The earliest RAW files are a bit tricky already Nigel, that is the Kodak ones in particular. A bit of a blow when the cameras cost thousands of pounds.

For the time being my JPEG files are secure from our first digital cameras onwards and I expect they will outlast me, in theory anyway. The pace of progress seems to also have slowed somewhat, so that helps. Maybe a plateau has been reached, and for a while improvements will be steady rather than in huge leaps.

In 50 years time, who knows what will be the norm. Maybe we'll have all gone back to film.....

Trees make great subjects and I like the low viewpoint.

Maybe we'll be re-discovered in far distant futures that we can only speculate upon. In the meantime, archivally processed darkroom prints have the potential to last many hundreds of years, and don't need any electronics to read them. Film may be the best way to go for truly archival "permanence" - all digital media rely upon our ability to read the files.

Here's a bit of The Baby, the first computer:


and things have moved on a bit. Apparently it had enough memory to remember 22 words. Floppy discs are later, and I think even now few of us will have means to read standard "A" drive floppies, never mind their 5 1/4" predecessors.

It's a case in point, because I have lots of floppy discs, plus a USB "A" drive to read them with. How often do I look at them? Never. In the future, they will be thrown out by someone and the contents lost forever.

In contrast, the case of old family photos from the 1850s onwards will still be there, under the spare bed. How often do we look at those? Maybe a few times a year, and they are enjoyed by all the generations of the family.

We can't. We can only make our images active whilst we are active. Afterwards, everything falls into disrepair and it will need our offspring to preserve a sample of our work.

Joining in a wide variety of websites can help, but in the end all is soon forgotten.

If you want to sell your lens, then it will be noticed better in the Classified Ads forum.

Cameras are computers, so updates are on balance probably a good idea. In some cases essential, otherwise my K-5 wouldn't allow AF with my new 1.4x converter.

I don't routinely update though and some cameras I have are still as bought and working perfectly well.

In the case of the Q system I had to update lens firmware as well as camera firmware.

Yes, I would pick those up as well. I read everything on the forums several times a day. If I miss something, one of the other mods will likely pick it up. We don't miss much!

Spam is spam and isn't allowed. The offending picture has been removed.

If there are any more I've missed, please send me a PM about it.

As a rule though, PMs and reports on spam aren't needed as it will be noticed next time we log on. If some time has elapsed and you think we've missed it, that's the time to let us know.

Many thanks!

I was thinking very strongly about moving from the K-5 to the K-S2 or the K-3, so that problem would be solved. In any event, there may well be a firmware upgrade for the K-5 series yet, so we'll see. It also depends on what is being updated and whether it's significant or not.

In the case of the AW converter it was significant in that K-7 onwards needed the upgrade to enable AF.

It's always been true that it's the photographer not the camera that makes a brilliant image.

However, it's also true that sometimes particular kit is required to make particular types of images. If we need the 560mm lens for our camera, for example, then there's no particular way round that if we only have a WG-3. The specialist lens may bring in the subject, the smaller camera won't let us do that.

In a similar way, there are specialist scanning digital cameras for astro-photography. Our DSLRs will do very well, but they won't compete for quality at the highest level, regardless of how good a photographer we might be.

It used to be a bit galling when people said "you must have a good camera", but eventually it just became worth an enigmatic smile.....