Digital cameras

Researching for a project for putting a large number of images on
the web brought me to investigate many of the cost aspects of image
acquisition. Some of my observations for our institution may be
useful.

My institution already has a considerable investment in film-camera
both as equipment and in the form of already processed negatives and
slides. Consequently, it was far more cost-effective to invest in a
scanner rather than a camera.  Moreover, if we are making even
incidental, casual photographs it is quite inexpensive to include
them in our regular photography schedule, and any film-based
photography done in the near future can be used for traditional
print applications as well as web applications. This is not the case
with most available digital cameras.

Photo-CD's (such as the various Kodak-licensed products) made from
slides or other transparencies are particularly cost-effective for
permanent record-keeping for up to around a thousand  images.  If
you are thinking of a larger archive, keep in mind that the cost of
creating cd-roms in-house seems to be plummeting. CD-rom recorders
have fallen considerably in the last year, and the media (called
cd-r for cd-recordable, and as distinct from cd-rw for
cd-rewritable) is very inexpensive at about $1 a disk.

Andrew Stevens
Curator of Prints and Drawings
Elvehjem Museum of Art
University of Wisconsin--Madison

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:69
                Distributed: Tuesday, February 10, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-11-69-012
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