Sirduke

I care about them!!!
Oh, how i wish I had my film negatives. Mine were lost or misplaced while moving. I hope you have or will digitize your photostory (history). The limited few that I found I digitized them. It surprises me when I extract amazingly rich saturation from some of the slides.

docerz

The conventional wisdom is that you should revisit your data every five years to make sure that you can still read it. The general consensus is that the magnetic platters in the drive will start to degrade in 5 years of storage. The bigger issue is that storage technology changes. That means a format that works today will be unreadable 5-10 years from now.

The best option you really have is to have multiple copies on multiple formats and to check on the data at least once or twice a decade. That's really the only way to make sure that the data is both intact and on a format that can still be read.

I

kocart Loc: Illinois

This brings to mind family history books--where you start with an ancestor and his wife and children and some of the children's children, all identified from whatever family photos from descendants that you can collect. Then once the books are made and the people documented, distribute the books. Wide dissemination seems to be the best way to insure photos survive for posterity. Also, consider the fact that some photographs can be uploaded to more-or-less permanent sites such as find-a-grave and ancestry. The key is that the images are widely shared and if you lose your copy, chances are you can locate another. Consider also donating digital copies of Civil War portraits and other such historical material to Library of Congress or other repositories. This doesn't cover your personal archive, but these are the images that are not going to be lost in our lifetimes and possibly not for generations.

fotobyferg

Facebook is forever, isn’t it? Set up a legacy account.
Seriously though, most of the images of enduring quality are of family. Anything else is just fluff.

Our two son’s childhood years are mostly on printed material, and movies have been converted to DVD.

In the final analysis, they will choose what matters to them and the rest will be chucked, the cycle starting again with their children.

I never take myself or my life too seriously. It’s not like I am some historically significant public figure who has solved the mystery of the universe. In the end, who cares who I was or what I left? It is enough for me that I was loved and will be missed. It’s what’s in the heart and mind that counts.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Exactly what I did for the past 2 days. No people that were identifiable got pitched and albums dismantled. Scenes even of famous places were pitched.

RonW42

Do you remember 5" floppies, 3" floppies, 8 tracks, etc. your great grandchildren won't be able to view them. The only thing that has survived since the beginning of photography are paper photos in a scrap book. We have a college here that wants either slides or negatives (not digital) for their history of the town... Food for thought. Ron

Kuzano

If I had any, I'd be much more concerned about my great grandchildren surviving WWIII to view my images. As it is, I worry about my nephew's two boys. Trump? Kim Jong? Pakistan? Iran?

Far more important than my 40 years of images. When I know the end is near, I plan to burn my legacy data and format my data drives.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Interesting topic. I read 3 pages before deciding to just add my 2 cents, so I hope I'm not repeating anyone in the couple of pages left before me.
Photos, are pretty much like video, and many photos are put into slideshows, so....in a way...video.

I remember having several super 8 movies of my family, thinking.......these would be great to pass down.
Then, I got my very first video camera. It was awesome, but I couldn't move much, because it was hooked up to a 3/4" video recorder. Unfortunately, I couldn't play my Super 8 movies in my video recorder.

It wasn't long until VHS came along, of course, that would be the best way to share my memories with the kids and grandkids.
Oops, Betamax is better. Yes, that will be the wave of the future.
Shoot...... VHS-C won the battle of "the wave of the future"
Dang...... VHS-C never caught on
Whoohoo!! CD's are going to last forever, they never degrade
Wait.......shoot, they will degrade
DVD's, there you go, those will be better they hold more, and won't degrade.....well....poop, they don't last forever either
Blue Rays.. finally, I can put tons and tons of memories on a blue ray
oops, Computer manufacturers aren't putting ANY optical readers on new computers, have to buy them separately

External HDD's fail at a spectacular rate
SSD's hold up a little better, but do you really think something else won't come along, and soon our computers will consider a Blue Ray the same thing as a Betamax tape.....as in "what the heck is this, and how do I read it?"

Now honestly, I have photos, even tintypes printed on PAPER in albums with notes about each photo, about who the people are. My children, and now my grandchildren LOVE looking through the old albums, and like to ask "who is that?" We look on the photo, see the date, check the names, and usually can figure it out. My parents are still alive, so I sometimes even get in touch with them, and get to hear wonderful stories.

I'm going to keep my family treasures printed and in albums to protect them, to give to my kids who will some day get to have the same experiences with their grandkids...and so on.

Phones, hard drives, and disks go bad, or may some day just be so outdated that nothing will read them. I can't see a day where someone can't pick up an album and not have the "technology" to go through it. Except maybe if the notes are in cursive, but that's another story all together.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Yes but translation is important. It is the content, not the format, and content can be preserved and translated from one format to another. It is the curation process that adds value, much more than the technology at a point in time.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Understood, but the more photos you have, the longer it takes (and/or more expensive) to transition them all over to the newest format. Once printed on paper, it's printed. I know companies specialize in taking your old "x" and converting them to whatever is current, but in my opinion (only opinion, I know nothing is absolutely correct for everyone) I'd rather print the ones I want to save for my great grandchildren, than to keep worrying that I "converted" the whole batch.......over, and over, and over with each change in technology.

As I said, even with printing them off, many of the notes and names are written in cursive, so even that's not perfect, but it's as good as I have for now.

Loving this discussion, it's one that I have often with my clients.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Not disagreeing, but digital updates don't take very long. It can be done with a batch process, drink a night cap, have a good night's sleep and it's done in the morning. That can't be done with physical media.

Every time I rip a vinyl LP or cassette tape, even an old photo for the first time it takes hours of work to capture, process, and document. Backing up or reformatting a digital file is easy and usually unattended.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

(1) use non-acid paper. It will last longer.
(2) if the photos are in B/W, be sure to use carbon-based ink rather than an organic mix. If the photos are in color, have them printed on photo paper and keep them out of sunlight. Some people keep them away from all light. Of course you have to have some light to look at them, but minimize exposure. IMHO the best way to to that is to put them in a book, which you can close up and keep in a closet, or at least a bookshelf away from direct sunlight.

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Quite right - not only is transferring from one digital medium to a new one easier than any analog form, Making exact copies is not only possible,but just as easy. I have digital audio that I recorded 20 years ago (*WAV files on early CD-R discs), Ever since these files have been on CDs,DVDs,SD cards, thumb drives, portable music players,PC HDDs,SSDs, Dropbox, One Drive and Blu Ray. All without "generation loss" from copying or "print through" (the bane of audiotape storage.) It takes 1/1000 (I guess) of the time to copy them than any analog dubbing, and I never have to worry about speed accuracy,head azimuth,or hiss that I had to with even the best O.R. tape. This goes double with video! -

As long as the files are transferred to new media, it doesn't matter what the original medium was. Of course I can't read my 5.25" IBM-PC XT disks on my Dell E5570 But I have many files that go back that far on it (Hell, with a VM a lot of software from my XT runs on the E5570!)

jzett

With three grand daughters ages 8, 9 and 12; I have photos from birth to the present. I am in the process of giving each family their copies on a flash drive (edited for those since divorced) for their photo libraries. Being the photog in the family, I enjoy attending all their school activities and sporting events. Needless to say, there are a lot of photos for each.

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

What is different in color printing today vs. those from 40 years ago. Most on my color prints have changed colors and faded, etc. The only old photos I have in reliably good shape are B/W. Some these my dad took in 1936 and before