As mentioned in an earlier post, there are certain media which contain data, but are not readily (read economically) readable. At my former employer, we devote large areas of climate controlled rooms and vaults, to protect corporate documents, and not just the charter and others. We have millions of punched cards, tapes, discs, floppies, etc., which require storage for the life of the company.

Now, the problem comes with the need for appropriate working hardware (magnetic and paper tape, disc, and card readers). Now, add to that the operating systems which were used to write that data. Are the original operating systems even recoverable, and at what cost?

Just askin'.

I wish I had the digital images I have lost due to confiscation of external hard drives by TSA agents and outright HD failures. Granted digital is far more convenient. In fact a fair number of fine art photographers have been outputting digitally printed negatives and then contact printing those negatives in platinum/paladium, carbon, and other historic processes. Why would they do that? Because of several reasons. The first and foremost is the historic process is head and shoulders above anything that can be a digital print. Second is the permanence of the final print. Third is the much higher price that a print produced in that way commands. In the final analysis it is horses for courses.

I started in photography in 1972 with a Pentax Spotmatic II and a Super Takumar 50mm f1.4. I took thousands of photos with this rig along with a Pentax 35mm wide angle and a Lentar Zoom lens. I went digital 15 years ago buying a Canon XT 8 megapixel body and some kind of zoom lens that I do not remember. Currently I have a Canon 90d with a 24-105L. I also have a couple other lenses to fill in the focal lengths before and after that lens.

Digital photography is great - instant viewing of the image to show composition, sharpness, exposure and DOF. But the thing I love most about digital photography is the ability to reset ISO on the go. In the old film days a roll of film had a given ISO (ASA in those days) and you could not change it until the roll of film was complete. And of course the film types of different ISO’s were limited - 25, 64, 100, 125 speeds were common. TriX which was B&W was 400. These limited ISO’s are the reason most cameras came with a prime lens with a large aperture, f1.4 -2.0 were very common. You could push some films to 1000 if you needed to but then you experienced lots of noise. Today you can set the ISO as high as 3000-4000 without a significant amount of noise. I’ve heard of some people using ISO 10,000 and lowering noise in post. What did we do in the old days when we had 3 exposures left on the roll and the sun was fading? We did not get the shot.

I understand 35mm film photography is making a comeback. I don’t understand that. I will never go back. How about you?

Well, I have a better idea. Since your suggestion involves a subjective determination you must surely understand such an evaluation proves nothing.

I do have a fact based determination to offer. I am in favor of you and I photography a single exposure of a resolution target. That way we can absolutely determine the best resolving ability of your camera and my camera and lens. Additionally we both photograph a single exposure of 28 step Stouffer tablet. That would clearly and factually determine the dynamic range of both formats... No individual assessments, no stitched photographs. You come prepared with the EXIF data to support your single exposure and I provide the camera negative to support my evidence. I'll even give you a break and only use 5X7 format.

Since you feel so strongly about this, let's attach a wager (make it worth my while),. We'll let Joe hold the wagers. What do you say? Are you up for it?