Do You think preservation of society in photos getting better or worse? (DSLR, hobby)
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With this digital age of photography do you feel that the preservation of society in photography is getting better or worse?
Digital photography is great for the following reasons
Pictures are saved with a good pixel rate
Pictured are saved on hard drives or other media storage devices
Pictures can reach the world audience faster than develop photos.
Picture taking has become easier due to no worries about buying correct film speed film.
Down side of the digital photography age
Less photos are being developed due to they can be viewed on photo hosting sites or computers.
Loss of photography due to computer crashes, web sites shutting down, damage media
Determine the age of a photo becomes lost due to resave and transfers.
Family photo albums used less due to lack of developed film
Photography art becomes less in value due to easy copies are available off computers and internet.
Location: Life here is not an Apollo Mission. Everyone calm down.
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Very interesting topic.
I have always been the family historian. I am also a professional photographer. I bought a slide adapter for my DSLR and am currently digitally archiving all of my grandfather's slide from the 1940's on. I am very careful to label my disks, but worry and predict that after I'm gone, those disks will be devalued as important images because my family is not computer savvy.
So I'm considering printing and putting the most important images in albums. Very very costly and time consuming.
These days, I take so many personal photographs that I can't keep up with them. I resize them, sort, store and am still behind. I think I'm still on 2005 vacation pictures. I delete a lot....only keeping the ones that would mean the most to family and friends at a later date; again wanting to print and put them in albums.
What I've found in general in this digital age...that people don't value photography as much as a they did. With camera phones and cameras that fit in pockets and purses...there are some really bad images out there...it's become too easy to take bad photos.
It doesn't help that companies market their digital cameras with tag lines like "now everyone can take pictures like a professional." I always try to make my images memorable and nurse each one like children.
The upside to digital, is that families are taking more photographs of each other from babies to grandparents. Photographs are such an important legacy.
Attached is a photograph only important to me; our former family camp.
Last edited by MainStreet; 07-17-2007 at 09:25 AM..
That is an interesting question. On a related note, Scrapbooking as a hobby has been gaining speed since 1997. As of 2003 it was a 4 billion dollar a year business & 1 in 4 American households scrapbooked in one form or another. Its greatly increased since that point. So in that aspect, more people are preserving photos. But I think they are preserving fewer photos now that digital has taken hold. I find myself only printing out the important pictures. Sometimes that is 1 photo for an event or outing. Sometimes its 3-4 photos per event or outing. Compared to 10 years ago when I was using film and spending a small fortune each month, I have fewer photos developed.
I am very careful to label my disks, but worry and predict that after I'm gone, those disks will be devalued as important images because my family is not computer savvy.
Don't know how old you are but it's hard to imagine that there will be many young(ish) people that are not computer savvy within the next 10-20 years. Would they be interested in paper copies of photographs anyway? It's probably the content and presentation that's more important than the media.
I suspect that almost all records of current society will be digital, do libraries keep permanent paper copies of newspapers and magazines any more? I very much doubt it. The era of the digital camera has exploded the number of images available to record keepers and researchers, certainly the vast majority will be lost, but I bet that will still leave more than all the paper copies that would have existed without digital imaging.
I suspect that almost all records of current society will be digital, do libraries keep permanent paper copies of newspapers and magazines any more? I very much doubt it. The era of the digital camera has exploded the number of images available to record keepers and researchers, certainly the vast majority will be lost, but I bet that will still leave more than all the paper copies that would have existed without digital imaging.
The problem with most digital media is that even it will start to deteriorate. It's not the perfect media.
We had some camcorder film shot from about 8-10 years ago along with a vhs tape of our wedding. We borrowed a dvd recorder to move all that over to dvd and almost didn't do it in time. The film quality was marginal at best. We may be able to have it professionally restored but we may not. We should have done it about 3-4 years before we actually did it. DVD's state they last forever but only IF properly stored and protected.
DVD recordings are about the only perfect media storage. Liz
The problem with most digital media is that even it will start to deteriorate. It's not the perfect media.
DVD recordings are about the only perfect media storage. Liz
No actual media is perfect, even if the bits are kept intact their format may (will) become obsolete in the future. For things to be truly archived they have to be constantly moved to the latest formats before that conversion becomes impractical. It's unlikely that JPG, TIF, BMP formats will be in use in 100 years and though it might still be possible to convert them then will anybody want to do it? Probably only professional archivists will have access to the tools to do so (hard to decide on that, maybe computers will be so powerful they can handle anything).
Good question Sunny. It's like going into an antique store and seeing a box crammed full of old family photos. Occasionally I'll check the backs for names,hoping to recognize one so I can return it to the rightful owner. I guess the best thing to do is to back up your files and keep current of any format changes.
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