Hello Alan,

Well, overall, I have quite a lot of film stored, in glassine or 35mm
sleeves, and kept in the dark in an internal cupboard in my house.  I'm
not too sure about saying that the images look ok to the eye.  I
recently had occasion to scan some ektacolor and kodacolor negatives
that were shot in Macau around 1998.  They 'looked' fine, but they
scanned horribly, with deep magenta shadows and greeny-yellow mid and
lighter tones, practically useless without extensive color correction,
and even then they did not look good at all.

I wonder if some people in this group have actually scanned old
negatives that 'looked' fine, and what results they got.

The scanner BTW calibrates up ok, and newish negs produce great scans,
but older negs, not so good.

Of course this may well be down to the neg processing, specially where
'stabilizing' was used instead of a good old-fashioned wash.  I have
never liked that idea, but with commercial processing you take what you get.

I am much happier with digital, where the entire process is under my
control, and where images don't degrade with copying or storage, and
diligent care is taken with backup techniques.

Colin D.

I think that if I were doing it all over again, knowing what I know now, I
would keep all my film under dry nitrogen gas......You can buy a bottle of
N2 for very little money, and it should last for years, Unless you are
messing with your film all the time. Under an atmosphere of dry nitrogen,
the colors should last effectively forever, and there should be no
development of mould spots on the film, either. Maintaining only a pound or
less pressure over atmospheric should keep all air out of any case you keep
it in, and a bottle of nitrogen would last for many years under those
conditions.

P'raps you should brush up your reading skills.  I did not say they
won't last, I said they are not needed to last.  I was talking at a
professional level, not the level of some amateur who wants the negs or
trannies to last without archival scans.

--

Colin D.

Rol_Lei Nut wrote,on my timestamp of 2/07/2009 12:38 PM:

Bingo!

Jeesus.  Not only is that not an equation - so your math knowledge is
suspect - your memory is overwhelmed by your vitriolic rejoinders.
Where have I asked anybody to front up with proof of anything?  Perhaps
you should ask your shrink to recommend a specialist for you.

Troll? hahahahaha.  You post here far more than I do, buster.  You are
the resident expert troll hereabouts.  Congratulations.

Colin D.

You've got to remember that ol' Bill is so old that he can't hear
anything above 8Khz and anything below about 500Hz.

You have Wharfedales on your DSLR??! Man, that's HEAVY! Gitzo supported,
I suppose?

ColinD wrote,on my timestamp of 2/07/2009 1:28 PM:

Ever heard of inter-modulation distortion?  A slight detail in that bunch you
label "so on" that might be, oh, let me see: slightly relevant to the CD versus
vinyl argument?  But let's not allow reality to sip in unnoticed...

Can you show me a good image taken with your Wharfedales?

True.
But in audio, at the cost, nothing beats my Marantz amp and CD, the home-made
and tuned bass-reflex speakers with Response cones and hand-tuned x-over.

Yes, I still like the soft, rounded sound of my turntable and its Shure
cartridge. But the CD player is very close if not superior.

I found that the CD itself is the biggest difference here.  I have two CDs of
the same musical performance - Al di Meola and his guitar - one very well
recorded and filtered, another sounds so harsh, it causes scratches in the
windows every time I play it.

But like you said: "one man's meat etc.
Personally, I prefer Kanga Bangas.

Right.  Everything is up to what you're used to, or willing to try.
There was a study some years ago showing that consumers, in blind
taste tests,  preferred canned tomato juice to that stored in glass.
The glass is inert and imparts nothing to the juice, while the metal
of the cans imparted a "can" flavor.  I guess some people just prefer
their music with pops and clicks.  I grew up with vinyl records, but
I'd never go back to them.

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Well, yes, but Bill raised the 78 rpm shellac example, so I ran with
that.  Of course later recordings around the late 80's are better, but
you're still stuck with the mechanical limitations of the medium.  Two I
didn't mention are stylus wear (when do you decide to change the
stylus?) and track speed.  Outer tracks can be good, but inner tracks of
full recordings can have a linear speed of one-third or even less of the
outer tracks, with inevitable loss of high frequencies and increased
distortion.

I can't really understand why CD's are judged not as good as vinyl.  The
distortion is way less, the frequency range is stable from beginning to
end and up to 20 kHz, there are no mechanical resonances to worry about,
the dynamic range is much greater, and so on.
People became used to the sound of vinyl just as they became used to the
look of silver-based photography, and the clean sound of CD upset some
just as did digital photography.  My preference is for good CD's,
150-watt RMS amplifiers, and good speakers (mine are Wharfedale) with
sub bass. Likewise for digital photography.

One man's meat etc.

Of course, I have CD's. and no longer bother with Vinyl recordings, for all
the reasons listed above, but the sheer fidelity of a fresh record from the
fifties is still remarkable to me. And the low noise of this particular 78
was astounding.....I don't know how they got rid of the record scratch, but
all it takes is one to prove the point......