and many others have taken great strides to improve the archival quality of both color and B+W prints. Archival papers have not only become widely available but also at reasonably economic prices. For example, Kodak's Endura line of color print papers are used by many photo services like Mpix or Kodak Easyshare at very competitive prices - and these prints have estimated 100 year life span in home display conditions, 200 years in controlled conditions.

Likewise the dyes used in color inkjet printing and the toners in color laser printing have also improved substantially for their color fidelity at the same time as delivering archival lifetimes. Again archival lifetimes of close to 100 years have been tested for and achieved by a number of dyes and toners being offered by Epson, HP, Kodak, Lexmark and others. Finally following their film counterparts, the digital photo industry now offers a variety of coating and finishing options that protect prints from chemical and environmental harm while further enhancing protection from ultraviolet and other sun-light or radiation damage.

However, buyers still have to beware. Sometimes to achieve low price advantage in the market, printer vendors or printing services cut corners on archival quality. Now this is fine as long as they are upfront about it, offer both versions and inform customers of the trade-offs. Unfortunately some vendors simply do not do so. Caveat emptor - Buyer beware. Be sure to ask your print service or paper and ink supplier what is the archival rating for their goods and services. If it does not meet your needs, look elsewhere because enough vendors are offering long (10-30 years) or archival( approaching 100 years) lifetime for their prints.

Progress on Processing of Images

There are two very popular image editors that have taken straight aim at "digital drifting". Both Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture offer completely non-destructive editing of images. All the edit commands are stored in a database and so the original image file is never changed - users see the editted version while the original remains safe and intact. Ditto for for all "export" or "save" operations - the original remains intact and unchanged.

Adobe Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro and other layering capable programs in effect do the same - the changes to the original image are just added on another layer leaving the lowest, original imager layer untouched. Adjustment masks and adjustment layers allow users to do an ever broader set of exposure and color corrections non-destructively. Finally, Adobe's Smart-objects extend that non-destructive protection to an even wider range of effects and image filtering.

Progress on Storage of Images

The third area where there has been some substantial progress is in finding archival storage media. First CD vendors and DVD vendors will say their media have archival lifetimes. But as the Wall Street Journal points out that is not exactly true. And having about 5 CDs that have lost images in less than 3 years of careful storage I agree with the Wall Street Journal. Now tape vendors will immediately argue that they have archival media, go away, problem solved. And I will counter argue that I have three different tape drives ready to mount in my PCs for which I can no longer find drivers for except for Win 3.x and Win 95 - operating systems that Microsoft even swears at and no longer supports. So I maintain a Teac tape unit on a dual boot PC whose sole purpose is to "back up" some of my images and files. But that will change very shortly as I now have three more viable options for storing images.

Option 1 is to store my images on a website like Flickr, Kodak Easyshare, or other similar gallery service (see our reviews here and here). For between $25-50 per year, the vendors provide not only unlimited image storage with extensive album/gallery services plus tagging/search functions - but also daily secondary backup and recovery services. Now I don't know exactly what medium they are using - RAID drives, offsite services, massive redundant tape systems and other redundant storage methods have been claimed. But after 40 years of enterprise computing, I know these vendors can tap into some very solid back up and recovery services no matter what underline method is used. So I actively use Image Gallery websites for backup services.

Option 2 is to seriously consider the new Iomega StoreCenter RAID drive for $800. Iomega Storecenter has 1TB or better in capacity in RAID drive configurations. 1TB (TeraByte) is equal to 1000 GBs(GigaByte=1billion bytes) . Compare that to the 5GBs a DVD typically stores. 1TB accommodates about 100,000 RAW images from a 10MPixel camera. The new Samsung NV10 handheld or new Canon Rebel XTi offer 10MPixel images. RAID is very important because redundancy is built in. Even if two of the drives fail, the remaining drive will preserve all the stored images. At $900 this is a serious attack on the digital image storage problem.

What makes the StorCenter even more interesting is RAID drive capabilities linked with Gigabit Ethernet plus Wireless access. So PCs can connect to the Storcenter either directly with ultrahigh speed connections (100 or 1000Mbps) or over fairly robust 802.11.9g wireless connections. The unit has two USB2 ports one of which can accommodate a Printer for networked Print Services. Not too shabby.

But of course I am paranoid, so option 3 is to try out the new CDs and DVDs from Delkin and MAM-A. Delkin is claiming for its Archival Gold with Scratch Guard line of CDs 300year life and for DVD-Rs to last 100 years according to ANSI/PIMA guideline tests. The cost of the CD-R and DVD-Rs are approximately $2 and $4 each respectively in quantities of 10 or more. MAM-A products are slightly lower to comparably priced. Both CD and DVDs are attractive options because the technology for CDs particularly is not likely to change while the ability to read older CDs and DVDs is not likely to change.

However, there is some risk for both CD and DVDs. It is another example of the rapid obsolescence of electronic "standards". Currently, the DVD and electronics industry is in a battle over BlueRay versus HD-DVD format standards(update: BlueRay appears to have won). My concern is how long will the older standards be supported after the dust settles on the new high density DVD standards. Think it is not a problem ? Try to find a high density 5 1/4" floppy disk reader. This leads to our lingering problems of all electronics and rapid obsolescence

Continuing Problems in Digital Photography

All electronics - how can that be a problem ? Well when the battery power runs out or one of the electronic components fails in cold, wet/humid or dusty weather you know you have a problem. But sometimes things gracefully degrade like the AutoFocus quitting on my Canon Rebel - the cameras kept working and I could take pictures by doing my own manual focus. But at the Molson Indy where I needed fast focus help, that was a problem. But other times, as in the case of my friend's electronic image stabilized lens, the whole system (the lens in this case) went down.

So then your equipment may only be as good as the least reliable electronic component. Not good. And because electronic equipment and sensors are sensitive to temperature extremes or contamination by humidity, water, dust or other chemical contaminants - the possibility of a glitch goes up. Finally, to add insult to injury warranties last only 1 year, and the cost of repairs of a single part can be very high. For example, to fix my Canon Rebel's autofocus component cost over 1/3 the price of a brand new Rebel camera. Unfortunately, this trend is not limited to digital cameras and printers, but prevalent throughout the electronics industry. So until consumers like you and I demand and pay for better, I expect the all-electronics Achilles Heel to persist for quite some time.

The second problem is obsolescence. When a part fails on my Canon A1 or my Nikon FM1 I cringe. Just getting the part let alone the labor and service charges often assault my sense of loyalty and history for the two cameras. This is old age obsolescence though - the parts just wear out or breakdown because of continued usage over nearly 20 years time. Like my bod, it is to be be expected. However, there are two more types of obsolescence - call them Future Shlock and Rapid Progress. Marketers want you to repurchase a new camera or printer a bit more sooner than your wallet wants or is able. Both types of obsolescence help bring that about.

"Progress is our most important product" happens because most companies need to compete on new technologies and breakthroughs. It has a name - disruptive marketing through high-intensity innovation. And it can bring the wonders that are digital cameras. But also it can bring you a top of the line Nikon film camera worth about 1/3 or 1/4 of what it was originally bought for 4-5 years ago. The pace of change in technology with the fundamental breakthroughs of digital control and wireless connections will probably produce a number of innovative but also "disruptive" breakthroughs. For example I will not be surprised if a hybrid movie/still camera largely replaces popular point and shoot cameras in the next 2-5 years. What does that mean for current digital camera owners - the same as what happened to Syquest removable disk owners over a 3-6 year period. In and out of fashion and usability very quickly.

First, digital point and shoot cameras, already marginal for repairs, will become more so. Parts will be soo expensive, satisfied users will be encouraged to upgrade rgather then repair their "old" cameras. Second, ven old but working cameras, may find that the software or hardware that allows them to export their images to a PC no longer works.

Finally, Rapid Progress contributes to the lack of standards in some areas of digital photography. This means there are many competing technologies some of which will die off. Examples are a common digital camera RAW format or LightFlash accessory standard or even image file format standard. So users can be on a treadmill constantly updating software, accessories, and then basic capital like lenses, camera body, printers, flash units, etc.

But also there can be a learning curve associated with getting to the new and better. Film camera users certainly find that true in using both handheld and digital cameras. The workflow is new, offers many new opportunities but also presents steep learning curves in getting the most out of their equipment and deciding how to get prints. So, for better or for worse, it is likely that digital image takers will have to live with the latter two Achilles Heels of all-electronics risks and rapid obsolescence for some time to come.

Summary

Now, more than ever before in digital image processing, users have to choose carefully. As always one wants to match digital imaging to your own pleasures and preferences. I know film photographers who resolutely avoid digital cameras but embrace the Photoshop world of post processing. They scan their slide and negatives in to preserve their images - and then use Photoshop, Corel, Flash and Xara among other tools. Others have already completely switched over to digital video camcorders - plucking out the exact frames they want in Premiere, After Effects or Camtasia Studio. Then they use some of the exceptional image size converters in PaintShop Pro, Snagit, or Fractal Design to either shrink or expand the image to their desired working size. And then they are off .... In sum, once you know the digital road's trade-offs and potential hazards, then users are in the best position to take their own unique and creative trip into the digital image domains.