What will happen when the digital imaging wave dies

Darkhorse is the correctest of all the posts....

Darkhorse is the correctest of all the posts....

Darkhorse said:
In 2012 Canadian terrorists will bring America to its knees via an Electro-Magnetic Pulse bomb detonated during the Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. The bomb will shut down everything electrical, and wipe clean every hard drive. Billions upon billions of digital photos will be lost.

Children's birthday parties. Gone.
That funny picture you took of yourself in the bathroom mirror. Gone.
Dozens of drunken snaps your teenaged daughter took when she acquired a fake ID and snuck into a night club. Gone.
The photos of you taken mid-yawn that your mother tagged you in on Facebook. Gone.

This disaster will spark a renaissance in film photography. However there will be many restrictions in taking photographs thanks to America's new Canadian overlords.
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The biggest advantage of the EMP bomb will be that no longer will ANYONE be able to talk on the cell phone while driving. In fact NOBODY will be driving except those of us who still drive cars with no chips in the system. Cars that run on crappy gas and downdraft carburetors, with windup windows, and no AC.

The additional bonus will be heroines dressed in black, exceptionally tight leather, like Jessica Alba saving us from the villains at Montecor.

Right on, Darkhorse.

The only part you got wrong is that the bomb may come through Canadian space, but it will be the joint effort of N. Korea, Iran, and the Taliban then in charge of Pakistan. The Iraqi's will be to busy wasting each other ethnically and genocidically to pay attention to the rest of the world.
 
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>The biggest advantage of the EMP bomb will be that no longer will ANYONE be able to talk
>on the cell phone while driving. In fact NOBODY will be driving except those of us who still
>drive cars with no chips in the system. Cars that run on crappy gas and downdraft
>carburetors, with windup windows, and no AC.

No- the electronic components in the distributer will stop working as well, right down to the condenser. Been a long time since I changed the condenser and points in a car, '68 Cougar. Spark Plugs will not fire anymore after an EMP.

The Stanley Steamer will still work.
 
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kuzano said:
The biggest advantage of the EMP bomb will be that no longer will ANYONE be able to talk on the cell phone while driving. In fact NOBODY will be driving except those of us who still drive cars with no chips in the system. Cars that run on crappy gas and downdraft carburetors, with windup windows, and no A/C.
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Hmmm, you mean wackos like me, with my '41 De Soto ?

😀

Luddite Frank
 
Instead of an EMP bomb, what is more likely: the digital folks will take thousands of photos and store them on CD, a flash card, harddrive, etc. Sure they say that they're going to make backups, just like the say they are going to go through the 5,000 pictures from vacation, but in the end of the day they'll procrastinate until they forget about them. Years go by and then they want to look at the photos only to find the CD is unreadable or the flash memory card is mysteriously empty.

Bottom line: a good people are going to lose a lot of photos from harddrive failure in 10-20 years time.
 
chris00nj said:
Instead of an EMP bomb, what is more likely: the digital folks will take thousands of photos and store them on CD, a flash card, harddrive, etc. Sure they say that they're going to make backups, just like the say they are going to go through the 5,000 pictures from vacation, but in the end of the day they'll procrastinate until they forget about them. Years go by and then they want to look at the photos only to find the CD is unreadable or the flash memory card is mysteriously empty.

Bottom line: a good people are going to lose a lot of photos from harddrive failure in 10-20 years time.
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No matter. They (we) are not going to want to look at 'em anyway.
 
chris00nj said:
Bottom line: a good people are going to lose a lot of photos from harddrive failure in 10-20 years time.
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Chris: I'm afraid you're wrong on one big point here: a goodly number of people have already lost a lot of photos (among other vital data) just this way. I've had my hands full attempting to recover said files for quite a few people; when I can't manage the trick, the alternatives get scary-expensive (try getting a quote from DriveSavers...if they can't get your data back, nobody can, but you'd better be sitting down when you get the tab).

Film-lover that I am, and remain, the digital world has far too many other perks to ignore. But one can't be an ignoramus about things, and I try awfully hard to drill this into my clients, sometimes to the point of being a PITA. But a few have thanked me for this, anyway. 😉


- Barrett
 
How many negatives are/have been lost by the average photo snapper? How many boxes of disorganized photos (something I personally love to dig through) go moldy in the attic and get tossed away, or are simply lost or sold to flea markets?

Digital frankly seems to offer greater permanence through its ability to multiply and be easily backed up/stored in multiple locations, and translated on to newer media forms without loss of information.

But in either case, if you don't care, the photos can be lost.
 
Lately I've been going through my old files of B&W negatives and contact sheets from the 1960's. I figured what the hell, I'll try scanning some images off the contacts and post them on my blog. I've mostly been scaning 120 images and decided to just post 'em, contact sheet imperfections, red grease pencil crop marks, everything. I think it looks kind of more "real" that way. Back then I was shooting a Minolta Autocord, which I sold years ago. Several years ago I got another Autocord essentially free with a bunch of other cameras, but never used it.

I started to look for it tonight, but before I found it I ran across Rollei bayonet size 1 hoods, filters, close-up lenses, and the rare Minolta Autopole ~ two polarizers geared together so it fits over both lenses, complete with the original box and instruction sheet!. Then I found the camera. The lenses are clean, no fungus, the Seikosha shutter seems to work at all speeds. Tomorrow I'm heading down to World Wide Photo to pick up a brick of 120 B&W film! BIG negatives! Yeah! Well, medium size negatives anyway.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
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amateriat said:
Chris: I'm afraid you're wrong on one big point here: a goodly number of people have already lost a lot of photos (among other vital data) just this way. I've had my hands full attempting to recover said files for quite a few people; when I can't manage the trick, the alternatives get scary-expensive (try getting a quote from DriveSavers...if they can't get your data back, nobody can, but you'd better be sitting down when you get the tab).

Film-lover that I am, and remain, the digital world has far too many other perks to ignore. But one can't be an ignoramus about things, and I try awfully hard to drill this into my clients, sometimes to the point of being a PITA. But a few have thanked me for this, anyway. 😉


- Barrett
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I think you are giving the average digital shooter too much credit regarding digital archiving and data protection.

The people who have been burned and have learned from their mistakes are very few.

There are many more people that either;

Don't know about the caveats of electronic storage devices.
Know about the risks but won't really see the value until it's too late.
...And the biggest group of people are the ones that do not and will never see the value of a image from the past. To them, it would be nice to keep these images for a long time, but really if they have to lift a finger to assure that happens, they won't and surely won't "cry over spilled milk" when they do lose those images.

I shoot a lot of images at the kids' school, field trips, school events, yearbook stuff... I would bet the farm that in fifteen years, I will have more pictures of some kids than their own parents will have of them. ...solely due to data mis-management as opposed to amount of images taken.

John
 
I think that's the reality. Most people never made any effort to preserve photos, beyond maybe pasting snaps into an album and storing them in the garage. Most of those images likely didn't survive either, eventually tossed out with other clutter.
 
sepiareverb said:
I don't think many people even consider backing up photos, and many likely don't really care. Had a look at any of that old Beta video lately?
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exactly - if it is likely to make me a little money, ( not many do these days! ) I'll do my best to preserve it, if it is of significance to the family - I'll usually print it. When I am gone, my negatives and files on disc, or whatever will probably go straight in the skip!....but will I care?, it's about enjoying myself now!.
Dave.
 
>What will happen when the digital imaging wave dies?
I don't know but after reading this thread I just decided to order an additional external hard disk to prevent premature death. (will be the 3rd external back up). Any recommendations anyone?
 
i have not read this whole thread so pardon me if this is out of order...

my plan is to back all my photos up to a 500 gig external hard drive and then back that hd up to a 1 terabyte external drive drive.
so a back up to a back up.

is that good enough?

joe
 
I do not remember the name, but there is a fictional movie in which a plague destroys the world. The source of the desease is due to worldwide outflow of computer info.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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