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After scanning old photos, archive in a box or trash?
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Jul 12, 2018 12:41:06   #
Jim Plogger Loc: East Tennessee
 
Longshadow wrote:
What do most people do with old photos that they scanned? Archive them in a box or throw them out?
I have many that are over 50 years old that I will be scanning. Scans are backed up in three places and in the cloud.
My primary reason for scanning them is to have a digital copy and also make them available to family.
It appears that they all will fit in one copier paper box.

Thoughts and opinions?


I would never thrown out those photos or negatives after scanning.

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Jul 12, 2018 13:31:58   #
josquin1 Loc: Massachusetts
 
I just recently finished scanning all my old photos and 35mm and 6x6 negatives and I have saved them all. I'm not a hoarder but those I cannot throw out esp the negatives. I keep them in a safe dry cool place and once in a while I pull them out and gaze. I love the feeling of prints in my hand.

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Jul 12, 2018 13:45:47   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
Longshadow wrote:
What do most people do with old photos that they scanned? Archive them in a box or throw them out?
I have many that are over 50 years old that I will be scanning. Scans are backed up in three places and in the cloud.
My primary reason for scanning them is to have a digital copy and also make them available to family.
It appears that they all will fit in one copier paper box.

Thoughts and opinions?


My wife was an archivist. For 50 years she beat into me "Always keep the original".

Seriously, archives require maintenance. All archives. Digital archives may even require more maintenance than hanging onto a box full of photos. The internet is full of stories (some of them even true) that some important files were lost because they reside on outdated media which cannot be read. The archive was not maintained to transfer the files from old media to new media (or if it was so transferred it was not verified). Back in the '90s I had a program that automatically backed up all the files on my computer. I used it. It generated compressed files so they didn't take up as much space (memory was not as cheap back then as it is now). After a few years the software company went out of business. The algorithm they used for compression was proprietary. All my archives were just unreadable compressed bits. Fortunately it wasn't my only archive.

My oldest digital images date from the '80s. My oldest photos date from the 1870s. At present the most reliable medium for an image is silver salts on paper. Of course I have digitized the old photos for ease of distribution to the family, but I will keep the originals. After all, a lot of them have the names of the people in the photo written on the back. Which brings up another related topic: documentation.

It's fine to copy old photos of your family. But a hundred or two years from now, who's going to know who that guy in the photo is? Yes, the digital file can have lots of data preserved in the metadata, but people like to print them and hang them on the wall. Where is the metadata in the print? I don't have a good answer for that. The only crude method I have used is to overlay text onto the photo. You can put the text off to the side if there are only one or two people in the photo, but if it's a group that's a problem. And it's intrusive into the artistic aspects of the photo.

For groups I have occasionally taken the photo, done edge detection and produced a line drawing. I then erase the lines inside the faces of the people in the photo and replace it with a number, then addd a numbered list of people below the derivative image. I then combine the image, the derivative, and the list into one image, which is the digital file I save.


(Download)

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Jul 12, 2018 13:50:09   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
... At present the most reliable medium for an image is silver salts on paper...


I should clarify that to include only photographs. There are paintings that are much older than any images rendered by silver salts on paper.

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Jul 12, 2018 13:55:22   #
Richard Becker
 
I have studio photos of my grandparents and great grandparents (16 x 20)--some dating into the early 1880s. I followed the photographers' suggestion for preserving family history--duplicate it and disseminate it. I copied the photos and made 4 x 6 prints for all my cousins so they would have photos of our ancestors. Then I also placed copies on the "Find a Grave" site.

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Jul 12, 2018 14:32:26   #
rck281 Loc: Overland Park, KS
 
In 50 years from now, will someone find the prints or your files and will they be able to use the media?

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Jul 12, 2018 14:49:40   #
Daryl New Loc: Wellington,New Zealand
 
Save and then you have no regrets if something goes haywire/changes digitally....Cheers

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Jul 12, 2018 15:11:29   #
JD750 Loc: SoCal
 
rck281 wrote:
In 50 years from now, will someone find the prints or your files and will they be able to use the media?


Depends on how the prints were stored. They prints and negatives could be good, or deteriorated beyond hope. There is a good article about archiving prints here:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/guide-archiving-your-film-negatives-and-prints-properly

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Jul 12, 2018 15:51:47   #
Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States
 
JD750 wrote:
Scan both sides?

Good idea if you cannot fit the info in the file name. Sometimes it's just a date, if you're lucky.

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Jul 12, 2018 15:53:58   #
rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona
 
Keep the originals in an archival file, box, etc. Those can never be replaced.
--Bob
Longshadow wrote:
What do most people do with old photos that they scanned? Archive them in a box or throw them out?
I have many that are over 50 years old that I will be scanning. Scans are backed up in three places and in the cloud.
My primary reason for scanning them is to have a digital copy and also make them available to family.
It appears that they all will fit in one copier paper box.

Thoughts and opinions?

Reply
Jul 12, 2018 15:57:19   #
Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States
 
rck281 wrote:
In 50 years from now, will someone find the prints or your files and will they be able to use the media?

Hopefully all future JPEG formats will be backward compatible since there are probably billions in existence with the current format.

Migrating (as I did from 5-1/4 floppy, to 3-1/2 floppy, to CD, to DVD) should be standard procedure if a new media comes out and you start using it.

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Jul 12, 2018 16:46:14   #
therwol Loc: USA
 
Longshadow wrote:
Hopefully all future JPEG formats will be backward compatible since there are probably billions in existence with the current format.

Migrating (as I did from 5-1/4 floppy, to 3-1/2 floppy, to CD, to DVD) should be standard procedure if a new media comes out and you start using it.


Here is some advice. If you have old digital video tapes taken on a camcorder that uses Firewire (IEEE 1394) for video capture, Find a computer with a Firewire input right now and take the video off of the tapes. I delayed getting rid of a 10 year old laptop because of this. (Don't tell me you can put a card in a tower. I know. There is nothing you can do to add Firewire to a newer laptop or All in One.) You will also have to find software to do the capture. I came across this. Haven't tried it. Note that the recent versions of Adobe Premier will no longer do this kind of video capture.

https://download.cnet.com/DV-Capture/3000-13633_4-10327313.html

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Jul 12, 2018 20:58:03   #
Architect1776 Loc: In my mind
 
Longshadow wrote:
What do most people do with old photos that they scanned? Archive them in a box or throw them out?
I have many that are over 50 years old that I will be scanning. Scans are backed up in three places and in the cloud.
My primary reason for scanning them is to have a digital copy and also make them available to family.
It appears that they all will fit in one copier paper box.

Thoughts and opinions?


Archive

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Jul 12, 2018 21:55:04   #
wolftracker Loc: Tennessee
 
I've been sorting through my old prints and after I scan them, I give them to members of the family in the pictures. A lot are from work and are of people that have passed away. Their families really seem appreciative of the photos. I know when I pass, my kids would just throw them away.

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Jul 12, 2018 22:03:04   #
JD750 Loc: SoCal
 
This thread reminds me of an old saying about bureaucracy: "When cleaning his files, A proper bureaucrat copies all the files before discarding them."

;)

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