Will Digital Photographs Bury Our History?

Brad Isaac · #1 04-26-2004, 04:44 PM

Some of you may have replaced your traditional film cameras with a digital model or an add-on card for your Pocket PC so that you can create digital photos. An article over at Stuff, is raining on that parade by indicating the new digital photo technology may be leaving gaps in our photographic history for future generations.

"In the United States, the sale of digital still cameras has outstripped film, with New Zealand and Australia close behind. Worldwide sales of camera phones are expected to near 150 million in 2004, accounting for a quarter of all mobile phones and generating an additional 29 billion digital images this year.
But while the public and the professionals have embraced this magical technology that allows pictures to be viewed in an instant and transmitted around the globe, concern is being raised that our pictorial history is at risk.
Few of the images taken on digital cameras are ever printed out, which means many are permanently lost when the file is deleted or damaged. Even if prints are made, the cheaper commercial models currently used for family snapshots reproduce at significantly lower quality and have less depth than film, especially when enlarged."
Personally, I do have a digital camera, and I do print the better of my photos but I do realize it is easier NOT to print them and wait till "someday" to do so. What do you think? Are digital photos ruining the history for future generations?

hawkmankt · #2 04-26-2004, 04:56 PM

I feel like the fact that you can burn these to a cd/dvd (which lasts how long again? like 2 millenia or something?) just makes these memories last longer. If you think that future generations won't have the ability to read one of our discs, then you're fooling yourself.
Sure it might be antiquated by then, a little like the LP, but it'll still work. And the images will be preserved as well as possible in the original format.
Just my two cents kids.
Up with digital!!!

bkbroil · #3 04-26-2004, 05:58 PM

I make a yearly trip to the Camera store with all my good digital photos and have them printed out, so that my wife can make the yearly photo album so that the kids can look at something when then older. I still keep them on my hard disk but it's nice to be able to flip the pages and look at multiple photos without any electricity.

jkendrick · #4 04-26-2004, 06:14 PM

Think of all the images and text on the internet and then realize that very little is truly lost. While it may not be searchable it's there. We'll find this true too of the online photo albums that people are beginning to use by the millions.
It may very well be the best way to not lose your digital memories will be to post them on the web.

hawkmankt · #5 04-26-2004, 07:35 PM

Here's what I wrote in response to that article...
On the "Snap unhappy - digital photography's dirty little secret", story, I'd like to respond as follows...
Boy, do I agree. I think that leaving all of our photos in crusty old albums in the basement that leaks in a little water every year is a good idea. Its so much better than having these photos on a laser read media that lasts who knows how long.
With all of that moisture in the air, all of your photos will be nice and faded in no time. If you don't believe me, just take a look at an old family photo album. Do you think those pictures always looked that crappy?

Brad Isaac · #6 04-26-2004, 08:36 PM

hawkmankt,
yeah, think of all the photo albums that have been destroyed in fires, floods and other disasters. There is no "sure shot" method of preserving your photos into the next generations. Get it? Sure shot? As in Canon Sure shot camera? I'm too much! :roll: :roll: :roll:
P.S. What's up with your Avatar? Its changed several times today.

jkendrick · #7 04-26-2004, 08:41 PM

I thought maybe his digital images were lost.

Drum4ever · #8 04-26-2004, 09:47 PM

I took a lot of 35mm pics. I take even more digital pics. The unprocessed film cans stacked up as I couldn't afford to develop them all. When I got to them, many were ruined. My digital pics don't all get printed but they are already processed. I store them on my hard drive and archive them on CDs. I am shooting more and losing less so I guess history will be interpreted by me as I am not losing my photo records.
Oh the pressure! I don't think I can take such responsibility! Maybe I'll just stop taking photos altogether.

Bruanor · #9 04-27-2004, 10:02 AM

While I hate to be the one to crap on digital tech, as I am myself just about as plugged-in as you can get... peoples ideas about the lifetime of CD-R's is a little off. According to what I've seen/heard on TechTV, CD-R's do not last an indefinete amount of time, but rather, a Very finite time. In the order of less than 20 years.
We really do need a media that Will stand the test of time, and appearently CD-R isn't it. Anyone have any ideas about the shelf-life of flash ram? Do they lose polarity?
Bru...

Drum4ever · #10 04-27-2004, 10:30 AM

I've gone from a shoebox to floppies, to CDr going to DVDr and I'm sure in less than 5 years I'll be moving to something newer so I suspect a 20 year CDr life will be more than sufficient. I don't have any of my 20 year old computers running either.

Hantra · #11 04-27-2004, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Are digital photos ruining the history for future generations?

I am going to have to affirm this statement. As much as I hate it, the fact is, these guys are on to something. I never had thought about it quite like this. I thought I was doing good by going all digital. Then again. . Now, I have so many freaking pictures all over the place. At work, on my home laptop, all over my hard drive on my main rig. It wouldn't take any time at all to completely just lose all of these.
There are thousands of housefires every year, whereas even the most seasoned IT professionals can blow out files on accident. I do it all the time.

Bruanor · #12 04-27-2004, 11:32 AM

Well, nothing is permanant of course

fire can damage both digital and physical.. tho a lot more things can damage digital copies... magnets, hard drives dying, comp crashes.. and of course like Hantra said, accidently deleting the wrong files

While I don't think digital photography will hurt out records of history, they will change how that history is kept. Instead of having catalogs of imagery stored in a library etc, we'll have massive digital collections, which will probally capture more of history than whats kept in physical form now. Instead of key images being selected and kept, anything can be stored and saved for future generations.
I think we'll have a richer record of history in the end.
That's my take on it

Bru...

knelson · #13 04-27-2004, 01:04 PM

In all periods of history, parts of the generation are lost, fires, wars, natural disaster et al....
The question here is a reduction of printed pictures vs. archived pictures, vs. unarchived pictures. For the lot that does not back up their hard drive or archive pictures, I agree their pictures will be lost when their hard drive crashes, as rare as that occurs these days. Most comptuers are upgraded and information transfered well before the system dies. People are upgrading for performance vs. need for replacement.
I think the part of the equation that the author misses is number, picture taking dramatically has increased with the introduction of digital media - the cost of development was a factor in film based picture taking. Secondly today we share our digitial pictures more, via e-mail, web sites, etc... so the archive base has increased.
Wonder if this author works for photomart?