I've been taking digital photos for nearly three
years. It's a wonderful thing. One can shoot pictures without need for processing,
simply downloading and viewing them with a computer. In that time, I've
graduated from a digicam capturing images at 768x1024 pixels (one megapixel) to the
next which captured 1200x1600 (two megapixels) and now to a whopping 1536x2048
(three megapixels). As a result, there's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is the images with the higher resolution cameras are clearer and sharper,
with more detail. The bad news is they require three times as much storage space on
a computer than did the earlier images. Although I no longer have to pay the photo
lab for processing, I'm beginning to realize there is a cost in archiving all the
pictures I take. I may be unusual. Since I'm into
QuickTime panorama photography
and each of my panoramas requires 18 digital photographs, I gather a lot of images.
If I go off for a weekend to some scenic place, I might create several panoramas,
ending up with nearly 100 pictures when the weekend has concluded. Each of these
three megapixel photos uses about three quarters of a megabyte of storage, so I'll
have 75 megabytes of photos from just one weekend. You might have a similar result if
you're the photographer at the family reunion or a child's birthday party. Know what
I mean? New personal computers, as we approach the millennium,
typically come with built-in hard disks perhaps 20 gigabytes (20 x 1024 megabytes) in
size. My three-year-old computer came with a six gig disk. 75 megabytes, once a month
or so, over a few years might not fill up your disk, but storage does become
a big issue when you start thinking about five, 10, or 20 years, the average time your
kids will be at home; the subject of your photos. Hard disks fail eventually, so, since you won't have
your digital memories in the old trusty shoe box, you'll want to have backups of all
your photo files. You don't want to inform your older children that you don't have
any photos of them when they were kids because the hard disk crashed back in the year
2000, do you?! So what is my point? If you're going to give up film
photography and go digital, you should do some planning. Get organized. Store your
photo files by date and description and back them up on a regular basis. Nobody seems
to know for sure what media is best for long-term archiving of personal computer files.
Until recently, I believed it was the CD ROM (write once CDR) but now I'm hearing
about chemical breakdown of CDR's after a few years rendering them unreadable.
Now what? My advice would be to maintain three copies of all
your digital photos. The original on your computer's hard disk, a copy on another
hard disk that you use as an external backup and a third on some kind of removable
media such as CD ROM, Jaz, Orb, or DAT tape. View your photos once a year on each of
these media to be sure they're still readable and stay current with the technology.
If, in five years, you can't buy a Jaz drive any longer, transfer your photos to newer
media before it breaks down. Another option is the recent development of online
digital archive storage. Dozens of storage providers are popping up offering online
albums, electronic greeting cards, and other merchandising possibilities. Most are
free, or at least, low cost. As usual, though, you get what you pay for. The
history of dotcom longevity is not good. For a review of many of these services,
visit Dave Dyer's
Guide to Online Photo Albums. If all of this sounds too complicated, I suggest
sticking with traditional film photography and the old shoe box. These methods have
worked for a hundred years. Just don't be surprised if you can't buy film or shoe
boxes before long. Dave Clark is a semi-professional photographer living in
Vail, Colorado and developer of our digital photography
helpware tutorials. The western half of Internet Brothers and a full-time print media
expert, Dave has quite an eye for the great outdoors. You can enjoy Dave's beautiful
panoramic photography on his personal web site,
Rocky Mountain Scenery.
16th of August 2000
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