NZDavid Posted March 15, 2012 Share #1 Â Posted March 15, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) What happens to your precious family or personal photos? Growing up, Dad meticulously stuck pictures into albums and captioned them all. We also had slides. And now? I have some albums. I have old prints still not yet sorted. I have heroically sorted most, though not all slides into plastic trays -- great to view on a big screen. With digital, most images remain on DVDs or the hard drive. With digital we shoot more than ever so pictures need even more sorting. I fear that for many people, precious memories will remain on the hard drive or disappear forever. I have seen digital prints, just a few years old, of a young child, now sadly faded. Who knows if the parents still have the original digital file? Yet, postcard prints seem to be thriving. If treated carefully, they may last. Another option is making a photo book. Despite being exhorted to store everything "in the cloud" in the ether someplace truly nebulous, to me hard copies are still important. What do you do? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted March 15, 2012 Posted March 15, 2012 Hi NZDavid, Take a look here What do you you do with your precious family pictures?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
wda Posted March 15, 2012 Share #2 Â Posted March 15, 2012 A very important question, David. With the change to digital, most kept pictures languish on hard drives or back-ups on DVD; most rest unseen. At least they exist. Will that be the case with those totally dependent on their 'smart phone' pictures, after the devices have been recycled to a third world country? Â I am preparing digital collections for my successors and hope that media and metadata will be readable in the future. Keywording and captioning is an important first step. How many of us have struggled to identify historic family group photographs of weddings or formal studio shots taken one hundred years or so ago, with the only surviving clue being an extinct photographer's studio stamp? Â Life gets ever more complicated and time congested. Yet if each of us merely selected and annotated a small representative collection, it would help our successors long after we are able to help them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 15, 2012 Share #3 Â Posted March 15, 2012 What happens to your precious family or personal photos? Â Two of my brothers and one nephew are our archivists. We have photos going back to about 1900. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thighslapper Posted March 15, 2012 Share #4 Â Posted March 15, 2012 You wait until you retire..... then at some stage you realise that you are mortal and that life is indecently short....... Â You then spend the next 10 years frantically trying to catalogue, file and store them for your kids and posterity.... Â Well thats what my father is doing ..... and I have every confidence I will be doing the same in 25 years time. Â Till then mine languish in various trunks, boxes in the attic and multiple hard drives and CD's..... Â ..... but ..... I trawl my recent pics every month or so and add the best to my iMac wallpaper collection ..... which change every 5 seconds and provide a reminder of happy days..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jneilt Posted March 15, 2012 Share #5 Â Posted March 15, 2012 Personally, I have a lot of bare wall in my house...I plan on filling it up. I just processed my first roll of B&W since 1990. I loved it. Got the scans in and am ready to print. I printed a couple on my HP crappy job printer and they look so-so...so I see a nice Epson on my wish list for my birthday. I might do some books or something...I have never been much of a photo book person though. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hiles Posted March 16, 2012 Share #6  Posted March 16, 2012 I scan everything over time at low-ish resolution. I store prints in fairly airtight plastic file boxes, and the scanned files have names that point to the box where the original is stored. For these purposes I use Picassa and I create captions that have key words - "Aunt Maple, Lillian, Québec, Date" - so I can search effectively. Scanned files can be shared easily, and originals can be carefully preserved. If anyone wants a print copy I can find and rescan at high resolution very easily. Works well for me. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted March 16, 2012 Share #7 Â Posted March 16, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) The print has always been my final output for all worthy photos, not just the family related ones. Digital didn't change that a bit; just made it easier to do than in my darkroom years, and now has made color easy to do as well. Â Jeff Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rramesh Posted March 16, 2012 Share #8 Â Posted March 16, 2012 Get a digital photo frame (The best resolution possible). This is what I did. I installed a photo frame in a display cabinet and showcased all the nice family pictures over the years for her and her friends to admire. Â My wife saw, said it was really nice, and I suggested "You know I could take better if only I had an M9". She asked me what it was. I explained it to her and here I am with an M9-P and a member of this forum. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Double Negative Posted March 16, 2012 Share #9 Â Posted March 16, 2012 My goal is to scan everything. That's part of the reason I went with a v700 as a lot of negatives have gotten "lost" (thrown out) over the years. Problem is, finding the time! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil U Posted March 16, 2012 Share #10 Â Posted March 16, 2012 +1 finding the time is the killer. Â I am the same, I am trying to digitize the old family prints as a backup so they may be printed again if necessary. However, I would always want the family photos to be prints in a good old fashioned photo album because that is how I remember them from old and, to me at least, it is a much warmer and inclusive shared experience to share a set of prints around a room of friends or family members than to be huddled around a screen looking at the digital versions. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter H Posted March 16, 2012 Share #11 Â Posted March 16, 2012 +1 finding the time is the killer. Â I am the same, I am trying to digitize the old family prints as a backup so they may be printed again if necessary. However, I would always want the family photos to be prints in a good old fashioned photo album because that is how I remember them from old and, to me at least, it is a much warmer and inclusive shared experience to share a set of prints around a room of friends or family members than to be huddled around a screen looking at the digital versions. Â For many people, I think prints have become even more significant with the domination of digital, because they are rarer now. Â I know many people who have their photos in their cameras or on their computers, and never get a print anymore. But quite frequently, if they see a photo that they really like they'll ask me if I could print it for them: prints have become special, and highly valued objects. (I don't mean expensive.) Â So I agree with you wholeheartedly about family photos. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hiles Posted March 16, 2012 Share #12  Posted March 16, 2012 For many people, I think prints have become even more significant with the domination of digital, because they are rarer now. I know many people who have their photos in their cameras or on their computers, and never get a print anymore. But quite frequently, if they see a photo that they really like they'll ask me if I could print it for them: prints have become special, and highly valued objects. (I don't mean expensive.)  So I agree with you wholeheartedly about family photos.  Good points here. Back in the day, almost all family photos were small prints, either in envelopes in a drawer or in albums - and never seen. These pictures are now on a disc somewhere - and still not seen. However, a good print, framed on the wall has become even more special, partly because what we usually see in shared files is not better than the awful old prints from the drug store. Only the medium (and maybe this exposure hit rate) has changed. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NZDavid Posted March 16, 2012 Author Share #13 Â Posted March 16, 2012 It is surprising how many people in the digital age still visit photo stores to get prints made from their SD card. Prints are still in high demand and this is what keeps such outlets in business. I haven't had postcard prints for years -- I should do some myself but haven't. Â There are so many choices now -- which is good, but also more time consuming. Digital photos need editing and archiving. I've also got slides (which will last for ages); scans of slides saved on to hard disk and DVD; and prints of some. Â Perhaps start with the end use first? What do you want to do with your photos to gain the maximum enjoyment from them? I am planning to do some more enlargements of special one for the wall. I need to round up digital photos of family to create special folders. I would also like to do a few albums. Â Perhaps a good project for a rainy weekend sometime... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
spydrxx Posted March 17, 2012 Share #14 Â Posted March 17, 2012 I have family prints going back to the 1880s, many well faded, and the tintypes are almost black with what I think is oxidation. Nobody in the family is the least interested, as hard as I try to encourage them. So, over the last several years, I've been trying to scan many of them and pass them along via hard disks to my daughter. All said and done, however, there is still about 1 cubic yerd of photos from albums, negatives, etc, which I've only lightly browsed thru, and the job just seems futile and endless, with no thanks or rewards. The tough part is everybody is now deceased who could identify many of the subjects in the photos, and most of the ones left to deal with, dpn't have anything to help written on the back or in the margins. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rachel@krusic.com Posted March 17, 2012 Share #15 Â Posted March 17, 2012 Hi, Â Funny thing about digital is that over time, DVD/CD become unreadable. In fact my husband told me that the color of the r/w DVDs change over time making them unreadable as he has to deal with ways of archiving petabytes of data at work. Â I painstakingly sort through them deleting unwanted photos and then taking the keepers to get printed at either Costco or Shutterfly. I've always loved holding a nice decorative photo album. Â Hard copy is still the best form of archival. Â - Rachel Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cocker Posted March 17, 2012 Share #16 Â Posted March 17, 2012 I think we will come to regret this new-fangled digital nonsense in more ways than one!:) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 17, 2012 Share #17 Â Posted March 17, 2012 the tintypes are almost black with what I think is oxidation. Â Many tintypes can be restored through scanning and digital manipulation. It is worth a try. I just did about 30 glass negatives, fortunately all were done by a real pro. Here is one of a prosperous young gentleman. (Yes, a bit of rear focus shift). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 17, 2012 Share #18  Posted March 17, 2012 Hard copy is still the best form of archival.  - Rachel  Not really. Archival processed film will long outlive a print. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NZDavid Posted March 17, 2012 Author Share #19 Â Posted March 17, 2012 I think Rachel's point was that something physical, whether print or film, may well outlive digital data. Files may become corrupted, or the storage medium (CD, DVD, hard disk) deteriorate. Â Color prints will fade, although some of the latest inks or pigments are claimed to last for 100 years or more. Old color prints from the 1970s have faded badly. B+W prints are supposed to last the longest. Color slides, if stored properly, will also last well, but some films last better than others (one of the best being Kodachrome). Â Perhaps the best solution is to have both digital and hard copies of your most valuable snaps. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
billib Posted March 17, 2012 Share #20 Â Posted March 17, 2012 My mother and father passed away some years ago. So, my sister and myself were the only ones left in our family. Well, my sister passed away last year. So its just me. Going through my sisters things after her passing, I found her Digital Camera, a Canon Elph. And what do you think was on the SD card? The last 7 or 8 years of her life. I hadn't used a Screen Saver on the Mac ever since LCD displays became the norm. I now use a Screen Saver of her pictures, very comforting. An album of photos wouldn't be the same. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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