Preservation of digital photographs for future generations

[SwampDude]

Interesting and helpful thoughts and suggestions. Plus, I now have a new perspective to ponder: my grandkids and family generations beyond them may have no interest in paper prints; maybe prints, like cursive writing, will become irrelevant in the future.

 

[Designer]

Interesting and helpful thoughts and suggestions. Plus, I now have a new perspective to ponder: my grandkids and family generations beyond them may have no interest in paper prints; maybe prints, like cursive writing, will become irrelevant in the future.

Picture a future Chevy Chase look-alike saying: "C'mon, guys, it's all hologram these days."

 

[ClickAddict]

Sorry, prints are fine for display but not for "long time archival for future generations" in my mind. For people saying... you wont be able to play that media.... That is simply not the case. You might not have the player available in your local Walmart, but we dont forget how to build the technology we currently have. And people will build converters. You have some old 8 Track cassettes lying around? There are places that have converters to get all that to Cd/ MP3 whatever. Old VHS (or heaven forbid BETA) tapes, no problem they'll convert to DVD / MP4 for you.

So your CD or DVD full of photos or USB drives whatever you use today... even 100 years from now you'll be able to retrieve the information from them. You might have to go to a specialty shop or find that geeky friend who still plays on his Atari 2600 for kicks, but the technology will be available if not commonplace. And honestly it's not hard with digital to copy everything over when new tech comes around before your current is "obsolete". We dont go from "Hey it works everywhere" to "can't even buy used devices" overnight.

And although, yes a fire can destroy a drive and you lose everything... last time I checked printed photos were not fireproof either. With digital you can have multiple copies easily so having them in two locations is all you need to safeguard against fire/flood/theft. Every time there's a flood or fire, you hear people complain about the photo albums they lost that are "irreplaceable".

 

[webestang6411]

Preservation of digital photographs for future generations

Save all your digital files on 3 external hard drives and place them in 3 different (safety deposit box should be one place) locations. DO NOT use CD's DVD's or USB's for long term storage.

 

[SwampDude]

If duplication of images is prudent for protection against loss, I could provide (1) albums (prints and shared on line) for enjoyment of family and friends now and the foreseeable future and (2) digital image storage on devices kept in my safe deposit box. If I'm serious about protecting these family photographs (and I am), the extra steps would be worthwhile. Thanks.

I still need recommendations for photo labs to produce good 5x7 and a few 8x10 prints.

 

[webestang6411]

I still need recommendations for photo labs to produce good 5x7 and a few 8x10 prints.

I work here and we do high quality prints. www.schillerspix.com

 

[SwampDude]

I still need recommendations for photo labs to produce good 5x7 and a few 8x10 prints.

I work here and we do high quality prints. www.schillerspix.com

Thanks. I'll send your lab an order soon

 

[Strodav]

How about a 'family' site on something like Flickr, 500px, Google or Instagram?

Give family members access and they can view them on their own devices.

I doubt printed photos will be common in the future, but cloud-based photo storage will still be common. And the cost and space needed to print and store hundreds of photos will be an issue, but a family photo site can be shared by all at no cost to them.

I have a separate Flickr for family but now that the free accounts have limits been thinking of merging those photos into my “Pro” account.

I use Flickr as well, but the problem is that all online services end up being bought out, merged, or change terms of service asking for $$ making them undesirable. It is a pain to delete thousands of images and move them to new web based services, so I no longer use them as backup and I have started keeping a much smaller number of my better stuff online.

 

[petrochemist115 140]

I can't see the future from here, but I wonder what the technology will be like in 50 or 100 years? I mean; suppose you have gazillions of photographs "saved" in digital format, but for some reason you can't connect the do-hicky to the thing-a-ma-mob.

And all those old-fashioned computer thingies won't run on the modern power grid, so they're giving them away at garage sales, and tossing them into the shredder for recycling.

So maybe paper is the way to go.

If the images are of interest it's not a major job to transfer them to new storage media. All my saved images fit in about 1TB add scanned copied of the families historical images & this might rise to 4GB but I very much doubt it, backing this up to an alternate external drive would take me less than half an hour (even if it keeps my old PC busy all night and half way though the next day).

Even with the rapid rate of change digital technology has gone through, actively checking & transferring data where required from dying formats to new media ever 5 years would be all that's needed to keep the physical media current.

If the images are in an obscure format converting that will be more labourious. But I can't see JPG becoming an unreadable format, there's so much stored in this format that support for it will be maintained even if only by historical societies. RAW files are not great for long term archival.

I have photographic prints of family members in a wide range of formats going right back to daguerreotypes, and examples of each media have degraded significantly. Some professional B&W prints from around 70 years ago have faded to the point they are hard to make out, professional slide s have severe red colour casts, Kodak colour prints from 50 years ago are often badly faded...

 

[SquarePeg36 7]

I think both digital and prints if you’re thinking about having the photos available for future generations. For the digital, I would make sure that at least 2 of your family members know how/where to access your files.

 

[TCampbell]

If you read the fine-print on cloud-based storage/backup solutions, you'll likely find that they do not "guarantee" your data.

I knew someone whose online backup service had an outage and lost their data (so they couldn't do a restore). They were a bit shocked that they were paying for a backup service and... the only time they actually needed to do a restore, the data was gone. The vendor pointed out that the service level is merely "best effort" -- there is technically no "guarantee".

But there are other problems with online services. If you want your family to be able to access your photos long after you are gone ... first they have to be aware that you stored photos online somewhere, and they need to know where and how to get them (they need account credentials) and will they remember all this?

If not, you spent your whole life paying a fee to preserve data that will never be recovered.

 

[petrochemist115 140]

If you read the fine-print on cloud-based storage/backup solutions, you'll likely find that they do not "guarantee" your data.

I knew someone whose online backup service had an outage and lost their data (so they couldn't do a restore). They were a bit shocked that they were paying for a backup service and... the only time they actually needed to do a restore, the data was gone. The vendor pointed out that the service level is merely "best effort" -- there is technically no "guarantee".

But there are other problems with online services. If you want your family to be able to access your photos long after you are gone ... first they have to be aware that you stored photos online somewhere, and they need to know where and how to get them (they need account credentials) and will they remember all this?

If not, you spent your whole life paying a fee to preserve data that will never be recovered.

I think this last point is realistically true for any data. While the family may come across prints by chance after you've gone, there may be enough other paperwork that they don't - or don't feel they can keep all these prints (without realizing these are the family archive).

Having important data of any sort stored in multiple locations/forms is always best, but if a back-up service has no guarantee then it's not really back-up at all. 'Best effort' from such sources should involve their own backup system, allowing them to offer a penalty charge if reasonable efforts fail, an notification if their data is compromised should be automatic allowing you to refresh the backup before there is an issue with the original data.

On-line storage that doesn't offer this is purely for convenient access.

The only data I store on-line is via free services like Flickr, and I certainly wouldn't expect any guarantee with that!

 

[ClickAddict]

With regards to family photos, it's really easy to find at least 2 family members who live in different cities (avoiding both being hit by same Flood / mass fire) to agree to act as each other's backup. for the price of HDs these days storing all my and my uncle bob's photos is pretty easy. Then he does the same. Multiple options to getting files from one to the other seamlessly and scheduled. This gives you your backup at no cost (perhaps the extra drive space on your end to back his stuff up, but that is a small one time fee).
This may not work with client files for those professional photographers. I shoot mostly boudoir and many clients would certainly never agree to me having backups on my 'My cousin Fred"'s computer unless they were encrypted securely , but this could work for non confidential photos well enough.

 

[pocketshaver]

the only things you can do is not worry about it. Its all a good faith effort anyway.

No matter how much you spend on that "nuclear blast fallout safe" digital storage disk system, if they cant get the software to operate on what ever system they hook it up too,, its worthless.

How many of your old hard drives can still be used these days on modern operating systems? Not many of them can be. speed issues, formatting issues, plug sizes...

 

[Original katomi]

Not going to comment either way.
But if you do decide to print, are you aware that you can do the equivalent of contact prints with digital images. Even has some info printed as well