I have just read an interesting article about a photographer who took some review shots of Bob Dylan back in 1979. After three decades he found an exposed roll of Ilford HP5. This was a favourite film of mine in those days.
He had the film developed and the images were crystal clear. Now, having had to go digital myself due to client requirements some six years ago, I recently had a very scary experience with my first external hard dive. I won't bore you with the techy bit but I nearly lost three years of stored images. Apparantly it had become "corrupted" and it was an expensive process to get them reclaimed and I had to purchase another hard drive to store them on.
Digital photography is undoubtedly fantastic but I find myself wondering about its archival ability. The problem for me is that I have no idea how it all works whereas I do understand the old silver halide photography. I have around 250,000 negatives on file going back to the early seventies and as an experiment, I scanned the one of this green keeper at the Hong Kong Open from 1980. It was in perfect condition and had been shot on Ilford HP5.
I wonder if my digital images will still be as good in 2040 if they haven't already disappeared in the ether. The old romance of going into the darkroom is sadly gone.
