For the one person that couldn't as...
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NYC – Kamil Needs Some Help
I Am An Image Pack-Rat – Why I Almost Never Get Rid of Images
When I was shooting film for everything I almost never got rid of any negatives. A combination of both irrational reasons as well as rational reasons combined to make me keep everything I shot. From a rational point of view if I was shooting roll film It was more trouble to cut individual negatives out of the strip rather than just filing the whole thing. For sheet film if there were technical faults or aesthetic faults I would make notes on what went wrong for educational purposes – mine mostly.
As time wore on and I made it a practice of reviewing contact sheets of things that I had shot years previously a few things occurred to me over and over again. The first thing was that a lot of the “faults” are not more than a passing stylistic fancy that you happen to have at a certain point in time. Second, other more technical faults are either irrelevant for a particular image or are so secondary to the image that you don’t really care about them down the road. Third, images that you may have decided are superior for inane reasons, like they are sharper or have no subject motion, are not nearly as good as the one right next to it that happens to have a little subject motion. This can be true of any image I guess but I have found it especially true of people.
Case in point. When I first shot the images included with this post of my 3 year old daughter I knew that they were not going to be great due to the fact that I grabbed my camera that was loaded with
Kodak Plus-X film and just started shooting. Plus-X is ISO 125 at best and this was an indoor shot of an animated 3 year old. As I fired off a couple of shots I “knew” there was going to be subject movement given that I was shooting at 1/30. I developed the film in PMK Pyro because all of the other exposures on that roll were perfectly exposed for that developer. The first prints that I made did not include these two. In fact they included none of the 5 shots in this series because what I “knew” was true – there was a ton of motion blur.
Years later when I was going through contact sheets I decided to print these two images. Turns out I like them way more than my other perfect images on this roll. Heck I forget where the original prints that I made of “perfect” frames are.
I guess my point here with digital is that I am still an image pack-rat and almost never get rid of images. I get rid of images that I take for e-bay auctions and such but almost never delete anything that has people in them. Especially people that I care about. I know there are two schools of thought on this but given that storage is small and cheap why not keep them?
My advise is to leave the things alone – at least for a couple of years.
Thoughts?
RB
RB
I couldn’t agree more.
As you say, especially with people they increase in value with each passing year.
One of the things I love about digital (and Aperture in particular) is how easy it is to keep, organize, find,and to go back and “mine” old shoots for overlooked images.
As well as taking a second shot at interpreting those “what was I thinking” frames.
All this applies equally to our film archive, but is more difficult in direct proportion to our conciousness in the organization of our analog past.
Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Michael,
I got a free dinner and bar tab picked up from an old negative that I had never printed one time. Maybe I’ll relay a very short version of the story.
RB
Don’t forget that with digital, specifically RAW files, there are always new and updated versions of software and RAW converters that may be worth sending old pictures back through to get better or different results.
A perfect example (in theory) would be an updated RAW processor in a new version of Aperture. I have quite a few images that I would like to “reprocess” to see if colors improve and the like. A lens distortion correction module would also warrant a “reprocess”. Also, newer and better image manipulation software is always “just around the corner” and they will work just as well with your old digital files as the ones that you will take tomorrow.
I can imagine the excitement when digital scanners came along (or became practical) that would allow you to work with older film negatives in image manipulation software and print as needed, no darkroom required.
However, a fear that I have personally is that manufacturers will no longer support a particular camera’s RAW files in new software/updates. No big deal, just a massive conversion to jpg will ensue.
Jason,
Agreed with a couple of exceptions –
1) hate to break the news to you but film scanners are here.
2) 16-bit TIFF or DNG would be a better choice for your storage format needs.
3) From what you are searching for it really sounds to me like you need to drop the $119 on a copy of NX2. The RAW conversions, automatic CA, automatic distortion correction, automatic lens corrections of all types via a database of Nikon lenses will knock your socks off.
RB
RB,
I already have a copy of NX2 that I won as a door prize at a Nikon School. Great for Nikon images, worthless for about everything else to do with that image. Reminds me of DxO Optics Pro, but that’s another issue.
I know of film scanners, B&H catalogs make sure of that!!! I was speaking of film scanners in retrospect to the context of the article. When film scanners came out, I imagine that there was a good bit of excitement at being able to manipulate your film images on the computer. In other words, old images were now “new”.
Agreed on the TIFF or DNG. Wish the file sizes were smaller, but storage is cheap and getting cheaper by the second.
Jason,
I was saying that very tongue in cheek. As for the NX2, there was an update just a little while ago and all of the auto lens corrections are even better.
If you have not tried them you should – Amazing. I really wish Aperture had the Nikon RAW processor, the NX2 lens corrections, and the Nik control points. It would be a dream.
RB
Maybe Nikon & Apple will get together for just a bit of collaboration, It doesn’t even have to be a big formal thing.
I wouldn’t call it likely, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
I believe Apple knows how much market share the slow development of Aperture has cost them. I think they also know that they have one last shot, and are well positioned hardware wise (virtually every machine has gotten more standard memory and a MUCH beefier graphics processor. I’m only speculating but with snow leopard, 64 bits, and open CL, I suspect many doors could open for Aperture.
But then again I’m an optimist by nature.
Capture NX2 & Adobe ACR from Aperture
A company named Brushed Pixel is offering Catapult – software that claims to allow the use of NX or ACR to convert files from within Aperture.http://brushedpixel.com/
Michael,
Good info but I will put money it renders TIFF’s as do all the plug-ins so far so it is “destructive” – meaning every adjustment that you do to an NEF is one time only or you end up with another giant TIFF. Not to much better than the people that I know that do all their processing in NX2 then use Aperture as a rather sophisticated file browser.
RB
Oooops,
just looked at your link in my email – yep that is how it works.
RB
Yes it’s still Tiffs, if it wasn’t it would really be news. But what I think is more significant is that a non-Apple commercial product is being introduced to address the increasingly held opinion that the Aperture Converter has “Issues” with NEF’s.
This cannot be lost on apple. When combined with the recent announcement from Adobe about the inclusion of “opcodes” in ACR to allow a degree of customization to the Raw conversion process, creates significant pressure on Apple to respond.
That’s probably a good thing for image quality in general, and for Aperture users in particular.