Re: JPEG fading and Sensor size

Jørn Dahl-Stamnes wrote:

cjcampbell wrote:

Most people are surprised to discover that JPG photos have such a short
shelf life. You can slow the process down somewhat by re-copying them
every three months, but eventually they will fade to almost nothing
anyway.

This deterioration is caused by UV rays and magnetic fields emanating
from your computer monitor and other peripherals -- even your disk
drive -- and cosmic rays coming from the sun.

Think of the constant bombardment of your storage media as a kind of
rain. Obviously, larger media such as DVDs and 5.25 inch floppy disks
will be struck by cosmic rays, UV, and other particles much more
frequently than smaller forms of media. Each particle can irrecoverably
destroy some of your data. Back in the old days when disk drives were
12 inch platters (or even larger), data often did not last more than a
few weeks! You should therefore store your most important photos on
storage devices that are as small as possible, and use only one device
at a time, since putting your data on two different drives more than
doubles the risk that your data will be damaged.


I have solved this problem by storing all my RAW files by writing down the
sequence of 0's and 1's on regular paper... As you probably know, paper can
be read after several 1000 years if stored properly... ;-)

Fast tip 'o' the day: You can print out the RAW files' O's and 1's on light weight bond paper. Saves 27 hours work per image, but does cost something for ink and, well, the paper you'd use anyway.

I've just completed archiving my last shoot of 64 images, and it took a palette and a half, weighing about 3/4 of a ton.

--
John McWilliams

I know that you believe you understood what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
.

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