Direct Digitizing

[Bart Hacobian]

There are a number of means available now to readily record and store
images of leps for id purposes using digital media. They certainly make
life easier in the short term. What concerns me, however, is that all forms
of digital technology are changing so rapidly that images so obtained today
will almost certainly be unreadable in 5-10 years time, both from a
software and hardware viewpoint. So, unless the recipient is prepared to
make an ongoing commitment to regularly upgrade the software form of every
image, as well as the digital storage medium, such images are likely to
have fairly short useful lives. For an amateur collector, it may not be
such a great idea to entrust those paratype images from a
once-in-a-lifetime visit to some remote museum to such a form of record. At
least humans come with eyes and the software to use them...I suspect there
is still a place for photgraphs.

Bart Hacobian
--
bhac at bigpond.com.au