What will happen to all our digital photos?

[Moby]

I'll bet every one of us has a box of old family photographs somewhere. Once in a while I pull out my box of photos and look at them for the memories. And it's not just for the content of the images. It's also the fact that these photographs themselves are actual keepsakes handed down to us by long gone loved ones.

Now with the advent of digital cameras and video recorders all these images only exist as ones and zeroes on a magnetic storage medium like a floppy. a hard drive or a CD. I know you can have prints made from digital pictures but usually we only select a few of the best ones to print out. The more zany or interesting ones don't get printed or even worse, they are deleted.

Another problem exists. Photographs on paper can last for 100 years. We have old 8mm home movies that are 50 years old. How long can we expect digitally store images to last? Also think of all the obsolete storage formats like the original floppies, small floppies and obsolete hard drives that contain images that we can't even access anymore?

You can't just toss your obsolete floppies, hard drives, memory sticks and Cd's in a box and expect that your Grandkids will be able to look at them in the future. What will our Grandkids have to bring back the memories if they don't have the traditional family album?

 

[lyburnum]

Technically, after 5 years there's something like 99.9% chance a file will corrupt if left unused, so it's very important you keep a track of important files. However they now make harddrives which backup themselves. Basically they recognise when they're likely to fail, and then they will move all the information onto the next hardrive (they come in a big stack, so just move information from one to another). On top of this, I find that people that really love their digital images tend to get them printed. So the print will last even if the file doesn't. If you think about it, it's not that different from negatives, as many negatives have been lost/thrown out over the years as people tend not to keep track of them, and only the prints remain. Also, I know my own family only keep the important/good photos from their prints. Or, they just took less photos than they do now, as they simply don't have room to store all the rest of the photos. So if anything we now have more capacity to store photographs as a result of the digital age.

If you're really worried about losing digital files, it's not like the film camera is completely obsolete (yet). And they're constantly researching ways to increase the longevity of digital files, so I doubt it'll be long before we get a much longer life span for digital files.

 

[Two Gun Bob]

1. Keep at least 3 copies of anything important, and use gold 'archival' CDs such as those made by Delkin Devices for your most important images.

2. Print anything you really want to preserve on either Fuji Crystal Archive paper (you need to take a CD to a photo lab for this) or using a pigment ink printer and archival paper.

3. Copy to new media on a regular basis as they are introduced. I keep stuff backed up on external and internal hard drives (Apple Mac 'Time Machine' auto backup to the external drive), CDs, DVDs and memory stick. Solid state drives will replace hard drives in the next couple of years (already happening).

4. If you want to preserve copies of important documents, laser print or photocopy onto acid free paper. This carbon on paper print is one of the most permanent methods you can use.

 

[Twitch]

Beyond any back up hardly anyone has a computer over 5 years old if that is a shaky point of degredation. We're constantly transferring to new machines. You can also upload your pix to sites like Flickr or Webshots where they are perpetually available to yourself and others.

I do have files from the early 1990s on my PC that still function though and images too.[huh]

 

[Two Gun Bob]

Flickr etc are useful additional options but they are not safe places to put important pix - if a server fails the lot will disappear and you have no comeback with a free service.

Files will always be transferrable and convertable, it's really just a matter of self discipline to make sure we keep up with changes in computing, whether it be by electronic or more traditional means.

Unfortunately film will not be commercially viable in future, and in any case colour film, which most people use, is not permanent long-term since the dyes will degrade over time.

 

[dhermann1]

There was a recent spoof where a group of "archivists" were going to back up the world's great music onto the most durable sound recording medium invented so far, 78 rpm disks. A joke, but not without some validity. I often wonder the same about my financial records. If I pay all my bills online, what if there's a huge international system crash? If I don't have hard copies of all my mortgage payments, etc., how will I be able to prove I actually do own my home?
The solution to too much technology always seems to be more technology. So I guess somebody will develop a more durable digital storage medium soon.

 

[Lefty]

I'm new to digital, and use it for things like Ebay, posting here, and sharing with friends.
As long as it's available, however, I'll keep putting Tri-X (B&W) through my Leica and, hopefully, the prints will look as good in 70 years as some of the first Leica shots look today.

 

[Naama]

So, I know, this is rather expensive, and you probably wouldn't do that to usual family photographs, you can make dias out of digital files, and theres also a cheaper way, you can make reproduction copys with dia film (photographs of you're photographs with diafilm). And yes, like said above, take care how you print them / get them printed out! And store them save and dark!



Naama

 

[Twitch]

A few years ago Motorola I think was working on the use of crystals to integrate information on. If that became a consumer viable medium it would never degrade.

 

[MK]

.

As much of an old world guy that I am, I tend to fully embrace certain technologies. Digital cameras are probably top on the list. Like everyone else I used to shoot film. I didn't shoot often because it wasn't convenient to bring an SLR. My film photos are either in boxes or a few are in an album. I will pull out the album about once a year. The one in boxes are seen about every seven years or so.

My first digital camera was a Kodak one meg. I used it for work and once in a while for personal use. It was smaller than a bread box but it ate batteries like crazy, so it didn't travel much.

These days I have a ten meg point and shoot camera that is the size of a deck of cards. It goes everywhere with me. I can always the opportunity to capture the moment.....and I can shoot video.

Since the late nineties, I have been shooting exclusively digital photos. Now I have a huge celibacy of photos for reference. There are a few dozen photos that exist of my before I was 12. There are a few hundred of my seven year old daughter.

I look at my digital photos often. The ones in the box collect dust. I have recently started scanning the old ones so that I will see them more.

 

[Twitch]

Like MK the digital format has spurred me to take more pix that I ever did with film. I have found the key to batteries in digitals is to use a lithium-ion batterpack

 

[adamjaskie]

When you're done shooting for the day, take your card(s), and copy them into your computer. Plug in an external drive, and copy them to that, too. Import them into iPhoto or whatever, then format the card(s).

I don't bother making bootable backups of my entire computer. It takes up too much space. I can handle re-installing an operating system on a new hard drive, so I'm really not worried about that. What I need to keep around is my personal data.

 

[Moby]

All this information about how to preserve our digital photos is great information but....

Think about this. 40 years from now your our Great-Grandchildren will not find a dusty old shoebox with wonderful paper family photos. They might find a pile of non-operational computer junk. Would they even know what to do with this junk? Looking at a pile of CD's or other storage media, do you really think they will say "Hey, I'll bet these are some really neat old pictures of Great-Grandpa in front of his old Prius?".

I think the day of the paper family photo album ended around the year 2000. Future historians will lament the passing of film and paper photographs.

 

[Bourbon Guy]

All this information about how to preserve our digital photos is great information but....

Think about this. 40 years from now your our Great-Grandchildren will not find a dusty old shoebox with wonderful paper family photos. They might find a pile of non-operational computer junk. Would they even know what to do with this junk? Looking at a pile of CD's or other storage media, do you really think they will say "Hey, I'll bet these are some really neat old pictures of Great-Grandpa in front of his old Prius?".

I think the day of the paper family photo album ended around the year 2000. Future historians will lament the passing of film and paper photographs.

I've pondered the effect on historians in the future of the move to digital, since the unused images get deleted. Beyond just the prints in the photo album, when you come across the box of old pictures there are often packs of negatives which often contain images, the prints of which were discarded. Those negatives can hold family treasure, like the only surviving picture of a relative. Scan 'em.

 

[TM]

It's not just about the risk of loosing pictures because of obsolescent technology (like floppy disks or zip drives). Another problem is that many if not most people have passwords to even get on their computer. So if some family member dies, chances are no one could retrieve those family pictures.

I haven't shot film in over a year, it's all digital now. I have to suspect that most of my images will vanish, if only due to lax backup procedures.

Tony

 

[Diamondback]

Two cents: IMO, any data worth keeping is worth keeping backups of, preferably multiple copies in multiple formats and multiple locations--then again, I take this to a whole new level, even having backups of the "functional core" of my mind on both hardcopy and digital data, both here and on the opposite side of the continent.

I'm not saying anyone else should be this extreme, but if it's something you wanna keep you should invest some thought in protecting it.

 

[Chanfan]

Looking at a pile of CD's or other storage media, do you really think they will say "Hey, I'll bet these are some really neat old pictures of Great-Grandpa in front of his old Prius?".

Well, when dealing with my parents estate, we did, in fact, get a lot of the old Super 8 and other types of movies scanned into DVD, then distributed 'em to the family. I know we have a huge pile of photos in a trunk, but I admit I haven't looked through most of 'em. Were they digital, we'd probably all have our own copies.

But yes, an old photo is more immediately accessible than digital on an old format. On the flip side, the digital one will be as "pristine" as the day it was taken.