What Do I Do With All This Stuff???

So I am converting from film to digital. Cool.

I have many, many large boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides.

I have envelopes on envelopes of negatives too.

I have rolls of film from the old "Slides and Pix from the Same
Roll" offers.

Now I upload my digi-prints to the PC, print what I want ....
Then What??? Do I delete all the files? Do I burn them to
a CD or DVD that has a lifespan of, what, 4 minutes??

Do I save them to a hard drive that I then take offline and
store in a vault??

What do I do with all this digitized "stuff" ?????

On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:49:58 +0000, nick wrote:

So I am converting from film to digital. Cool.

I have many, many large boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides.

I have envelopes on envelopes of negatives too.

I have rolls of film from the old "Slides and Pix from the Same
Roll" offers.

Now I upload my digi-prints to the PC, print what I want ....
Then What??? Do I delete all the files? Do I burn them to
a CD or DVD that has a lifespan of, what, 4 minutes??

CDs and DVDs stored in a reasonable climate will have a lifetime of many
years - not minutes.


Do I save them to a hard drive that I then take offline and
store in a vault??

That would be another option.


What do I do with all this digitized "stuff" ?????

I have a CD or DVD copy along with copies on a couple of computers - and
an external USB hard drive. A lot of digital photos have also been
'archived' on the flash media on which they were taken, since it is now so
inexpensive.

nick wrote:
So I am converting from film to digital. Cool.

I have many, many large boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides.

I have envelopes on envelopes of negatives too.

I have rolls of film from the old "Slides and Pix from the Same
Roll" offers.

Now I upload my digi-prints to the PC, print what I want ....
Then What??? Do I delete all the files? Do I burn them to
a CD or DVD that has a lifespan of, what, 4 minutes??

CD's and DVD's life span is maybe half of that of a slide or negative
and likely more than most prints. Of course they can't be totally trusted
because the don't fail slowly, they fail all at once.

If you want to be sure of them, you make at least two copies. You keep
one and send one off far away. I send copies to my kids out of state. That
way no fire or simple defect will cost me all the images I wish to maintain.
That is far safer than keeping the negatives or prints or slides.

Remember to replace and update those storage devices on a regular basis.

It also helps to reduce the total number of images you are keeping. You
really don't need to keep 16 very similar images of the front of the church
where your son was married. :-)



Do I save them to a hard drive that I then take offline and
store in a vault??

What do I do with all this digitized "stuff" ?????

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia 's Muire duit

There are numerous companies that will convert your slides and negatives to
dvd. A couple of them are really reasonable. Check out
http://www.photoscanningservice.com/

500 slides scanned for $.39 each isn't bad and $.49 for 2000dpi isn't all
that bad either. http://www.digmypics.com/OE/Pricing.aspx

"nick" wrote in message
news:W4JHh.15017$zh.11260@trnddc08...
So I am converting from film to digital. Cool.

I have many, many large boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides.

I have envelopes on envelopes of negatives too.

I have rolls of film from the old "Slides and Pix from the Same
Roll" offers.

Now I upload my digi-prints to the PC, print what I want ....
Then What??? Do I delete all the files? Do I burn them to
a CD or DVD that has a lifespan of, what, 4 minutes??

Do I save them to a hard drive that I then take offline and
store in a vault??

What do I do with all this digitized "stuff" ?????

On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:49:58 GMT, nick wrote:

So I am converting from film to digital. Cool.

So you're converting from film to digital. Yawn. Er, I mean,
like, coooool, dude!


I have many, many large boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides.

I have envelopes on envelopes of negatives too.

I have rolls of film from the old "Slides and Pix from the Same
Roll" offers.

Now I upload my digi-prints to the PC, print what I want ....
Then What??? Do I delete all the files? Do I burn them to
a CD or DVD that has a lifespan of, what, 4 minutes??

Do I save them to a hard drive that I then take offline and
store in a vault??

What do I do with all this digitized "stuff" ?????

Put it all in a locker, forget photography and take up model
railroading or collecting very British tea cozies. There are some
for every taste, whether Cotswold Cottage, Ginger Cat, Plum Sauce,
Lorna Doone, Black Adder, more Wodehouse or Marmite.

http://www.bluemoontea.com/tea-cozy.htm
http://www.amazon.com/As-British-as-...R27I5ZPFAUK94I

Joseph Meehan wrote:

CD's and DVD's life span is maybe half of that of a slide or negative
and likely more than most prints.

Wow! Is that ever encouraging! I recently scanned about twenty
storage boxes of slides. They had been around from as long ago as
1966. Guess how many, stored in total darkness, had turned green
or purple -- ektachrome, kodachrome, etc. What a waste.

nathantw wrote:
There are numerous companies that will convert your slides and negatives to
dvd.

I can do that myself. But then what do I have?? A bunch of DVDs with
a shelf life of what?? I'm looking here for duration, not fancy.
My old slides lasted 30+ years then started to die. My DVDs will
last what, 10 years? maybe? I am looking for a real answer, not
just another temporary solution.

ASAAR wrote:
Ummm, and this is supposed to be helpful???

Thanks so much.

Now crawl back into your hole and go back to sleep.

nick wrote:

I can do that myself. But then what do I have?? A bunch of DVDs with
a shelf life of what?? I'm looking here for duration, not fancy.
My old slides lasted 30+ years then started to die. My DVDs will
last what, 10 years? maybe? I am looking for a real answer, not
just another temporary solution.

nick, you are right, digital media (irrespective of type; optical,
hard-drive, etc) does have a limited life, BUT, so too do
slides/negatives. the big difference is that once you've got a digital
version it is much easier to create multiple copies, and without any
loss of quality. the great advantage of multiple copies is that they can
be stored in multiple locations, so if for whatever reason one storage
location is destroyed you can easily restore your memories from copies
that have been stored elsewhere.
yes, over time you may need to update them to whatever the newest format
is, but the point is that you can easily create copies, and without a
loss of quality...something you can't do with slides/negatives.

is there a way that will perfectly preserve all of your photos forever?
the answer is a definite no, and there probably never will be. but you
have to accept the fact of nature that over time everything degrades.
you can only use what is available, and at the present time, like it or
not, digitial media is the best option.

nick writes:
Wow! Is that ever encouraging! I recently scanned about twenty
storage boxes of slides. They had been around from as long ago as
1966. Guess how many, stored in total darkness, had turned green
or purple -- ektachrome, kodachrome, etc. What a waste.

I don't think they're wasted. The colors shifted but those color
shifts happen in a fairly consistent way, that is, you can make
appropriate adjustments manually on a slide to get the original colors
back, then apply the exact same adjustment to the rest of the slides
from the box and fix the colors on all of them pretty efficiently.