Opinion: If digital camera makers see a big market in camera accessories, why not take advantage of the bigger after-market in online photo storage?Some good news for GretagMacbeth customers, and some reflections on data storage for photographers.
First, GretagMacbeth. Gretag has developed some new accessory plastics which should improve the handling of the EyeOne spectrophotometer. There is a new measurement ruler which provides a sled for the spectro unit, and a paper holder which will lock paper up to 3mm in thickness in place under the new ruler, while providing a white backing surface. These new plastics will be supplied, together with a case, to all customers purchasing an EyeOne print profiling solution.
I applaud this move by Gretag—the EyeOne has always been accepted by the industry as a precision instrument manufactured to high standards, but I've described it as finicky to use. Now however, the new teflon patches on the Rev B spectro, its added speed, and especially the redesigned accessory plastics should bring all Gretag customers the ease of use and error-free operation they expect from high-grade equipment.
According to a Gretag U.S. spokesperson, the new plastics are fully compatible with the older Rev A units. And all existing customers with EyeOne units will be able to purchase the new plastics and case through their dealers, for the very reasonable sum of $100 in the U.S., and E100 in Europe. I think this modestly priced upgrade will be a bestseller.
I expect the new plastics upgrade kit will reach the market around a month from now. By the way, Gretag is also very close now to distributing the EyeOne IO automated scanning table intended for those who need to profile on a regular basis. This strange-looking contraption should obviate the old Spectrolino/Spectroscan bundle for all but the most specialized applications.
Now for some thoughts about image storage.
At the moment, Joe Photographer is not really being offered a way to archive his photographs, except by writing them to his PC's hard disk. What then? Joe becomes responsible for buying supplementary disk devices, or burning everything to DVD—soon his closet fills up with drive boxes, or DVD packs.
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In fact, at a rate of 8 gigabytes a day, Joe is going to be adding a hard drive about every month, and that's not even counting backups.
There are several inconvenient aspects associated with this state of affairs. Let's examine some of the most obvious flaws of disk-in-closet storage.
Firstly, most of Joe's imagery is now effectively offline, and cannot be searched. Even if Joe were to construct adequate online catalogs, accessing a given hi-rez image still involves selecting the right disk or DVD.
And when Joe needs to access several images, the problem can worsen: The quick extraction of a transverse selection becomes very cumbersome, as photographs that belong to different temporal strata will be archived on different devices.
Then, there is the permanence of the disks, be they hard drives or DVDs: Will they last 10 years? Twenty? Will a new computer be able to connect to an old drive?
Joe's issues are not entirely academic: I have five-year-old pictures stored on Mac SCSI disks, but my new Macintosh computers do not even have a SCSI port to connect the old drives!
Even worse, when in Tokyo this summer I burnt my travel photos to DVD disks daily. On my return to Paris, I found that my desktop Mac cannot read the DVDs burnt by my laptop. Will next year's desktop read them?
Many high-powered minds are focused on image-search engines, as the Internet has made search a lucrative preliminary to image sales. However, I wonder why the photo industry has left storage to the hard disk and computer manufacturers.
Film had the double function of imprinting with an image, but also of storing it in a form that was readable for decades. Now, if today's digital camera makers have made a lot of money supplying sensors that electronically supply the first part of film's functionality, surely there's money to be made on the other half too?
Edmund Ronald has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, and he is currently on a sabbatical as a photographer in Paris.
Edmund Ronald's blog can be found at www.monitor-calibration.net.
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