Bu, Bu, Bu

How many people here actually believe that when you are gone someone is going to go through all your negatives and hard drives and curate your images for posterity? I for one don't. The best I can hope for is that some of my friends and relatives will take a liking to a few of my prints and keep them for their own enjoyment. The rest, prints, negatives, slides, and hard drives alike, are destined for the dumpster. It's only a question of time. So I am focused on printing the best of my work. I'm current to within a couple of months, so if I lost my negatives and digital files tomorrow, I'd be okay with that. I keep my negatives properly stored and my hard drives backed up, but I am not a hoarder.
 
ptpdprinter said:
How many people here actually believe that when you are gone someone is going to go through all your negatives and hard drives and curate your images for posterity? I for one don't. The best I can hope for is that some of my friends and relatives will take a liking to a few of my prints and keep them for their own enjoyment. The rest, prints, negatives and hard drives alike, are destined for the dumpster. So I am focused on printing the best of my work. I'm current to within a couple of months, so if I lost my negatives and digital files tomorrow, I'd be okay with that. I keep my negatives properly stored and my hard drives backed up, but I am not a hoarder.
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This.

Also, what will people do when their chosen iCloud storage supplier goes bust? It's not beyond the bounds of reason that they will not be around for ever or, even, our lifetime.
 
Beware friends, Beelzebub lives in that box of "lights and wires in a box" and his favorite meals consist of TIFF salad with JPEG garnish. I recommend the online book publishers that use acid free materials. A book provides instant protection, one location storage and valued presentation. For those that don't get printed it's multiple solid state hard drives at the present. Short of a worldwide electromagnetic pulse I feel that I'm adequately covered. Since the world appears to be drifting away from printed pictures to online presentation, my confidence in TIFF is not as high as it once was. I use a batch processor to create 300dpi JPEGS from TIFFs and all other file formats.
 
Pioneer said:
..It sometimes feels a bit like a confidence game to me.
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Well it is exactly a confidence game. If we follow standard, well-established procedures, we won't loose our data.

Pioneer said:
Oh, and by the way. If the sun burps wrong someday you are out of luck even if you spent hundreds of thousands of your hard earned dollars on all the latest gadgets and followed all the instructions exactly right.
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If there is an event that destroys all digital image storage devices, the least of our worries will be about the loss of our gadgets and digital images. Think about it.

Pioneer said:
...The rest of this is just a great way to get you to spend your money and make Gates and the rest rich.
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This is a profoundly selective and incomplete view. One of countless examples are found in medicine. If we, or a loved one, become injured or ill, digital information from MRI and, or CT X-Ray imaging could save our lives. If someone's health benefits from pharmaceuticals, these were discovered, developed and manufactured because of diverse array of digital technologies.

I think an old Jazz song ""Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" is more appropriate. All technologies are have the potential to be good or evil.
 
My computer help guy recently told me that when SSD external hard drives crash they are most likely done, nothing recoverable. But the HDs with spinning parts, usually die slowly and data is recoverable. Problem is, SSD will completely take over the older technology. Recently I consider my archives to be a memory bank of great experiences and don't worry too much if it disappears by natural disaster or digital rot. I don't want the archives to feel like a burden or a losing battle in front of a computer screen.
 
twopointeight said:
... I don't want the archives to feel like a burden or a losing battle in front of a computer screen.
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The battle is winnable by using standard data backup procedures. These can be automated as well. SSD's are not significantly more problematic than magnetic media. All digital media will eventually fail. Older devices must be replaced by newer devices.

However, you do have to sit in front of a computer screen.

Protecting assets is a burden for both analog and digital media. All your analog media could be destroyed by catastrophic events. Also, analog media is vulnerable to physical degradation. Having duplicates for all your prints in separate physical locations is a burden. Making analog duplicates of original film media is a burden too.
 
Digital is a never ending money hole. If you have plenty of money to spend, or client files to protect, then continue to throw your your cash into that digital shredder.

For the rest of us I suspect that our money is better spent on the prints.

EDIT - Although I am sure that I sound like one right now, I really am not a Luddite. I enjoy working with digital as much as film. But I am really getting tired of this continuous digital upgrade cycle that has been designed for us.
 
Pioneer said:
Digital is a never ending money hole. If you have plenty of money to spend, or client files to protect, then continue to throw your your cash into that digital shredder.

For the rest of us I suspect that our money is better spent on the prints.

EDIT - Although I am sure that I sound like one right now, I really am not a Luddite. I enjoy working with digital as much as film. But I am really getting tired of this continuous digital upgrade cycle that has been designed for us.
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I look at my M3 or even a Nikon FE and ask myself: Is there nothing sweeter? I compare film to having a cup of coffee with a friend and digital to having a "friend" on social media.
 
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