Thinking of the future:

[chippy]

What about Adobe DNG?

 

[Warren_L]

What about Adobe DNG?

Here's an interesting thread on DP Review talking about DNG. I don't know enough about this to say either way.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=15744012

 

[Puffer Fish]

This is such an ugly issue - I doubt that CD's have 10years life in them, and DVD's will shortly be in the same boat. Formats are not any better. Make lots of high durability prints and hope there is not a fire.

 

[Larry C]

If the lament is that we can't have a reliable physical representation of our work, why not process the image to the best available quality, just as great great grandpa did with his tintype, and transfer it to a high grade color negative for storage and future photographic reprocessing?
One thing I can agree with is the need for multiple forms of back-up. I used to have great trust in digital storage. Then my hard drive died and took all of my pictures, family records, class notes and lesson plans with it. I try to put all my pictures on both hard drive and CD or DVD now in both RAW and finished JPEG or PSD formats.

 

[alo100]

This is not a news, someone suggested this before... not exactly about RAW files, but in general, file format, and software to read those files. That was a practical issue to talk about, e.g. some of the libraries has started to discard the old books. One of the solution mentioned at that time was, besides making a text file, make a make a copy with micro-film also.

 

[MasterGoa]

www.irfanview.com

This is my suggestion.

MG

 

[PapaBob]

What about Adobe DNG?

When Adobe released DNG it promised to support it forever. As long as I have a computer that can run the Adobe RAW Converter (ACR) I can have Jpegs, TIFFs or PSDs any time I want them. I now shoot exclusively raw and convert to DNG for manipulation and storage.

The cost of bulk storage on portable drives has come way down. I have two removable drive media for my home computer that I back my picture files to. One is in the computer and one is in a home safe and I swap them each backup. I also have two seagate portable drives I use for data in the office that can plug into any PC via USB connector. After a major photo project the master photo folder gets copied at home on a Seagage and stored in the office.

I have CDs and DVDs that I have burned and have kept at home. I have yet to experience a CD failure and think the shelf life of CDs will be better than projected. I hear a lot of anecdotes but no sceintific studies of shelf life. If you are really worried then buy archival quality gold CDs or DVDs to store the real important stuff. Yes they cost a few bucks but your valuable images are worth it.

RAID is a great idea.

Just my thoughts.

---Bob

 

[Diver Dennis]

I back up on several hard drives. I use 2 of these... http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10384 Plus 2 250GB drives on my editing computer.

If you are really serious and have a lot... http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10600

These are todays prices. They will be down again in a few months.

 

[vondo]

http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

"So here is my mission: Write and maintain an ANSI C program that decodes any raw image from any digital camera on any computer running any operating system."

One always has to be careful about making 50-year predictions in computing but dcraw is about as robust a solution as there is.

 

[kiwachen]

I envy all of you cause of the ability to discuss RAW. My camera doesnt have RAW (Canon S80). But for back up purposes I kept everything on a extra hard drive stored in a controlled environment along with DVD backup.