How Long Will Your Pictures Last?It all depends on you, your successors, and whether anyone else cares.

How Long Will Your Pictures Last?
It all depends on you, your successors, and whether anyone else cares.

By Jason Schneider

Analog aficionados like me are excruciatingly aware that shooting pictures on film is considerably less convenient and a heck of a lot more expensive than shooting equivalent images with a digital camera. We do it because we love the leisurely pace of the traditional shooting experience, the distinctive esthetic qualities of images shot on film, the vintage rendition of our ancient cameras and lenses, and the astonished expressions on folks who watch us loading our cameras with strange metal cartridges or cylindrical rolls of paper-backed film. We’re also amused by the quizzical looks we get when we explain that we can’t show onlookers the photos of them we just shot on the LCD because there is no LCD!

However, there’s one aspect of shooting film where many film dinosaurs believe they have a technological ace in the hole. Their images can potentially last and be easily retrievable for hundreds, if not thousands of years because they’re captured on negatives, physical objects that can theoretically be preserved indefinitely if properly stored. In contrast, digital images are basically electronic data captured on media that are seemingly more ephemeral and subject to degradation. And even if by some miracle these data remain intact on a hard drive, archival CD, or some super memory card, 200 or 500 years hence, perhaps nobody will have the hardware, devices, or operating systems needed to display an ancient JPEG or TIFF, so they’ll essentially be lost forever. It’s a scenario that may be appealing to film fanatics, but as we’ll see, the facts and the limitations of preserving any kind of photographic images, are a lot more complicated.

The Niépce Heliograph, the earliest preserved photograph, an 8-hour  exposure taken in 1826.jpg
The Niépce Heliograph, the earliest preserved photograph, an 8-hour exposure taken in 1826.

When it comes to preserving images on film, proper storage is critical to avoid chemical and physical deterioration of the images and loss of information. According to data from the RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) Image Permanence Institute (IPI) there’s a direct relationship between the storage conditions (temperature, relative humidity and light level), and long-term image stability, and the differences can be startling. According to results published in the IPI Storage Guide for Acetate Film, a collection of triacetate-based film stored at 70°F and 40% relative humidity, will only remain in good condition for about 50 years. But the guide predicts that by lowering the temperature to 30°F at the same 40% relative humidity, fresh triacetate film in dark storage will last for 1000 years! In other words, the cost of maintaining an improved storage environment is directly proportional to the quantitative benefits measured in years of preservation. The study concludes that carefully controlled cold storage is the only viable option for enhancing the stability of film that has already shown signs of deterioration and the only way to maintain new or undamaged film in good condition for extended periods of time.

A picture worth saving: Earth shot ny Lunar Orbiter from near lunar orbit taken on Kodak Bimat...jpg
A picture worth saving: Earth shot by Lunar Orbiter from near lunar orbit taken on Kodak Bimat film, processed in space, scanned with a flying dot scanner, converted to an analog TV signal, and finally transferred to film.

All these stats and general principles apply to old cellulose nitrate-based films, current cellulose acetate and triacetate (TAC)- based films, and polyester (polyethylene terephthalate)-based films that were first introduced in 1955. The study notes that polyester based films may offer inherent advantages in terms of image stability and permanence, and they are recommended for making duplicates of any images intended for archival preservation. However, that is of little consequence for most film shooters since almost all current films, including black-and white emulsions, employ a triacetate base.

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady, February 1860, salted paper print.jpg
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady, February 1860, salted paper print.

The most economical way of preserving a collection of film images in good condition is cold storage at 30°F and 40% relative humidity. The chemical reactions driving the deterioration of acetate-based negatives are also autocatalytic, meaning that once the products of chemical degradation accumulate, and once deterioration starts, the process gains momentum. To prevent the build-up of gaseous by-products, negatives should be removed from sealed “air-tight” containers such as metal film canisters or plastic bags and installed in non-airtight boxes in well-ventilated spaces. All negative enclosures should pass the photographic activity test as prescribed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standard IT 9.2-1991. Before placing the negatives in enclosures, dust them with a wide, soft brush, and label the enclosures with a permanent archival ink meeting ANSI Standard IT 9.2-1991. Negatives should fit snugly, but not tightly into boxes that have reinforced seams, be acid-free with a high alpha-cellulose content, and meet ANSI Standard IT 9.2-1991. The boxes should have tight fitting “clamshell lids,” negatives of different formats should not be mixed in the same box, and films should be boxed separately by film type. Note: this is only a small portion of the IPI recommendations for archival storage of negatives and other types of images recorded on film, but it gives you some idea of the rigor and detail of the requirements.

Perspective of a Portal by Todd Gustavson, shot on a Nikon QV1000C electronic still video camera.jpg
Perspective of a Portal by Todd Gustavson, shot on a Nikon QV1000C electronic still video camera.

The cost of long-term film preservation? You don’t want to know!

The most economical way to preserve a collection of images on film in good condition for a century or longer is cold storage using frost-free freezer systems that regulate the temperature (by far the most important factor) and the humidity. Though duplication is a viable option, it is expensive, time-consuming, and not a perfect substitute for proper care of the originals. The bottom line: If your goal is to preserve your film images intact for generations or centuries, you must replicate what a museum like the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has been doing for 75 years, and to arrange for that level of care and stewardship to continue in perpetuity! Significantly, the Eastman Museum’s top annual expense is not maintenance of its impressive facilities or paying its expert researchers and staff, but the cost of the energy required to maintain its display areas and dark storage facilities at optimum temperature and humidity levels. Not even considering that temperature regulated frost-free cold storage units require periodic maintenance and replacement, can you imagine the cost of just keeping the power on for 1000 years?! BTW, Current solar panels last for about 20 years.

Digital to the rescue? Sort of.

It may not please film fanatics who prize their negatives and slides as the ultimate physical representations of their precious photographs, but scanning is now generally considered the best way to preserve film images over extended time periods. Scanning to create digital files allows for the highest quality reproduction of the original negative, preserving the most detail and greatest color accuracy compared to simply making photographic dupes on film (which is also a lot more expensive and labor intensive). And scanning at hi-res to create digital files is now generally held by accredited conservators and major museums to be the best method to ensure long-term preservation of photographic images on film. Of course, preserving digital files in readable forms without compromising or losing any data presents its own unique challenges, which we’ll get into shortly.

Key advantages of scanning film to create digital files:

More detail from negatives:

Film negatives contain more image data than a printed photograph, so scanning directly from the negative provides a superior result.

Color accuracy:

High-quality scanners can accurately capture the colors from the film, especially when properly calibrated.

Digital longevity:

Once scanned, the image can be easily stored digitally and backed up for long-term preservation.

Shooting digital: Will your image files last, and will they be readable?

The digital JPEG, TIFF or DNG image files captured by your digital camera can potentially yield higher picture quality (sharpness and detail) and greater color accuracy than images shot on film, but digital storage media can lose data or even become unusable for a variety of reasons such as damaged spindle motors in hard drives. The flash memory found on solid state drives (SSDs) smartphones, USB flash drives, and memory cards (all types), can start to lose data around a year after their last use, depending on the storage temperature, and how much data was written on the device during its lifetime. Current “archival” disc-based media are only designed to last 50-100 years and most use a proprietary format.

The M-DISC is a DVD-based format claimed to retain digital data without loss or alteration for 1000 years, but writing to it and reading the data it contains requires special optical disc drives which may be difficult or impossible to find in 20 years, much less a millennium from now. In addition, the company behind it went bankrupt, highlighting another potential pitfall with all digital storage media. Linear Tape-Open (LTO), an open-format digital information storage technology created by HPE, IBM, and Seagate Technology requires periodic data migration since older LDO tapes cannot be read by newer LTO tape drives. RAID arrays (which store duplicate mirrored copies of all data on a drive) afford some protection against failure of a single hard drive, providing you don’t mix the drives of one array with those of another.

Common File formats compared

JPEG is the most popular image file format in use today because it meets the needs of the broadest spectrum of users and compatible with the widest variety of devices.

Advantages: Compressed file structure results in small file sizes, making them easy to transfer and store. Compatible with most browsers, software and apps. JPEGs can achieve high compression rates with little loss of visual image quality. JPEGs are ideal for web pages, email attachments, and archiving large photo collections.

Disadvantages: JPEGS use lossy compression, meaning that some image data is lost when the image is compressed. Repeated editing and saving JPEG images results in progressive loss of quality over time. JPEGs don’t support transparency, which is necessary for drawing templates logos and buttons, and are less suitable for working with text or monochrome graphics with clear boundaries.

TIFF is a lossless compression format widely used by professional and advanced photographers for storing and archiving images.

Advantages: Because TIFF is a lossless compression format it does not lose image quality if the dot per pixel value is modified. This capability makes TIFF images portable to almost every hardware and software, and allows them to be easily edited and modified, which is why they’re the de facto file type used by professional photographers and publishers who need to maintain quality while editing and storing images. You can compress TIFF images using virtually any file compression tool, archive multiple images in a single TIFF file, and TIFF is platform/hardware independent, facilitating resizing, transfer, editing and the overall flexibility of working with TIFFs.

Disadvantages: TIFF is a raster image file format made up of small bits so resizing can affect image quality. TIFF does not have a sophisticated security system, so users can set the security for a whole file, but not individual file components. The TIFF image format cannot imbed or attach other file types with it like, for example, PDF. TIFFs consume a lot of storage space even when compressed and take longer to open. PDFs are a better choice for Images requiring more sophisticated security and imbedding features, and for commercial printing.

DNG (Digital Negative Format) is a patented, lossless RAW image format developed by Adobe in 2004.

Advantages: DNG files are compatible with more software and devices than proprietary RAW files. DNG files are smaller than RAW files and help conserve disk space. DNG files have embedded metadata that makes them easier to manage and organize. DNG files are easier to edit because changes are written directly into the file. DNG is an open-access format so anyone can use it without restriction.

Disadvantages: DNG may not be able to capture every aspect of the proprietary format, especially if the manufacturer has incorporated unique features. Converting RAW files to DNG can take time and computer processing power. Some software may not fully support all the features and metadata contained within a DNG file. It is possible to lose camera brand specific data (e.g. color balance) when converting to a DNG.

Kish stone tablet section of c.3,500 BCE is the oldest known example of human writing, but it ...jpg
Kish stone tablet section of c.3,500 BCE is the oldest known example of human writing, but it hasn't been deciphered.

Data retrieval is a problem that is literally thousands of years old. The earliest preserved example of written text is the Kish Tablet of c.3500 BCE found in the ancient city of Kish in modern day Iraq. A small limestone tablet clearly inscribed in pre-cuneiform pictographic writing. It has yet to be deciphered—indeed, it’s not even certain that it corresponds to any language that was spoken at the time! The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799 by French soldiers building fortifications in the Egyptian town of Rosetta (now Rashid) was much more enlightening. Inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BCE by King Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the top register (excerpt) is in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the middle one is written in Demotic, a cursive form of hieroglyphics, and the bottom one is in Ancient Greek, using the Greek alphabet. The presence of Greek convinced the French soldiers that they had found something significant, and they turned it over to Egyptologists who realized that the Greek text repeated the hieroglyphic texts and used the tablet to decipher the hieroglyphics. The lesson for those striving to preserve digital files for millennia: include keys to unlocking the data, and indelibly mark the storage device with a detailed description of the contents. Modern examples abound. Just try opening a WordPerfect document in a current version of Windows or recovering data from and old floppy disk and you’ll soon see that preserving the bits is not necessarily the hardest part—it’s determining what they mean!

To this end, Mahadev Satyanarayanan (“Satya”) at Carnegie Mellon University began to develop a platform designed to catalog and record both the digital objects (e.g. image files) we create and descriptions of the software and hardware that make them interpretable. Known as The Olive Archive, Satya’s platform is designed to address one of the trickiest problems, how to preserveexecutable files. Rather than having to preserve every single piece of hardware in working condition, a daunting and nearly impossible task, Staya’s goal is to create “virtual machines,” maps or descriptions of the hardware, that will allow old programs to be recreated using new software. Emulating past hardware isn’t a new idea, but the idea of building a repository capable of opening and executing any digital object is a massive undertaking.

Identifiers: How to know what you’re looking for.

Organization is one of the main pillars of image preservation because merely having information is of little value if you can’t find what you’re looking for. To preserve digital content and manage its collection effectively it’s essential to use assigned identifiers and accurate descriptive metadata. An identifier is a unique label used to reference an object or record (digital file), usually given as a string of numbers and letters. It’s a crucial part of the metadata included in a database record or inventory, used in tandem with other descriptive metadata to differentiate objects (files) and their various iterations. Descriptive metadata refers to information about a file’s content such as title, creator, subject, date, etc. that helps to minimize the risk of a digital object becoming inaccessible. Implementing a filename protocol such as 8.3 filename or Warez standard naming is essential to consistent and efficient discovery of stored objects (files), especially with digitized files of analog media such as film images. It will also ensure compatibility with other systems and facilitate the periodic migration of data, another key element of long-term digital data preservation. However, filenames are not good for semantic (descriptive) identification because they are non-permanent labels for a specific location in a system and can be modified without affecting the bit-level profile of a digital file.

Essential elements necessary for long-term digital file preservation

Integrity: Data integrity refers to the assurance e that the data is “complete and unaltered in all essential respects” and a program designed to maintain integrity aims to ensure that data is recorded exactly as intended and will be the same when subsequently retrieved, Unintentional changes are to be avoided, and strategies to detect such changes should be implemented. If preservation necessitates modifications to content or metadata, the procedures used should be responsibly developed and well documented, and integrity-checked versions of the originals should be retained. The integrity of a record can be maintained through bit-level preservation, fixity checking, and capturing a full audit trail of all preservation actions performed on the record.

Fixity: This is the property of a digital file being fixed or unchanged. File fixity checking is the process of validating that a file has not been changed or altered from a previous state, a procedure often enabled by the creation, validation, and management of checksums, values that represent the bits in a data set, and are the calculated using a function that depends on the content of the object or file. The checksum is then stored or transmitted with the data, and when the data is received the checksum is recalculated and compared to the original checksum. If the checksums don’t match the data may have been tampered with or infected with malware.

Sustainability: This encompasses a constellation of issues and concepts that contribute to the longevity of digital information that focus on building a flexible infrastructure emphasizing interoperability, ongoing maintenance, and continuous development. It incorporates activities in the present that facilitate access and availability into the future, a process analogous to the successful centuries-old community upkeep of ancient relics. Examples: the Uffington White Horse, a 360-foot-long hill figure of a horse formed from deep trenches dug into a hillside in Uffington, Oxfordshire, then filled with white crushed chalk sometime between 1380 and 550 BCE. The Ise Shrine, a Shinto temple complex in Japan’s Mie prefecture dating back to about 4 BCE.

Uffington White Horse from the air.jpg
Uffington White Horse from the air. British locals have been dedicated to preserving this ancient relic for centuries, a tactic we need to emulate!

Recorded media such as film or digital files can become corrupted due to physical and chemical degradation caused by lack of maintenance and/or inadequate storage conditions. However, images originally captured or replicated and stored as digital files can also become unreadable when access to digital content requires “external dependencies” that are no longer manufactured, maintained, or supported. These can include hardware, software, or physical carriers. A good example is DLT tape, a magnetic tape data storage technology that was originally developed in 1984, later imprved as Super DLT (SDLT), and phased out and shifted to LTO tape in 2007. While data recovery services for DLT and SDLT tapes are still available, they should be converted to a more viable format as soon as possible to ensure future readability and high-level information retention.

Bottom line: Whatever file formats archiving institutions choose, experience suggests they should be open, standardized, non-proprietary, and well-established to enable long-term archival use. Among the deciding factors should be: disclosure transparency, widespread adoption, self-documentation capability, and the impact of patents and technical protection mechanisms. Additional considerations for selecting sustainable file formats include format longevity and maturity, adaptation by relevant professional communities, incorporated information standards, and long-term accessibility of any viewing software. For example, the Smithsonian Institution Archives considers uncompressed TIFFs to be “a good preservation format for born-digital and digitized still images, because of its maturity, wide adaptation in various communities, and thorough documentation.” Whatever other advantages they may offer, formats unique to one software vendor are more likely to become obsolete and difficult to decipher than widely used formats like JPEG, even though the latter enables significant variations in color palette, contrast, etc. depending on brand of camera used to capture the file.

Wait, there’s more!

In addition to everything noted above, there are many other parameters that must be taken into consideration by museums databases and other organizations whose mission is preserving and providing access to digital images over extended times.

Significant Properties refer to those essential attributes of a “digital object” which affect its appearance, behavior, quality and usability, aspects that must be preserved over time to remain accessible and meaningful. In short, understanding and defining Significant Properties is part if the process of deciding which properties are worth preserving, developing preservation metadata, the assessment of preservation strategies, and developing common standards across the preservation community. Authenticity, whether in the analog or digital domain, is defined as the trustworthiness of a record, that it is what it purports to be, and is free of tampering.

Authenticity is not the same thing as accuracy—it’s more like a chain of custody. In other words, an inaccurate record may be acquired and its authenticity as an inaccurate record may be preserved so long as it has not been altered while in the archive’s custody! Most digital preservation efforts are directed toward enabling good decision making in the future. Should an archive decide on a particular strategy, the content and associated metadata must be available in unaltered form to allow good decision making by the controlling party.

The key enablers for digital preservation include the preservation metadata (technical information about the file), information about its components and its computing environment, information that documents the preservation process, and the underlying rights basis. All this allows the organizations or individual researchers to understand the chain of custody—the preservation history of the data over time. Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is the de facto standard that defines the implementable core preservation metadata used by most repositories and institutions, and includes guidelines and recommendations for its usage, and a common vocabulary of clearly defined terms.

The challenges of long-term preservation of digital information have been recognized by the archival community for years, resulting in actions, policies, and reports issued by the following: The Research Libraries Group (RLG), Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA), Open Archival Information System (OASIS), the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and the Trusted Digital Repository (TDR). Other approaches to digital object preservation include the creation of Trustworthy Digital Objects (TDOs) that can verify their own content validity and authenticity to future users by incorporating a record of their change history, and the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES), which has developed guidelines, action plans, and training programs on long-term

preservation for small and medium-sized organizations.

Can you save everything, and if not, how do you choose?

Traditionally, societies have preserved their heritage on long-lasting materials including stone, ceramic, non-oxidizing metals, etc. and more perishable but still relatively archival materials such as vellum, parchment, bamboo, and paper. Unlike traditional material such as books, scrolls, or analog photographs where the user has unmediated access to the content, digital information and image files always need a software environment to render it—and these environments keep evolving at a rapid pace, threatening the continuity of access. The previously mentioned protocols are all, in their own way, designed to address these issues, but there are other “existential” considerations.

When you consider the immense volume of digital data, including all manner of images, texts, and raw information, created every day, does it make sense to save it all, and if not, who decides what to keep? For many photographers the repository of last resort is “the Cloud”, but which clouds will endure? Will the Apple Cloud still be around in 500 or 1000 years? Will all the information in all current cloud storage sites be merged into a Mega-Cloud of the future and stored in perpetuity, and in continually updated form to remain readable? Does it even make sense to preserve every bit of the undifferentiated digital minutiae created by a society for “eternity,” or only to preserve the “important” stuff? And then who gets to decide what’s important?

Clearly if you want to assure that your images, both analog and digital, are preserved for, say, the next 1000 years and not consigned to the oblivion of what amounts to an immense scrapheap, you must take personal custody of them and arrange for their continuing care going forward. Your analog images must be physically preserved in controlled cold storage for as long as possible and converted “perfectly” with as little loss as possible, to TIFF or DNG (Digital Negative) files or whatever superior uncompressed file system of the future takes their place. They must be refreshed or duplicated at regular intervals to prevent degradation of information, and to assure they remain in a format that’s readable using current technology. What all this entails is a system of ongoing stewardship, which is neither cheap, easy, or guaranteed once you are gone. It also entails the continuity of human civilization, which has so far lasted more-or-less intact for “only” about !0-12-thousand years and is by no means guaranteed to do so for the next millennium, especially given the way things seem to be going. Perhaps that’s why NASA sent a “Golden Record” documenting human civilization into outer space aboard the Voyager in the hope it might someday be discovered by a superior—or luckier—extraterrestrial species.

The motivation to preserve our photographs (and other creative output) is clearly implied in the ancient Roman dictum, Ars Longa Vita Brevis, roughly translated as “Life is short (but) Art endures.” In essence, it because we are mortal that we want to leave something physical behind, a memento that expresses our life, our being, our experiences, and our perceptions. In fact, all we can really do is stall for time, because nothing, including the earth, the sun, the solar system and maybe even the universe, lasts forever.

In the immortal words of Emily Dickinson (No. 936, c. 1863):

This Dust, and its Feature—
Accredited—Today—
Will in a second Future—
Cease to identify—
 
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As a Canadian-Australian with family mostly in Canada but some still the USA, but otherwise little affiliation other than the three wonderful years when I was a uni student in New Mexico in the '70s, like many others I try to not make direct comments or be politically critical about the American electoral system and how you will be voting next Tuesday.

It is after all your democracy and your electoral system, your right to vote and to make your own decisions about what you believe suits best the interests of the nation in a democratic system (or what remains of one). As I see it, it's entirely up to the citizens of the two countries I've called home in my time, when voting to make their own choice for their own reasons. Democracy is like that, and whether or not we like it we have to accept it.

We do care, and we are all concerned about things globally maybe going belly up if the wrong elements end up in power in Washington. You are after all the world leaders, and we accept that. The other choices, other than the EU, would be, well, let's not go there.

It helps if we pause to consider that in politics and in voting, we gets what we votes for, and we than has to put up with that for the duration of the electoral term. It could be a long four years for you lot, and three years for us. So much will happen in that time. I worry that too much will.

Australians also will be wise to keep this in mind in next year's national election, if the country goes that long before the polls are called.

Meantimes, I do not believe that our respective fates will be decided by a big nuclear boom. Rather, it will be more like a slow death by a thousand cuts.

I've said enough about all this, and I will now leap (or fall or be pushed) off my soap box - I hope not on to my own sword...

Why not now return to the future legacies of our saved images, or even to Kafka. I wonder, did his amateur snaps survive his passing? I like to think of him in the 1880s with an Eastman Kodak #1 Box Brownie, the first one, with a 100-exposure film roll, no viewfinder, small circular images and the annoying string-pull shutter cord, snapping away at things that interested him.
 
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That image has struck everyone who saw the film. I have always thought the author intended it as such. A hit on the more silly (or stupid) traditions of Germany at that time. Says one who has always detested sauerkraut, altho' to give the country and its traditions some credit, German beer can be very drinkable in the right places and circumstances and fellow company at the table - and at the right temperature.

As for me, Tin Drum (the film, when it came out) is about the time I committed to being vegetarian. With a few slip-ups, I haven't regressed, and I'm healthy enough for it, now in my 70s. So thanks, Gunther Grass.

We seem to have drifted off a bit from the original theme of this thread, but I will say it's been an interesting digression.

I see all this a bit differently. I grew up around German ESL's with thick German accents and German traditions and food. And while the part of the family in Germany had some ardent Nazis none were here. So it is ganz gemuetlich, as the Germans say, for a nice slice of that hard, dark rye bread smeared with good liverwurst with onions to cheer me, despite Oskar Mazerath. Smoked pork of some fashion with that pickled cabbage, sauerkraut, and potatoes is always good and to hear Zauberfloette is to hear magic. I know both sides of Germans, more closely the kind and loving side. Because those were the ones I knew.
 
Why not now return to the future legacies of our saved images, or even to Kafka. I wonder, did his amateur snaps survive his passing? I like to think of him in the 1880s with an Eastman Kodak #1 Box Brownie, the first one, with a 100-exposure film roll, no viewfinder, small circular images and the annoying string-pull shutter cord, snapping away at things that interested him.
Kafka is not known to have had a camera of his own, or to have taken photographs himself. But to understand his engagement with photography I recommend Caroline Duttlinger’s book: Kafka and photography : Duttlinger, Carolin, 1976- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive free at the Internet Archive (when it is not under a ddos attack) and WG Sebald’s chapters on Kafka in the posthumous collection of his short works Campo Santo Campo Santo by W.G. Sebald: 9780812972320 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
 
Out of interest, I fired up one of my raw file drives, and discovered that I became very lax with organization. Usually, I separate files by brand, then camera and date, so the file path would be something like Panasonic > LX10 > March 2019, or if I'm feeling lazy, Panasonic > LX10 2019. But there were tens of thousands of images I had yet to separate into folders, which has been a bit daunting.

I also discovered that I'm missing a bunch of Leica M9 files from 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Very odd, as I consider the M9 to be a Camera of Permanence and would never delete its raw files. They must be somewhere...
 
Out of interest, I fired up one of my raw file drives, and discovered that I became very lax with organization. Usually, I separate files by brand, then camera and date, so the file path would be something like Panasonic > LX10 > March 2019, or if I'm feeling lazy, Panasonic > LX10 2019. But there were tens of thousands of images I had yet to separate into folders, which has been a bit daunting.

I also discovered that I'm missing a bunch of Leica M9 files from 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Very odd, as I consider the M9 to be a Camera of Permanence and would never delete its raw files. They must be somewhere...
Hopefully!
 
Out of interest, I fired up one of my raw file drives, and discovered that I became very lax with organization. Usually, I separate files by brand, then camera and date, so the file path would be something like Panasonic > LX10 > March 2019, or if I'm feeling lazy, Panasonic > LX10 2019. But there were tens of thousands of images I had yet to separate into folders, which has been a bit daunting.

I also discovered that I'm missing a bunch of Leica M9 files from 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Very odd, as I consider the M9 to be a Camera of Permanence and would never delete its raw files. They must be somewhere...
One of the advantages of analog is that you can use shoeboxes. Lots of shoeboxes. Then, you know they must be somewhere... ;)
 
Will it count if I put the hard drives into shoeboxes?
Maybe put the M9 in the shoebox with those HDs... them missing files may then turn up.

I've had such things happen too. Mysteriously. Inevitably due to a little too much Victorian red while I was moving photo folders around to new places. Eventually they all turned up. Sober.

As for negatives and slides (the unmounted ones), I go a little more upmarket. Food storage containers, the $4 ones from our local Reject Shop. On the (to me eminently sensible) theory that if it's good enough for brownies, it must be okay for my images too. Been doing this since 1990, so far all good.

Now to answer the obvious next question - in our household anything freshly baked and out of the oven rarely survives long enough to make it into storage containers.
 
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Maybe put the M9 in the shoebox with those HDs... them missing files may then turn up.

I've had such things happen too. Mysteriously. Inevitably due to a little too much Victorian red while I was moving photo folders around to new places. Eventually they all turned up. Sober.

As for negatives and slides (the unmounted ones), I go a little more upmarket. Food storage containers, the $4 ones from our local Reject Shop. On the (to me eminently sensible) theory that if it's good enough for brownies, it must be okay for my images too. Been doing this since 1990, so far all good.

To answer the obvious question - in our household anything freshly baked and out of the oven rarely survives long enough to make it into storage containers.
My system is unsophisticated but effective. Turn the gps on in your camera if it has one. Always make sure that the clock in the camera is corrrect. Make photos. Keep the cards, number them sequentially with a camera prefix. Everything is in a lightroom archive, backed up onto two separate sets of redundant storage and another on cloud storage. I print my 24 best photos from each year and put them in archive boxes, plus any reified projects. I have not lost any digital photos yet, and even if I forget most things about them, if I can remember where I was when I took them I can find them.
 
You've just reminded me to be sure that all the digital cameras on the shelf are set to correct time in Daylight Saving Time mode. Of course, the Light L16 did that automatically as soon as I turned it on... :)

As stated before, *all* my digital photo live in a Original File tree on one ginormous volume, and are backed up to two others. Film photos end up there after being digitized. On importing photos, I set the file names to a simple pattern (Y-M-D_original file number portion of the name) in folders organized by date of import. I also add IPTC keywords and location data, event data if an event, etc. For film images and for digital photos made with non-recognized lenses, I use EXIFTool to add the appropriate camera and lens data before importing (for old scanned images, I add this if known of course). Once done, I save the metadata to the image files (for DNGs, it is in corporated into the files; for native raw files, it is written as sidecars).

From that point on, Lightroom Classic then allows me to find every single image in the entire library by a number of different parameters ... camera, date, event, category, content type, etc. This is the value of using an image management system. If LR were to disappear entirely, well, adll the metadata is there in IPTC form so anything that can read the EXIF and IPTC data can find all the particulars for every single image, and at very least every file has a date in its name.

Oh yes: I also maintain a separate Lightroom Classic catalog of all the rendered, finished work, independent of the main ongoing work. This constitutes a separate directory tree organized with slightly different naming conventions to reflect the job or project that the rendered work is associated with, with links in the naming to relate them to the original image files. These are all finished, full resolution TIFF files: the masters that are *done* and need no interpretation, just in the odd case that LR ceased to exist for some reason I would never lose my finished work. This directory tree is parallel on the same storage volumes as the original files.

It's been working well as a system since I first put it in place in 2004. I continue to load into it my older film work as time and interest allows.

G
 
My system is unsophisticated but effective. Turn the gps on in your camera if it has one. Always make sure that the clock in the camera is corrrect. Make photos. Keep the cards, number them sequentially with a camera prefix. Everything is in a lightroom archive, backed up onto two separate sets of redundant storage and another on cloud storage. I print my 24 best photos from each year and put them in archive boxes, plus any reified projects. I have not lost any digital photos yet, and even if I forget most things about them, if I can remember where I was when I took them I can find them.
Impressive! I'll bet even your sock drawer is perfectly organized. ;)
 
My system is unsophisticated but effective. Turn the gps on in your camera if it has one. Always make sure that the clock in the camera is corrrect. Make photos. Keep the cards, number them sequentially with a camera prefix. Everything is in a lightroom archive, backed up onto two separate sets of redundant storage and another on cloud storage. I print my 24 best photos from each year and put them in archive boxes, plus any reified projects. I have not lost any digital photos yet, and even if I forget most things about them, if I can remember where I was when I took them I can find them.
Those "printed 24 best photos" are more likely to be seen by your descendants 100 years from now than the digital ones. Yes, I have digital snapshots stored but only trust physical photos to be around to be seen by my descendants. It is not that digital won't last or can't be archival but it has more to do with the nature and psychology of human beings. At least in my family.
 
Those "printed 24 best photos" are more likely to be seen by your descendants 100 years from now than the digital ones. Yes, I have digital snapshots stored but only trust physical photos to be around to be seen by my descendants. It is not that digital won't last or can't be archival but it has more to do with the nature and psychology of human beings. At least in my family.
All the more reason to make photo books and distribute them to family and friends. No time like the present! I wonder if it is viable to put a DVD in an envelope in the cover of the photo book.

Years ago, I was looking through photo albums that belonged to the woman I was with at the time. There were photos from her childhood and teenage years, all the way through to her adult years, going on trips, having children. These would have been far less accessible had they been on a hard drive, USB or cloud. Over time, I gave her DVD's of images from our time together, and when her dog passed, she printed a number of images I had taken of him, and framed them in a collage. Again, the printed images will be seen for as long as that frame exists, but who knows what will happen to the DVD's.
 
I only wear three kinds of socks. That makes organising the sock drawer easy. 👍🏻
Me too. I have four pairs of blacks and one pair of whites. Done!! Which gives me in total four pairs. One black, one white, one black-white, one white-black if I feel like going outlandishly mod. Yes, at my age. Ha! to that.

Pants, I have four pairs, blue, black, light and dark grey, as befits a retired architect. Minimalist to the extreme. Every two years I visit a tailor in Indonesia for at least two new pairs, cotton-polyester, tailored to fit my odd body size, they cost me AUD $30-$35 each so a bargain). I then donate two old pairs to someone in need. Oddly, my pants tend to shrink over that two year period. It must be the material. The polyester does give them a distinguidhed bright sheen after a few washes, a sort of ethereal glow, very fab indeed...

Oop, I forgot. One pair of jeans, classic Levis, real one (they must be, I paid enough for that). Washed a zillion times, so old they stand up by themselves in a corner of the bedroom. So classics, yes.

Shirts, six, five short sleeves, one long sleeves for those very few formal dinners or regal parties. We have an excellent charity shop in my town and I buy as new quality name brand ones for AUD $7-$10. T-shirts, well. I mean, it's hot in Asia. I'd rather not count them.

As for underwear - never mind. (okay, sarongs if you prefer), sandals, shoes (too many pairs, all Florsheims, some 20 years old and while like their owner they look their age, they still walk well and don't wear much.

Otherwise, bathers (swim wear), sun hats, several sarungs. That's it.

Winter gear stays home in Australia. Not needed in Surabaya where day temperatures range from 38 Celsius to 38 Celsius, day in, day out.

(Disclaimer) I did try to think of something 'photo' to post here, but nothing popped out.
 
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You've just reminded me to be sure that all the digital cameras on the shelf are set to correct time in Daylight Saving Time mode. Of course, the Light L16 did that automatically as soon as I turned it on... :)

As stated before, *all* my digital photo live in a Original File tree on one ginormous volume, and are backed up to two others. Film photos end up there after being digitized. On importing photos, I set the file names to a simple pattern (Y-M-D_original file number portion of the name) in folders organized by date of import. I also add IPTC keywords and location data, event data if an event, etc. For film images and for digital photos made with non-recognized lenses, I use EXIFTool to add the appropriate camera and lens data before importing (for old scanned images, I add this if known of course). Once done, I save the metadata to the image files (for DNGs, it is in corporated into the files; for native raw files, it is written as sidecars).

From that point on, Lightroom Classic then allows me to find every single image in the entire library by a number of different parameters ... camera, date, event, category, content type, etc. This is the value of using an image management system. If LR were to disappear entirely, well, adll the metadata is there in IPTC form so anything that can read the EXIF and IPTC data can find all the particulars for every single image, and at very least every file has a date in its name.

Oh yes: I also maintain a separate Lightroom Classic catalog of all the rendered, finished work, independent of the main ongoing work. This constitutes a separate directory tree organized with slightly different naming conventions to reflect the job or project that the rendered work is associated with, with links in the naming to relate them to the original image files. These are all finished, full resolution TIFF files: the masters that are *done* and need no interpretation, just in the odd case that LR ceased to exist for some reason I would never lose my finished work. This directory tree is parallel on the same storage volumes as the original files.

It's been working well as a system since I first put it in place in 2004. I continue to load into it my older film work as time and interest allows.

G

This sounds like me, except I'm not as organized as you are, ha!

Come to think of it, maybe I am. Organized. Only in a different way. Read on, please, and decide for yourself.

My folders are dated. Today's photos will go in a folder marked 2024_11_08 Surabaya. Some folders I mark NE (not edited) or if I've dipped into and dabbled with them, PE (part edited).

I have a Word document - not a spreadsheet as in all my years as an architect I failed miserably at mastering the fine art of spreadsheeting software. I was also a complete failure at CADs drafting/drawing but I contracted this out, so nothing lost. At home I have a huge WD HD full of CADs drawings from my best interior design projects. But I've not looked at one of those since I retired in 2012. Go figure.

Let's return to photography. Here in Indonesia I save the original photo folder, unedited, to my MacBook Air, as BACKUP. I then do backups to one 2 TB WD HD and to one 1 TB WD HD. When I return home I immediately copy the first backup to a larger archival HD and I do a second backup to a smaller archival HD. As I've written before, all my HDs are WD, Western Digital. The bigger HDs are now due to be replaced but I probably won't get to this until mid-2025 when I plan to be home in AUS for two months.

All images are captioned, most only briefly. I have two categories of images I want to look at again. BEST and GOOD. The former are of course my best (so I think) work, the latter are 'seconds' I may do something with in future.

The individual images I want to keep (+/- 50%) are keyworded. Some are post processed and small web images made. Others I mark NE (not edited) but I caption them all so as not to forget the basic details.

That's about as foolproof a system as I could come up with. I've done this since the mid-2000s. No disk failure so far, touch wood.

We all have different ways to do our 'basics' here, but many variables seem to be much the same.

If it works, whatever it is, well and good.

It may be of interest to some here, that I did RAW for many years. In-camera colors and tones have now improved to the stage that I now do large JPEGs only. Anything worth saving for posterity is copied to TIFF. The time I now save in this has been, in a word, tremendous.
 
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A friend brought me some glass plates to work on in my darkroom. After making contact prints, I "scanned" them with the Fujifilm X-T1 with Samyang 100mm macro lens.
An amazing experience, viewing scenes from more than 100 years ago (there are also military uniforms and a car visible on some of the plates).
The quality was so so, the exposure time of my enlarging unit ranged from 8 to 44 seconds, same aperture. Two were even positives (the one with the brownish tint), obviously taken with a different camera (rounded corners).
What I had expected was boring work, what I got was an amazing experience...







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