As long as archaeological excavation continues, and as long as artifacts are studied and conserved, there will be a need for accurate visual records. How far such records will continue to be based on optical–chemical systems, or how far they will in future rely on electronic imaging in one form or another, cannot yet be predicted. New processes and new types of equipment are constantly being promoted, each apparently surpassing and superseding its predecessor. Because of this, great care has to be taken in setting up or re-equipping a project or laboratory, to ensure not so much that everything is the latest or the quickest – which hardly matters – but that apparatus and methods are not of a type that might become obsolete and therefore difficult to service or to supply with materials.

There are a number of fields in which developments of great potential interest are taking place. Two in particular seem likely to affect archaeological and conservation recording within a few years. These are the use of video and the introduction of digitalization in image capture and storage.

Video

At present, the resolution of detail and the recording of colour are considerably better with silver-based conventional photography than they are with video-recording, and the apparatus needed is simpler and cheaper. However, the use of video cameras on excavations, usually as a secondary visual record, is becoming more widespread (Hanson and Ratz (1988), Grace (1988) (but see also Hanson (1988)) and Locock (1990)), and there have in fact been suggestions that in the future video could serve as the primary record.