On 10-03-09 15:56 , Richard Knoppow wrote:

Digital properly refers to a method of storage and
transmission that samples the original continuous data in a
discontinuous way and further codes it into numbers. There

snipped

The main advantages of "digital" photography is that it
is electronic and would have many of the same advantages
even if digital encoding were not used. However, properly
applied, digital encoding and decoding can eliminate many
problems with imperfect transmission and storage methods.

The main reasons for digital photo popularity remain its _convenience_
and low recurring cost, low cost of experimentation, high image quality,
immediate feedback (try again if you screwed up), post processing
convenience and cost, ease of storage and storage maintenance - not that
everyone practices good storage habits.

That the data is loss-lessly manageable after the fact is a huge
benefit. Digital photography also lends itself to the information
exchange age so well. Snapshooters and journalists share the trait of
shooting and transmitting images in short periods of time.

In 500 years, a lot ( say 0.0001% ) of the digital photography of today
will be available to future historians. It will be very well documented
in many cases. Those who preserve the data well will be more likely to
document it well.

And yes, I know common CD/DVD ROMs don't last more that 5 - 10 years,
but there are other archival media that will easily do 200 years. Some
of that will survive much longer.

A lot of key data will be attached to these images in tag/exif form, and
I wouldn't doubt that they will be linked to very descriptive documents
(or be in the documents).

For those with other photographic pursuits, where film has its
advantages or character, film will continue for a very long time. (All
predictions of film's demise having so far been way off the mark).

Most movies (and many television shows) are still shot on film, often
because the cinematographer, producer and director have agreed on a
certain look that digital fails to capture. But I bet that digital
cinematography will improve (mainly in highlight capture) that film
cinematography will become quite rare. (Some cinematographers are
shooting mixed film and digital now...).

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