20 years from now

I recently moved into a new house after 7 years of renting because I bought a business, after all that time my wife

and I were able to finally unpack all of the boxes of stuff we had not opened due to us having to move as leases

expired, good fun.

 

In one of those boxes we had all of our old family photos which were taken with an old camera well before we

upgraded to SLrR's. 23 years of memories and kids growing up, our first house all 4 kids as babies , toddlers, etc

etc, really good to catch up with where we came from and how everything has changed.

So now we have the task of putting some into frames again and making our house a home, looking forward to it.

 

Now in this day and age, who of you can guarantee that in 20 years you will find an old box of CD's with all your

memories on it and be able to sit back and remember where you came from and how much it has changed.

 

My worst threat is a house fire, heaven forbid, what threats do you face?

 

Food for thought!

It sounds like you found a box of prints. I still make prints (from film or digital files) of my more-important or worthwhile shots, so the usual risks apply: loss, damage from poor storage, damage from fire/flood/natural catastrophe.

 

I have a minimum of two copies of all my digital files (there are four or five copies of older files) and three copies of all the "good" shots (ones I've done significant work on in Photoshop and saved as TIFFs). Copies are located in two different locations on two different sides of the world, so fire or other catastrophe can only knock out, at most, less than a year's worth of digital images. Files get refreshed and saved to new media yearly.

 

The biggest threat to preservation of photos is neglect and lack of concern for preserving them, no matter what the medium.

Prints are the most lasting thing you will have to remember those "Kodak Moments". In the short term, I keep archived photos on CDs and DVDs in archival pages in notebooks - it's easy to keep things in proper order for retrieval. In twenty years, who knows if you can find a CD or DVD reader? Consider your parent's and grandparent's photos - scrapbooks but hardly ever any negatives.

 

I don't print as much as I should, and prints often times get stacked up at random, damaged or lost. Rather than scrapbooks per se, I have begun collections in presentation portfolios of 8x12 inch or larger prints. My customers get letter-sized proof sheets and a double set of discs in a manila envelope. How they archive them is their decision, but I encourage them to use notebook binders.

I have to agree with Edward, even though I religiously back up all my files on three external HDs and DVDs. When my father died, I inherited a large collection of prints of shots taken in the Panama Canal Zone in the 1930s, when he was stationed there (Army). Most of them are still in remarkably good shape, considering that they were never stored with any attention to longevity. I'm slowly working through them and scanning the best of them and, yes, backing up those image files, too.

But, I have more confidence that those prints will still be around in 20 years than in all my backup files, or even the devices for recovering them. When I first started playing with "personal computers", the only backup device was a cassette recorder. Remember them? Anyone seen one lately? The 5 1/4-inch floppy was a giant step forward. Where are they now? Then came the 3 1/2-inch floppy. Computer makers no longer install the drives for these, although can find them as external USB peripherals. Will USB still be around in 20 years? Maybe the only way to ensure longevity of back up files is to keep migrating them to the latest device technology as it happens. In 20 years, I'll be 88 years old. Will I still care?

I had a problem attaching this to my last post:<div></div>

I'm trying to preserve myself for 20 more years.

what about all those rolls of film is the freezer will you be able to have those developed in 20 years from what iv been reading its getting harder and harder to find good places to develop them im sure you will still have a hand full of places in 20 years but the fact remains in 20 years you will still have a pc of some sort i have upgraded pcs 3 times in the last 5 years and all my files follow me so im sure they will develop a way to keep your raw and jpg files usable

 

 

Amber

Heck, I had a whole bunch of film in the back of the freezer that I forgot about until the refrigerator died. I

threw it into my old camera cabinet without thinking much about it in the rush to sort out the remains of stuff

from holidays past. Finally got to it. It turns out to not be feasible to shoot C-22 process film these days,

because of the cost. Some of the boxes have expiration dates in the early 1970s. Others into the early 90s. So

one of these days I'll load it into something of the same vintage and try shooting the E-6 and black and white films.

 

I don't have to wait no 20 years! I already have.<div></div>

I honestly don't worry about it. I enjoy the process of photography. It's like cooking and eating. The end result, the prints, are only a tangible byproduct of the process. And judging from many of my photos, the output from the process is more like eating than I'd care to admit.

I select my digital pictures and make photo books. To me they are another way to preserve pictures

and still be available in the living / family room. I have used Snapfish, Mpix, My publisher, Apple, and

Blurb. They are all just about equal in quality, lately I have been using Blurb There binding is superior

and pricing is better. Regards ifti

Interesting that most peoples important photos are printed, commercial or personal. I have met many people who have lost years of memories due to hard drive crashes. I feel that the average man or woman on the street will not go to the lengths that the pro's like yourselves do, in years to come there will be a shortage of family memories within a large number of the general population.

My stuff is a muddle at the moment.<BR>

An awful lot is on one piece of film filed away, not scanned or printed.<BR>

The digital stuff, backed up, is probably safer.<BR><BR>

At the the other end of the scale, scanning, editing, and on line printing, are good enough now that I have

copied and cleaned up some really old family photos, and passed new prints on to my nephews. They have at least a

small number of pictures of their great and great great grandparents, of better quality than we had in our childhood.

The files are on two hard disks, DVD, and a commercial website for printing.<BR>

The thread is a reminder, I should do some more this winter.<BR><BR>

I suppose its true that nothing is quite like holding the original, over 100 year old, photo, but only one of us

at a time can have them.

Negatives of importance go to our safe deposit box.

 

I am trying to embalm myself from the inside for another 20 years.

[[i have met many people who have lost years of memories due to hard drive crashes.]]

 

As Mike already stated:

 

[[The biggest threat to preservation of photos is neglect and lack of concern for preserving them, no matter what the medium.]]

 

People that do not care about their digital photos did not care about their negatives.