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Comment by fauxreb | Hacker News Reader

I worked for years for a professional photographer with a vast commercial archive.

After every finished project we would copy the files to a thumb drive and print the top 10-20 images at around 14" long edge >300dpi and place everything in a simple archival box.

The logic being that even if the digital copy becomes unsustainable because of interface change or degrading, you could still scan or photograph the prints.

Most analog prints you see 'digitized' on Instagram are iPhone photographs of prints laid flat. It's all a bit ridiculous.

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Paper will last, a 100 or so years is not that hard to achieve, honestly. A bank I worked for had documents dating 140 years and they were just in a box most of the time. They handled it carefully, kept proper moisture in the room, but that was mostly it.

What about the original photo film? Isn't that the ultimate backup in such situation? There will be an option of potentially scanning it with better equipment or skill in future. Like it's done nowadays firm classic analogue movies.

I've recently read a great story of a son of a local artist who found a box of photographic film left behind his relative 80 years ago and it was "relatively well preserved, just sitting there in a box".

This reminds me: please let me know if you found a tape backup solution that is feasible for a small homelab!

> Paper will last, a 100 or so years

afaik even the best color papers (for wet prints) will last 20-50 years before starting to show color shift, that's in a darkbox with optimal humidity. b&w obviously is much better

Modern pigment prints seem to perform a bit better, 65-120 years according to some studies

Haven't taken into account that article talks about actual photography and arts, not written or printed text... That is a different story.

Color film and photo paper is made with dyes that fade and shift over time. An inkjet print with pigments will last longer. Only monochrome silver metal film or paper will last indefinitely, and it's the gelatin layer that will last, some substrates including consumer-grade acetate film and most papers will degrade. The best archival format is silver on polyester film. Color can still be achieved by way of three exposures in RGB, similar to Technicolor.

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