Savageduck writes:

On 2011-12-12 16:50:41 -0800, David Dyer-Bennet said:

Annika1980 writes:

This question got me to thinking. I started shooting digitally about
10 years ago, but many of my early efforts (taken with a 2.1MP Kodak)
are stored away on some CDs somewhere or in an old hard drive I don't
even have easy access to these days. I do have pretty much everything
from late 2002 on, which is when I got my Canon D60. The only problem
is storage space since they take up a few Terabytes.

I used to shoot quite a lot of film as well and I still have many
negatives and slides, very few of which have been scanned. I don't
even think my old scanners and software will work on my new computer.

I wonder how many of these images will still be around in another 10
or 20 years?
An even scarier thought is what if something happens to the drive(s) I
have them backed up on?
Poof! The last 10 years of photography gone forever. But on the
other hand, if I haven't used or profited from those pix by now, what
does it matter? Very few of the photos I've taken have been seen by
anyone besides me, despite the fact that I post a good number of
photos online. So who really cares if they go away?

Most of my old negatives were never seen by anybody but me, either.

Let's see; oldest image on my computer might be...probably this
http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/1956?pic=mdb-alb01-00025.
1956,

taken by my mother, scanned by me from a print.

Well if we are getting into "old" this is a scan of my wife's
grandmother's bridal shot.
http://homepage.mac.com/lco/filechute/Evans-05AW1Cw.jpg

Then there is my father is 1928.
http://homepage.mac.com/lco/filechute/Howard-7w.jpg

I've got some older prints from others, but haven't scanned much. Ah, I
know where I overlooked. Here's a shot of my father and his two
brothers from 1922
http://john.dyer-bennet.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/photos/data?pic=dick-fred-john.

...and for an early shot of yours truly, here I am in 1950 with my two
older cousins looming over me. Taken by my father with a C3.
http://homepage.mac.com/lco/filechute/LGJ-Afw.jpg

Nice. I knew one kid in highschool with me still using a C3, and as
I've learned more about them, they're really pretty remarkable cameras.

My mother was the photographer in the family, and used a Bolsey 35 up
until about 1964, when they got her a Minolta rangefinder. The new
Minolta actually had a light meter! I inherited the Bolsey in time for
the 1966-67 year in Switzerland, but I guess it just sat around from
1964 until then, because my summer 1964 pictures were with my old
Pixie. The Bolsey required judging exposure by eye (or using the advice
on the film data sheet), maybe they figured I was too young to do that
reliably at 10. They were probably wrong.

The oldest photo I took on my website is probably
http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/1964?pic=ddb%203-10,
summer

of 1964. Shot with my Pixie 127, and scanned (from the negative)
rather later).

This 1966 shot of my shooting buddy shot with a Spotmatic is one of
the oldest shots of mine I could dig up at short notice.


I finally managed to upgrade to an SLR in 1969. Brand new Miranda
Sensorex, which was a mistake (I'd argue that either a Spotmatic or a
Nikkormat would have been a better choice; I traded to a Spotmatic after
I bought a Leica M3 around 1973, and got a Nikon FM in 1980).

The oldest digital capture I have up on my website is probably
http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/2000/Pittsburgh%20Feb%202000?pic=02230003,
Feb.

2000.

My earliest digital capture is this October 2001 Coolpix 775 shot.
http://homepage.mac.com/lco/filechute/DSCN0003.JPG

The Coolpix line around 2000 were really pretty good. I ended up with
an Epson 850Z myself, which had advantages and drawbacks. Moved on into
DSLRs in 2002 (well, the last day of December 2002 is when it arrived; a
Fuji S2).

So far as I'm aware I still have every digital photo I've ever taken
that I didn't deliberately delete.

Same here.

And there are some film photos I haven't been able to find lately.

The digital versions can fairly easily be maintained forever -- but
somebody has to be paying attention routinely. All mine live on the
running hard drives on the server (mirrored pairs there), plus are
backed up on three external drives that I take off-site in turn. Plus I
have optical disks of most of the photos, most of them old; but I'm not
throwing them out, they're another string to the recovery bow if things
go pear-shaped.

Of course, if I stop paying attention, the photos probably won't last
that long. Digital archives properly managed can be eternal, but
digital data doesn't do very well under benign neglect. And
historically nearly everything we have from the ancient world got to us
by lasting through at least a century or two of neglect.

But for my lifetime, if the house burns, I'll lose the physical books
and the physical photos, but not the digital books and the digital
photos (including scans of the physical photos).

I haven't quite gone to those lengths to preserve things.

Scanning old negatives has been very productive; things that become
important (largely as people die off), and things that I couldn't print
back then (either my darkroom skills weren't up to it, or the neg simply
works better scanned). This has focused my attention on the value of
keeping the old photos around.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, ; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info