From the Dome Car: Train 12 Track 1 (Oct.- Nov. 2002)

 

Today, when digital cameras constitute 99% of the market, almost nobody talks about digital vs. film photography anymore. But that was a real debate in 2002 when Morgan wrote this Dome Car. Back then, digital photography was in its infancy; he still preferred to receive printed photos for the magazine. (Although he would take high rez digital photos on a CD.) He practiced what he preached as a railfan; when he died, his widow bequeathed his large prototype print photo collection to me. After having a look through them, I gave the collection to well-known railway photographers and historians Brian Schuff and Mark Penny. I did keep a few of Morgan’s framed prototype photos for keepsakes, though. 

I recently read a very interesting article in my local newspaper about the long-term preservation of images. The article, which was reprinted from the Baltimore Sun, compared digital photography verses conventional film. 

The article addressed a question many of us are considering: Should we buy a digital camera? There is no right or wrong answer, of course, but one consideration is what you plan to do with the pictures over the long term. 

We're all familiar with how print film works: the images produced at the photo finisher are put on photographic paper, which can be filed away in albums. Each image has a negative that can also be filed away for future reference. It's like a hard copy of the image. And slide images and negatives last for decades if stored properly. 

But with digital photography, there is no actual 'hard copy' unless you have the ability to print the images on a good printer. Thus, the main concern is with storage. 

A digital camera stores images on a flash memory card. Once the images are transferred to a PC (or to a CD or ZIP disk), they can be erased from the camera and the card used again. It's what to do with the stored images that creates the problem. 

If you only take a few rolls of film a year, the hassle to grasp the technology needed to manipulate the images likely isn't worth it. But if you take a lot of pictures and plan on keeping them, there may be a problem with storage and permanence. 

As we all know only too well, hard drives crash. As well, disks and tape degrade over time and CDs may not be reliable for more that a decade. On top of it all, the media is constantly evolving. Computers of tomorrow will use a different system of storing information and the photos you have on CD will need to be upgraded to the new media once it arrives. 

Maintaining a digital photo collection could become a huge chore, certainly a lot more difficult than putting prints in albums and filing negatives in a safe place. 

Film has its problems, too, of course; over time, a colour photo can fade. But most serious photographers haven't given up on film altogether at least, not yet. 

As for CRM, we still prefer people to submit glossy colour prints, but we do use some digital photos, provided they are saved at a high enough resolution so that they are 300 pixels per inch at final printable size. Rather than sending by e-mail, it's best to send them on a CD, and provide a printed copy of the photos (b&w is fine). 

On to other things. The month of November is National Model Railroad Month, and what better way to show off our hobby than by taking some advice from 'The World's Greatest Hobby' folks. For the second year in a row, hobbyists are invited to share their love of model railroading with colleagues and friends on 'Take a Model Train to Work Day' on Friday, November 15. 

Participants are encouraged to share their experience with other enthusiasts by submitting photos and success stories to the folks at the World's Greatest Hobby. Their address is PO Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612. Or they can be sent to us here at Canadian Railway Modeller and we'll pass them on. We may even use some of them in CRM, as we've done in the past. 

Who can forget the great time they had promoting our wonderful hobby at a Loblaws store in Quebec last year? Our hats are off to 'Take a Model Train to Work Day'!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From the Dome Car: Train 3 Track 3 (February-March 1993)

Image
    A price increase! And not the last time. Prices for everything kept going up; finding a way to balance costs and revenue was an ongoing challenge for Morgan. And we get a report about his plan to give a train set for Christmas to some neighbour boys. New collector cards are coming, and we hear the common refrain again for more articles. Journalism, it is said, is either an act of commission—going to get articles—or collection—waiting for them to come in. The latter approach is less expensive but riskier; that’s the approach Morgan took. Later, when I became involved, I would search out articles and work with authors, trying to keep the hopper full. It was always a challenge. With Groundhog Day behind us, it's only a matter of time now before the snow will be gone and I can drag the BBQ out of the shed and burn up a steak or two! We've had our share of the white stuff this year. On the plus side, the railfanning in the snow and cold was great! Our plans this year in...
Read more

From the Dome Car: Train 7 Track 4 (August-September 1997)

Image
Remember when collecting  President’s Choice trainsets was all the craze? Maybe some of you still have them in your basements or attics! When we cleaned out Morgan’s basement after his death, I think he had two of each set there. (Sold to support his widow, along with the rest of his model railroad collection.) Morgan was a big booster of Boris Polakow and his trainsets for Loblaws, seeing them as a way to introduce kids to the hobby.   When we think of manufacturers of model railway products, names like Walthers, Model Die Casting and Athearn quickly come to mind. Chances are you wouldn't include Loblaws in that group, but since 1992 the grocery chain-giant has been one of the largest retailers of model trains in Canada, selling 60,000 specially-produced train sets.   It all started with an idea by Boris Polakow, Vice President of Canadian Sales Development for Lob law's Private Label. As a kid, Boris was fascinated by trains, building three HO scale layouts with his...
Read more

From the Dome Car: Train 5 Track 5 (November-December, 1995)

Image
  "Weekend Warriors”—there’s a term I haven’t heard for a long time! Weekend Warriors is what we used to call people who operated hobby shops out of their homes, selling new products at weekend train shows across the country. Hobby shops disliked them for cutting into their sales since they could sell items so much cheaper due to not paying rent, salaries and taxes. Morgan took the topic head on in this Dome Car, and in a special investigative report in the magazine written by yours truly. (I think this was my first byline in the magazine.)   The ongoing controversy between hobby shops and the so-called 'weekend warriors'—people working out of their homes who sell new model railroad products at weekend shows—was recently brought to our attention here at CRM. It's our policy at CRM not to mention swap meets in Subdivision Footnotes. The column is intended to provide free space to clubs which want to promote their shows.   But a hobby shop owner in southern Ontario i...
Read more