I have never been to Sedona by car, but have been there twice in small aircraft, the last time about a month ago. Totally different perspective from the air, and definitely a rare treat.

Photo Canon 60D Tamron 18-400

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I do a lot of archival work on historical documents and images for a family organization. I have heard that the .jpeg format is one the most fragile of the formats. And .tiff the most reliable. My oldest daughter was sitting beside me yesterday and looking at some very old family images scanned and stored in multiple locations. We found one file that had several corrupted jpeg images. I am working on re-formatting the most important images to tiff.

Also, several years ago, I had a discussion with a friend who is works for Intel and this is what I learned. Engineered life span of a memory card or stick, 10 years. The same life expectancy with a conventional DVD stored correctly. He mentioned that there are archival DVD disks available.

Since I have many "antique" black and white, negatives and prints, dating from the early 1900s, I have invested in a pigment based ink printer to make hard copies of the more treasured images and documents using acid free papers for archival storage. Why all the effort? Only time will tell.

My father 1903

Coincidence. My daughter is here (California) from Kansas City to look through the "boxes" and try to help me decide what is landfill material or what might be of interest to hers and future generations. Writing this, the thought just hit me in the face - the landfill might just be the best place for some things as I can see in my minds eye an archaeologist, sometime in the distant future, discovering the landfill and my rejected treasure might have a better chance to be highlighted in a real museum.

Yes, I whole heartedly agree. I no longer get weekends or holidays!

My take on the demise of Radio Shack is a little different, though I do agree with most of the previous posts. I received a General Class (Ham) Radio license in the early 60s. I recall that the "man cave" where the equipment was kept was generally referred to as the "Radio Shack". With the decline of the hobby over time, I always wondered why they kept the original name. Today, my main hobby is amateur build aircraft. I have built two and helped on two others. When I built my first airplane, the factory was averaging 40 kits per month shipped with a reported high of 90. Today, the average is about 3 per month. My general take on both situations is a fundamental shift in the nature of our hobbies. Early on in amateur radio, we built a lot of our equipment from scratch and the customer knew about as much as the store rep did - or maybe more. Attached is a picture of the video camera mount on my most recent airplane. Cable control with about 100° vertical and 190° horizontal movement. The design is based on the one on my first airplane built in the late 90s. Lots of parts and trial and error - cost about $300 including video camera. Today for $5000 I could buy one far more sophisticated but no more effective and without the fairings - or I could buy the GoPro with all the issues that go along with fixed focus, wide angle and the nature of the sensors. I felt I needed at minimum, zoom and aperture control. In short, just not so many of us tinkerers around.

Go for it. Would be fun to see.

This is my favorite. It was taken about 1974. The who is my daughter and the where is unknown as well as the camera and film. It was total luck on my part as the location, the pose and the shutter click all just happened.

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I appreciate the responses, especially the location correction. Being a pilot and looking at a compass every time I fly, I should know better. Being new and not sure yet of the fine points of posting, I will re-post the image with the full size for download.

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Several weeks ago there was a post showing wild horses in the Owyhee area and viewing that triggered my search for this photo. It has been one of my favorite areas in NE Oregon and SW Idaho. My familiarity has been from the air as a group used to fly annually from the Sacramento, CA area to explore the back country if Idaho. I took this picture using a Canon 20D in 2005 0r 06 and suppose the camera was set at a high shutter speed to minimize shake as I was the pilot as well as the photographer. I have tried to find this specific location again, but without luck. What draws me to this area is flying over what appears to be a flat desert landscape, then suddenly there appears a deep gorge with a river on the bottom.

I have the Pro 10 and am very pleased with it. I bought it primarily because of the pigment based inks. My primary purpose was in a family history archival sense. I have many old photos and documents of personal and pass down value. Many of the original photos had to be seriously post processed after scanning due to fading of the original color prints and slides. It was my hope that the next generation or two won't have to deal with those issues. I don't use it regularly, but it is always ready to go - due in part, I am sure to the regular weekly power up and maintenance sequence it goes through automatically. The ink is pricey as mentioned, but worth it in my mind.

I have been lurking for quite a while. I've been interested in photography since the real old days having been introduced in the black and white era by my father. I spent a lot of time in his darkroom with him learning early post processing techniques and the time in front of his camera as a subject, as he learned portraiture, helped me learn the basics of lighting - especially how to wrap an extension cord to prevent tangles. That being said, I am still pretty much a novice despite my background. I have enjoyed the forum basically for two reasons - a source of information from some very knowledgable people with a kindness and support that strongly suggests a desire to help and inform rather than argue and criticise. Other interests, flying and tinkering in my shop.

I am totally new to the forum so what I will offer is done with some reservation. About me, I am an amateur photographer in the most complete sense, though with a history that prompts my interest. My father was also an amateur, but with a sense of dedication that has always impressed me. He studied portraiture which dictated at least in part, his camera choice – a large format bellows camera. In his photography club, the focus was on portraiture and I was occasionally a volunteer model where even as a young boy, I learned some incredible things, like how to coil a light cord to prevent its kinking when uncoiled later. I also spent countless hours watching him develop and print from his negatives. This helped me when in college as I worked for a time at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the UC Berkeley campus in their darkroom processing proofs of what were called Progress Shots. I worked under their highly respected photographer as he documented the construction of the Cyclotron then under construction.

I was attracted to this thread because of my desire to archive and protect some very old family photographs, especially those of my father. I am sure all of you are aware of the incredible archival endurance of the silver based black and white negatives and prints. And opposing that the rapid degradation of the dye-based color negatives and prints that followed. I have spent countless hours digitizing negatives and prints with additional hours attempting to reclaim the original colors using Photoshop and Lightroom. With this in mind, I was talking about long range storage with a friend who worked at the Intel facility in Folsom, California. He mentioned that a Flash Drive has an expected life expectancy of about 10 years. He also mentioned that a DVD disk had a similar life expectancy if stored carefully. He then mentioned the development of the Millennium DVD that claims a life span of 1000 years if stored properly. This then prompted some research where I discovered that the JPG format most commonly used has the poorest life expectancy of the digital image storage formats with Tiff being the best. Then my thinking went to the hard copy idea for a more secure archival possibility for those few once in a lifetime images. That led me to the vulnerability, once again, of the die-based inks most often used in the typical ink jet printers and of course the papers used. I read that if we made an 8X10 using dye based inks and hung the picture near a window that allowed periodic direct sun exposure, you would likely see fading within a year or two.

I agree with most previous posts that many of our most treasured photographs might be of limited interest to generations to come, but there will be some that would be real treasures if still available. One such treasure of mine, though not a photograph, is a ten minute home movie clip filmed, I think, in 1938. It was shot by my father with his Kodak movie camera on black and white 16 mm film. It begins on the family farm in Utah showing his sister’s family sampling their farm grown watermelons with their farm animals in the background and followed by a segment filmed in several New York City locations showing his friends there with the typical short clip of the - photographer or cinematographer (him). This when he was there studying for his PhD. How to preserve this is a major challenge to me.

I have decided to attempt to select which photographs – mostly family members and other people of interest that might be of interest down the years. Then to print those few in a fairly large format using pigment-based inks on acid free paper. These should be good, if stored carefully, for many years. Of course, I think of these things primarily because, like many of us, I am old enough to have experienced many technical advances through the years. I remember the excitement I felt seeing the first image printable on one of the new “high tech” dot matrix printers - a club - as in an "Ace of Clubs" in a deck of cards. And I don’t think we have seen it all. Whatever the technology that is around the corner, a few Hard Copy prints would definitely be compatible and for someone, at some future time, they just might have an opportunity to find some keepers.