RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

You may be correct that digital images are easy to archive, never deteriorate, can easily be made into multiple copies stored in various places and readily accessible, but that isn't the point of this thread. The question is will the digital images be available to future generations? I have some old floppy disks of 5 by 7 or some similar size and some harder ones of a slightly smaller size. I have no idea how to access what is on these. I am sure that it could be done, but it would require having a "reader" and other equipment to do this. Going forward from now, the same question remains: will the media of today be able to be read by the person in the future seeking to see an image of their distant ancestor. I have printed images of members of my family going back into the second half of the 1800. Will the digital files of images of your family be available to your descendants in the year 2170? One of my hobbies is collecting examples of the work of photographers who have worked in my home town. I have examples going back to the time of the Civil War. In all my visits to antique shops, thrift stores and estate sales, I have never seen seen an a CD or an SD card in an enveloped labeled "family pictures". If you care about your descendants having a chance of seeing likenesses of you and your family, I'd put my money on the shoe box and photo album that can be accessed decades even centuries in the future as affording a better opportunty for those descendants in our future who do give "a darn" to know about their ancestors. And as far as laughing at the ridiculous clothes people wore, I have a question "Big Daddy, do you laugh at the "ridiculous clothes of your ancestors.?

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

As long as they are back and white.
Color will inevitably fade away.

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Yes of course, but I think the real issue here is one of not comprehending that we in the present are merely part of a long arc of time. In the past images were regularly made, letters were written and life was recorded even if not on purpose always, but now in these days of the e mail, twitter and the rest, with more people than not keeping their images in their phones, if we want our family lives to carry into the future, we are going to take steps to ensure that actually happens. Perhaps the real issue is living so totally in the present that neither the past nor the present means much to those who would trash can the images that help tell their life stories.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Yes, I am well aware of this.
I have salvaged hundreds of old photos dating to the 1800's and thousands of pages of journals, letters and diaries of my ancestors.
Many are failing and unless museum level preservation is performed will fade away.
I scan and distribute to siblings and interested nieces and nephews.
Hopefully one or two will desire to preserve the items for future generations to enjoy.
If not, I will be dead and not care anymore.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Like I said, if you really care, you would back up your media, and particularly back up stuff on old media to new media. Windows can read my first hard drive, a giant 10 megabyte IBM hard drive. I don't have the 1982 PCXT or drive but I do still have all the "important" files that were on it. As hardware is updated, you need to transfer anything you want to keep onto the new hardware. Other than floppy drives though, even if all I had was my original hard drive, I could easily copy everything on it with my current windows computer. The disk format is still readable.

As far as software, the first jpg file is still readable by any photo viewer. Since there are many billions (probably trillions of jpg files, around, it's not likely the ability to view them will ever go away. This may not be true of proprietary formats like RAW files, which unlike jpgs, go obsolete with every new camera update and are proprietary to each camera make.

Those who think they can store prints for long periods of time are in for a shock, or their descendants will be. Ask any museum about storing print media and they will enlighten you about what is needed to archive photo's for long periods.

Y'all can do what you like, but I'd suggest strongly you convert your prints and slides to digital and you learn how to store and protect your digital photo's for easy retrieval and viewing for your descendants if not yourself.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I've addressed most of this in my reply to William Royer.

As far as laughing at the ridiculous clothes people wore, hell yeah. I have slides from the 70's (converted to digital) that are hilarious, not just the plaid pants and paisley shirts, but really comical hair styles. I also have old family photo's from around 1920 that no one can identify the people since no one is alive that knows who the people are. ALL my photo's are catalogued with keywords that identify who they are, so future generations will not have much trouble identifying when and who is in the pictures. This includes pets as well.

Digital photography is hands down far, far superior to old film and the ability to store and preserve it is so far ahead of film it's ridiculous.

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

Backing up your stuff is important and can be effective. But it only works during your lifetime. The real question is "do you have someone to take over the maintenance of your files after you expire"? All that stuff you have backed up on hard drives and in the cloud will last, but will someone know how to access it? And the cloud stuff will persist only as long as your account is paid up. Will that happen after you're gone?

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Once you die if no one cares then so what.
I will be giving all my family materials to the AZ historical society at ASU as they expressed a strong interest in the materials.

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

So you have found someone to take charge of future maintenance of your collection.

I am sending my photos of the town I lived in to the local Historical Society for their collection. It's a bit iffy since it's a volunteer organization and it's really getting hard to get volunteers to run things like that these days.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

That is why I chose a major University.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I sort of expect my children to keep at least my favorite digital photo's around. I'm certain as can be that the software to view all my jpgs will be around to anyone interested for at least several generations, far longer than a shoebox of old prints will last.

Kids today are rather computer literate, at least as far as using software, such as is needed to view simple jpg files.

You really can't assume anyone will be interested in keeping around boxes of deteriorated prints with loads of unidentifiable people on them either.

I suspect those interested in either prints or digital photo's will be MUCH happier with perfect digital photo's that NEVER deteriorate than they will with the boxes of yellowed, deteriorated prints. There simply is no upside to prints as far as photo storage is concerned.

I've been heavy into computing for 40+ years and so far I've lost nothing due to advancing tech. Actually, it keeps getting easier and easier to keep old stuff around and transfer old tech (floppies, tape drives) to new tech (hard drives, flash drives) and so on. The jpg viewers we use today are the same that we used in 1994, and is not likely to become obsolete ever without simple backward compatibility. I feel a whole lot less confident about all the various RAW file formats. I'd recommend any pics you want passed along are jpgs at a minimum.

One additional note, I have almost 80,000 jpg files on my PC right now. Many are dups, many suck the big one and could be deleted. I always keep any photo that is not hopeless junk. At my advancing age, I've started to cull some of this but at I doubt my ancestors will be interested in stuff even I have no interest in, so if there is a downside to digital, it's the huge volume of crap that is easily stored. Fortunately for my ancestors, I resize my favorite photos for TV viewing and store just those 3-4 thousand files in a folder separate from the originals and and they should have no trouble viewing just those, and easily access the originals if they wish.

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

Kids today use computers a lot. That doesn't make them computer literate. They just know how to use the software that interests them.



The "unidentifiable people" part is easy to take care of by adding documentation to the prints



It's a myth that digital files never deteriorate. The data do not deteriorate but the recording of the data can. There is an upside to prints since they do not reside on media that will be obsolete in a relatively few years.



I have been using computers for longer than that and I have lost things due to advancing tech. All it takes is inattention. Preserving files requires maintenance (as you note, transferring to new media when necessary), and maintenance is not really generally high on everyone's list. Even NASA has lost data to advancing tech (data stored on old 7-track tapes). I did not stop losing things until I recognized the necessity to do the maintenance, so now I do it. But we really have to get people thinking about that problem, otherwise the physical print will probably last longer than the digital file on average.

And I tend to think of preserving things for centuries, not years.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

How many paper prints have survived over 150 years?

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

We tend to be photocentric here, being photographers, and perhaps miss the big picture. Future generations will value our pictures far more if they understand why we value them. Why is this picture important? Why did you want to take it? What does it say to you? What feelings does it evoke in you?

I'm a big proponent for putting pictures into albums, with plenty of text to go with them. Particularly if the pictures are intended to tell a story, like a vacation or important family event, or to record our family history. I've found I can simply insert pictures into a Word document and create an album with as little or as much text as I want, and as many pictures and pages as I want. I can arrange and re-arrange to my heart's content. When satisfied with the results, I can print the Word document as a PDF file and email it to friends and family. The end result is an album made the way I want, produced and distributed at zero cost.

After printing and distributing the PDF, I keep the Word document as well. Often one of the recipients will get back to me with some story that one of the pictures has reminded them of. It's simple to edit the album to incorporate their recollections as well. The very best family albums are a collaboration, with all the family sharing their memories of their ancestors.