Way O/T - Saving Digital Pictures

Just got thinking about the future of our family"s pictures - Last 5 +/- years have put them on the computer and burnt a disk but will these be available in the next 25 - 30 Years with the technology? Still have my photo pictures from 60's - 90's and Dad's slides dating back to the 40's - 60's. Just wondering if I should do something else to save these - daughter's 4H shows, tractor pulling, vacations and just the neat stuff you take when you don"t have to pay for film and processing. Thanks!

kruser

I think that a CD will last virtually forever if properly stored in a cool, dry environment.

We have most of ours on kodakgallery.com as well to share with friends and family. I don't know how many they will allow us to store or for how long, but we have four years worth of pictures up and haven't gotten any notices yet... I'd like to see other people's suggestions as well.

I'd venture that CD's wont be the technology of choice in a few decades, but, when you notice it going obsolete, thats the time to copy the images to the new media. I've thought the same thing, since I archieve all of my raw images from each photoshoot. I may go a little extreme but I upload them to my server, keep them on an archieve portable drive, and burn them to CD that I keep in a lock box.

Buy photographic paper,available in shops, and put them through your printer.[assuming here]
My Epson stylus PHOTO RX430 has a recess for digital .nothing flash.

In 1986 and 1987 I served on the history committee for my hometown centennial celebration.

Prior to that, during, and since I am a strong believer in film, negatives, and photo paper prints.

While serving on the aforementioned committee I had the pleasure of copying old photographs by copying them with a 35mm camera with a special copying lens onto a fine grained film.

One particular image showed the first boys of the town shipping off for duty in WWI. In the background about 300 feet from the principal subject was a rail car on a siding. The photo was so sharp and clear and fine grained that with magnification one could even read the writing on the box car.

My point is if you want snapshots that might last 20 years then by all means use digital media and burn them to disc.

If you want photographs which are different than snapshots then use a camera and high quality film. Just as Matthew Brady's work of the Civil War is still around you can expect your work to still be around in 100 years.

We've seen computers go from punch cards to tape to 5.25" floppies to 3.5" floppies, to CDs to DVDs, with some flash drives, etc. thrown in for even more media confusion. Along similar lines we've had Blue Ray and ???

I am not willing to bet that DVD readers will even be around in 20 years in order to recover stored digital images. Digital is fine, but consider them temporary.

(quoted from post at 19:31:26 08/13/08) I'd venture that CD's wont be the technology of choice in a few decades, but, when you notice it going obsolete, thats the time to copy the images to the new media. I've thought the same thing, since I archieve all of my raw images from each photoshoot. I may go a little extreme but I upload them to my server, keep them on an archieve portable drive, and burn them to CD that I keep in a lock box.

Click to expand...

y thoughts also. I've lived through the Kodak Brownie era and we still have Matthew Bradys civil pictures. David...........

I'd advise using USB jump drives. They are inexpensive, and can hold a ton of pictures. I bought one a Wally World for $30, and all my pictures fit on it. When it gets full, buy another...

Copy them on an archival quality CD or DVD and store them in a cool dry place.

old bc

I have similar concerns, so I do back up my files onto a CD once a year. I also pick out a few dozen highlights from the year, basically the things I want to remember (buying a house, a new parts tractor, a new pet, etc). I take the digital version of these to one of the photo kiosks at Walmart and have them printed. This gives me a copy of the photo in the same high quality format that has been used for the last 30 years. I keep them in a traditional photo album.

When the CD/DVD technology is on the way out, and at some point it will be, there will be a window where the newer equipment and it will be able to copy one from another. Just like betamax, laserdisc and ZIP drives. I have a working VHS player stored away just so I know I will always have one when I get around to copying old tapes.

Make at least two HQ printed copies of anything you can't afford to lose and store them in different buildings. You never know when you might have a house fire.

And while I agree with Brian that the USB drives are handy, they do die unexpectedly. I've had one that worked after a trip through the washing machine and a couple others that just quit for no reason.

This one's right up my alley! Here at work (I'm a photographer) we take all of our raws and drop them onto a server, which is backed up every night, we also save a copy onto our own machine. When we have a DVD worth of images, we burn them to 2 copies of DVD, move them to our archival server. We've been doing this for about 8 years and have not had an issue yet. You can always get something like a flickr account, where I think they give you 6 gigs of space.

For online storage, I use Photobucket... used to be cheaper, but now is up to $39.95 per year for 10 Gigs of storage, free photosharing, putting photos in message boards, etc. I've been happy with my service, but like I said, the price has gone up since I started...

I like being able to post pictures with my messages, it would be hard to give up after having it!