35 years into the digital imaging age - A dilemma

[vabrou]

Digital technologies for image capture and storage began in the late 1980s with the introduction of the first consumer digital cameras, and in 1990 the first version of Adobe Photoshop. I have used 35mm film cameras for over a decade before that. In reality, despite having the best 35mm macro lenses, and a full complement of attachments and gizmos, today's digital images are a significant improvement. Digital images can show us every missing or wayward scale and we have the ability to magnify our images ad infinitum. And using digital imaging editing software we can repair images of specimens with tears, rubs, dings etc.

The problems brought on by digital photography includes the ability to take gigantic amounts of images for pennies compared to the high cost of processing film photos. If we take and process thousands of film images, all those bad photos are a huge waste, but with digital we just have to press a button and "POOF!!' there gone. What does this cost the photographer, just one time $$ outlay in reusable storage discs and hard drives, lots of them. But, the downside if there is one is that today we take gigantic quantities of images that we keep. This leads to those $$ spent on film processing, now spent on image storage and a host of different photo editing software and PC's make all this work. But the resulting digital images can be manipulated for good or bad and allows any self taught individual to create and self-edit high quality unlimited size manuscripts with unlimited quantities of images ready for publication. But like all constantly evolving technologies, we are forced to purchase ever changing better versions of digital cameras (I now have 13 digital cameras), much much more digital storage (internal hard drives which today can be multiple Terabyte size - My new PC has about 50 Terabytes of internal and external hard drives attached -see jpg) and innumerable digital editing software programs.

Now, how do I extend my rapidly diminishing lifetime to use all this. These new technologies have allowed me to self create and publish over 470 novel entomological manuscripts in print format so far over the past 55-years. And I have an additional 600 manuscripts in various stages of completion/incompletion.

[Chuck]

I read once a reference to those living in the digital imaging era as "the lost generation." Meaning, their photos will not outlive them, and images of them, and their lives, will not exist. Photos taken with phones rarely get downloaded, and get purged when the new phone arrives or the phone gets lost. Photos on computers don't get backed up, and stay on the old computer until it's recycled.

Internet storage sites are, like all of the internet, temporary. How many photo storage websites have gone dark? How many others have gone to pay-for-storage and accounts deleted? Even FB, the industry juggernaut, will some day go the way of Kodak and K Mart. Poof. Images gone.

Hard copy- in the form of paper- has a chance to live forever. Print the most important photos and publications.

In the near-term (Vernon) sharing your images and publications online would be invaluable. Yes, many of your publications are online. Kudos! Perhaps your images would be of value as well.

As for me, last year I scanned all my printed film photos from the past 50 years. Boxes of them. I'm going through them one more time to take out important photos, and toss the rest. I went digital photography in 2001 and never took another film photo again. All digital images from my phone get downloaded to the computer about once a month, and all photos get moved when I get a new computer. I have redundant backup devices (really, in case one gets a virus.) If I pass tomorrow, my digital images will probably be ignored, and likely disappear. Perhaps though my family will retain the hardcopy photos and publications. I have used the online print-on-demand publishing resources to compile and print hardcopy books of key times and people in my life; I hope these are passed down.

[kevinkk]

As for me, last year I scanned all my printed film photos from the past 50 years. Boxes of them. I'm going through them one more time to take out important photos, and toss th

Exactly. I've been transferring digital pictures from the camera(s) to dvd for several years now ,it doesn't take much thinking to realize how fleeting
digital could be, a strong magnet, water, coffee all sorts of stuff can wipe you out. Hard copies don't always hold up either, I've scanned all the old family photos as well. I don't use the "cloud" either, besides the fact microsoft wants paid for more storage, it seems less tangible than anything.
I like putting pictures on sd cards and putting them in digital photo frames so we can see them, although there's going to a limit to that.

[vabrou]

Chuck,

The reason I have all these external hard drives is because I create all my images and text on my PC, but do not ever save any on my pc's hardrives. I save the PC's hardrives for operating system files and various softwares. So I learned my lesson early on that PCs die without warning and so do the external hardrives. So I have these many external hard drives as main storage drives and also as duplicate back ups. And though I only show 8 currently connected to my pc, I do have another 8 of earlier filled hard drives not currently connected to my pc sitting here in boxes. Too many connected hard drives slows down the performance of PCs. The PC age created amazing and professional results, but it takes a hell of a lot of time consuming work to produce these good quality manuscripts and images. Like your specimens, each photo (Image) has to have date and location of capture, otherwise it is worthless. One has to set up a system of alphabetical file folders to be able to find what you created or photographed 20 years ago with just a few mouse clicks. I have a used all along a system of creating alphabetically named file folders as I need them, and this has worked really great. I taught myself how to use a PC trying to figure out how to professionally create 'phenograms' for my hundreds of entomological publications, and I successfully did that when no one had ever done this before. People ask my how I learned to operate a pc by myself, I tell them truthfully.... Start downloading PORN and all your questions will be answered. 'OH, NEVER EVER USE 'THE STUPID CLOUD'. Miss a monthly payment and all your life is deleted. Who would stupidly place their most valuable possessions in the hands of corrupt money-grabbing Micro-soft?

Though, like everything I do is different from others that I know, e'g, I never ever take photos with my phone, nor do ever access the WWW on my phone, nor do I send or read text messages sent to me. Using these things will only lead to them eventually be used against you. You are probably asking what do I do with my phone, you probably guessed it, I make and receive phone calls. You can see my 'stupid phone' to the right in the earlier attached image of my hard drives. I don't walk around all day playing with my phone. Wife and I once each bought one of those so called 'smart phones' which i referred to back then as 'boat anchors' because one needed reinforced pockets to carry them around. But alas, once was enough. I was upset very upset when the cost of my $14.00 flip phone went up to $50.00 and the most recent one I have that went up to $88.00. Each of us has our bucket of idiosyncrasies, the types of persons we often call 'he is a real character.' I guess I am one of those 'real characters'. Those large capacity external hard drives are useful to download you-tube videos, 35 years of free porn, music, how-to videos, did I mention porn?, how to play the guitar better..... my younger planned avocation for life was to be a R&R musician. I worked as a musician in a New Orleans Bourbon street strip club 'Silver Frolichs', 427 Bourbon Street (bottom two photos from my saved photos back in 1967), when I was 18 years old, and so was the babe, one of the dozens of cuties where I worked back then as a musician If she is still with the living, she is now 75, (also I'm 18 in upper photo (year 1967), I'm that skinny guy on left of photo).... Needless to say that was the best job I had over my entire lifetime,
and the absolute most memorable job I ever had.

I end by saying, only those who publish their valuable research in time tested ;PRINT PUBLICATIONS' will be remembered. I prepare my research using PCs, then publish it in a print venue, then convert the publications to portable document format (PDF) which can be accessed by persons in 200 countries of the world. My publications have been downloaded via the WWW as PDFs tens of thousands of times so far.

[kevinkk]

Nice Vernon,
I never would have expected. The other 49 states need someone like you.