Grandma's Shoebox - Creating Heritage

Steve Smith said:
Prints are probably going to last longer than any digital copies. It doesn't matter how good you are at backing things up and making sure you have multiple copies. Once you are gone, this will stop.


Steve.
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This, really.

I've always moved my files forwards from machine to machine since '97, but one day our kids won't know what our passwords were, and the security conscious, paranoid society we are will have built encryption into all our OSs, so those images will be gone once we have, or once our poor old brains can't remember the PW we set.
 
ancient_mariner said:
This, really.

I've always moved my files forwards from machine to machine since '97, but one day our kids won't know what our passwords were, and the security conscious, paranoid society we are will have built encryption into all our OSs, so those images will be gone once we have, or once our poor old brains can't remember the PW we set.
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Playing devil's advocate in my own thread .... or even know where the shoebox is!
 
Light Tower One said:
It is 800 years today since the Magna Carta was produced. I understand a 1st digital copy that was created is semi obsolete unless a new version has been created?

The original Hard Version is still in good condition!
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The original was written on velum, if it had been on paper it would may not have faired so well.
 
Steve Smith said:
Prints are probably going to last longer than any digital copies. It doesn't matter how good you are at backing things up and making sure you have multiple copies. Once you are gone, this will stop.


Steve.
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My point was really about using the cloud for back-ups, I can share with my kids, they don't need my password, the backing up and possibly format conversion is done by someone whose business depends on it.

I've got film prints from 20 years ago that have only seen the light of day a couple of times and are fading, who knows how long inkjet on cheap photo paper will last...
 
sirch said:
How long are the current prints going to last?
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Pretty long.
I posted some old ones of my family here:
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/help-with-coursework-please.546074/

Here's one that Alistair gave the desciption as:
#1 Late Victorian professional portrait of a woman from the studio of William Avenell. There's an online biography for this photographer (linkthat allows the date to be fairly confidently put between 1889 and 1905. It would appear to be a carte de visite, and there are other clues that hint at a late date. The painted trompe l'oeil backdrop, rustic furniture props and the elaborate embossed backing card suggest a date in the second half of the known date range for the studio. The woman appears middle-aged and is probably middle class, she may be a resident of Brighton but it's more likely that she is visiting the area for a holiday. Her dress is typical for women of her apparent age and the period. The colour of the dress can't be determined, given the response of emulsions of the period it is likely to be a warm colour - it could be a deep read, royal blue, deep bottle green. It doesn't have to be black. Victorian fashions aren't my speciality but I don't think these are mourning clothes - the cape and ribbons appear to be satin rather than crepe and are too shiny and decorative to be mourning clothes, which would be matt. The portrait was probably taken in summer as seaside portait photographers specialised in the holiday trade. They were dependent on the weather for for good natural light for both the taking the portrait and contact printing from the glass plate negatives.

img_8705-jpg.13371
 
Byker28i said:
Pretty long.
I posted some old ones of my family here:
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/help-with-coursework-please.546074/

Here's one that Alistair gave the desciption as:
#1 Late Victorian professional portrait of a woman from the studio of William Avenell. There's an online biography for this photographer (linkthat allows the date to be fairly confidently put between 1889 and 1905. It would appear to be a carte de visite, and there are other clues that hint at a late date. The painted trompe l'oeil backdrop, rustic furniture props and the elaborate embossed backing card suggest a date in the second half of the known date range for the studio. The woman appears middle-aged and is probably middle class, she may be a resident of Brighton but it's more likely that she is visiting the area for a holiday. Her dress is typical for women of her apparent age and the period. The colour of the dress can't be determined, given the response of emulsions of the period it is likely to be a warm colour - it could be a deep read, royal blue, deep bottle green. It doesn't have to be black. Victorian fashions aren't my speciality but I don't think these are mourning clothes - the cape and ribbons appear to be satin rather than crepe and are too shiny and decorative to be mourning clothes, which would be matt. The portrait was probably taken in summer as seaside portait photographers specialised in the holiday trade. They were dependent on the weather for for good natural light for both the taking the portrait and contact printing from the glass plate negatives.

img_8705-jpg.13371
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But that is an old print, my question is how long will one that I print today on my Epson printer using cheap ink on cheap glossy "photo" paper last? Not as long I bet...
 
I've a photo on the bedroom wall printed 25 years ago with a cheap epsom printer. The colours have faded as it's in direct sunlight.
The ones in a box in the loft are fine.

Couldn't say about todays printers as I now use a professional lab
 
Home inkjet printing probably won't last well. OTOH we have a picture framed on the wall behind our bed that I hand printed 26/27 years ago (C41 process) and there's no obvious fading, so it's likely that many of the C41 images we have left from the 70s and 80s will still be OK for a long time if stored well.
 
Ed Sutton said:
With due respect, David, you are computer savvy and no doubt have an archive of work. My guess is that the majority of people don't worry about such things. They imagine that once something is stored on a disc or drive that's all they have to do with it forever. After all, once a photo is in a shoebox it's there until the box is binned.

My negatives are filed neatly, my slides are numbered and could be put back in order, but my digital stuff is all over the place. I never migrate stuff because I'm bone idle. I'm sure casual family photographers are even more lackadaisical!

For those who missed it - here are some photos I found in a shoebox.
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I agree in principle, but this just means that we need more education... even at school level. As we become more and more reliant on data and digital devices, having security for this data is just as important as all the paper correspondence and data we have now. To suggest that it's problematic and then lament the passing of an age will achieve nothing, nor help anyone. We are where we are, and we need to adapt. This is not an issue for "older" people either. Half the kids I teach at college have very poor data management skills, and never back up data.

Things need to change.

Handled correctly, digital images are FAR more likely to make it to future generations.

You could all start now. You have children? Grandchildren? Then teach them. Don't wait for someone else to do it... as with the state of education at the moment.. you'd be waiting a long time.

Steve Smith said:
Prints are probably going to last longer than any digital copies. It doesn't matter how good you are at backing things up and making sure you have multiple copies. Once you are gone, this will stop.


Steve.
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Unless you teach your progeny otherwise. BTW.. inkjet prints will not last. They're essentially crap. Even archival inks are only rated at 70 years or so under "ideal" conditions.

Handled correctly the medium most likely to make it into the distant future, is a digital file.

Stop all this digiphobia (made up word).... for a bunch of people who are almost all exclusively digital, amateur photographers don't half panic over this.
 
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The other side of the argument is who cares? The human race existed for many years without photographs of their relatives so it's not exactly essential!


Steve.
 
And will we pass down the passwords to these archives?
 
chuckles said:
And will we pass down the passwords to these archives?
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I don't know. Will you? Why you asking me? I don't use passwords, you obviously do, so will you leave them? If not, why not? If you're worried, why not?
 
To be fair windows 8 forces you to use a password for your user account as does linux, chrome OS and all cloud storage (at least their web front ends) so for the majority of people passwords will be a consideration.
 
Just pull the drive and connect it to another machine, you can access the files that way. Most people's images will be on separate drives, CDs, memory sticks etc.

Windows 8 doesn't force you to use on at all - it's an option. I have Windows 8 and there's no password set. It just boots straight in.
 
Define obvious? You, of all people, should know it's a very assumptive path you're treading!

And you managed to "arrive" here at TP without a password? I know you don't store your archival heritage here but archivists and genealogists follow any leads they can to find 'the facts'.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Just pull the drive and connect it to another machine, you can access the files that way. Most people's images will be on separate drives, CDs, memory sticks etc.

Windows 8 doesn't force you to use on at all - it's an option. I have Windows 8 and there's no password set. It just boots straight in.
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I couldn't work out how to turn it off... Though I don't use W8 that much and really cba to dig around, so force is probably too strong but I'd bet most users will likely not have bothered to find the no password option. Don't you need it to you live drive? (or what ever its called this week)

Pull the drives from my LVM and you'll have a broadly unusable selection of hard drives.
 
Ed Milliband stores everything on his tablet. Which is a huge block of stone he carries around with him.
 
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steveo_mcg said:
I couldn't work out how to turn it off... Though I don't use W8 that much and really cba to dig around, so force is probably too strong but I'd bet most users will likely not have bothered to find the no password option. Don't you need it to you live drive? (or what ever its called this week)

Pull the drives from my LVM and you'll have a broadly unusable selection of hard drives.
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Likewise.. pull a drive from my server, and you essentially have a drive with fractured data and RAID parity information. However... most people just have a hard drive, and it's most people we're talking about.

As for W8 password: Just don't type on in when asked, like all other versions of windows, or to remove it:


  1. Press Windows key + R to open command prompt. Type "netplwiz" into the command promp. OR - Press Windows key + Q to open search, and type "netplwiz". Click it and open it.
  2. Uncheck "user must enter user name and password to use this computer", then click "ok".
  3. Enter your user name and password, then click "ok".
  4. Restart your computer.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Likewise.. pull a drive from my server, and you essentially have a drive with fractured data and RAID parity information. However... most people just have a hard drive, and it's most people we're talking about.

As for W8 password: Just don't type on in when asked, like all other versions of windows, or to remove it:


  1. Press Windows key + R to open command prompt. Type "netplwiz" into the command promp. OR - Press Windows key + Q to open search, and type "netplwiz". Click it and open it.
  2. Uncheck "user must enter user name and password to use this computer", then click "ok".
  3. Enter your user name and password, then click "ok".
  4. Restart your computer.
Click to expand...

Cool cheers.
 
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