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Why Digitization Matters

A photograph made on film is a physical record of light, it is silver halide crystals or dye clouds arranged by the world itself at a specific moment in time. That physical record contains more information than any downstream reproduction can capture.

Most digitization loses quite a lot. Flatbed scanners, however capable, make optical compromises. Camera copying introduces its own variables. The result is a file that approximates the original.

By holding film in direct, intimate contact with a photomultiplier tube, a drum scanner reads what’s actually there: shadow detail, highlight separation, the full tonal range that the photographer put on film. It’s as close to a primary source document as digital technology currently allows.

For artists, estates, and institutions whose work deserves to survive on its own terms, that distinction is everything.

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