[deus ursus]

My dad threw away all the negatives from the Flexaret we used back when, so the paper prints are all we have of memories from the early history of my family. :-(

[grhazelton]

My dad threw away all the negatives from the Flexaret we used back when, so the paper prints are all we have of memories from the early history of my family. :-(

I think I still have the negatives and color slides my Father shot back in the day, but scanning them into Lightroom for cataloging purposes is a huge job, not to mention the hundreds of shots I took back in the day.

[yucafrita]

What sort of electronic shoe boxes are today's families bequeathing to the future?

When I see the mostly out-of-focus or shaken images of her 2nd and 3rd child that my sister-in-law and her husband are producing on their smartphones, I have the impression they neither care for image quality (or format) nor for long-term storage. They upload to facebook, though, but that doesnt qualify for long-term storage, IMHO. Sometimes, out of luck, I guess, a picture is sharp and well taken.

[grhazelton]

When I see the mostly out-of-focus or shaken images of her 2nd and 3rd child that my sister-in-law and her husband are producing on their smartphones, I have the impression they neither care for image quality (or format) nor for long-term storage. They upload to facebook, though, but that doesnt qualify for long-term storage, IMHO. Sometimes, out of luck, I guess, a picture is sharp and well taken.

I'll have to check with our kids and their pix of our grandchildren. As far as I've seen cell phone pix are the preference, although Curtis uses an Olympus point and shoot for dismal, stilted pix. He seems to feel that he must not "waste" a shot! I don't know about backup, cloud if we're lucky. I am the defacto chronicler of the families, when I'm around. And yes, I do have proper a backup regimen for digital stuff; film is properly stored after being scanned to Lightroom for cataloging purposes.

[yucafrita]

I'll have to check with our kids and their pix of our grandchildren. As far as I've seen cell phone pix are the preference, although Curtis uses an Olympus point and shoot for dismal, stilted pix. He seems to feel that he must not "waste" a shot! I don't know about backup, cloud if we're lucky. I am the defacto chronicler of the families, when I'm around. And yes, I do have proper a backup regimen for digital stuff; film is properly stored after being scanned to Lightroom for cataloging purposes.

Well, you are lucky to be around but I live in Germany and my sister-in-law lives in Australia. No chance for me to document for them. That's life...

[barefootdesigns]

Yes, I guess it all depends. In my world in the 60ʻs, I would have thought Kodak was king with GAF as the alternative brand. On the pro end, I remember Nikon for 35mm and Rollei TLRs. I didnʻt start photography as hobby until the early 70ʻs, and by that time, my entry level budget meant Yashica (SLR, TLR, and Super8).

Alex645, you have made some very good points. I had discounted Polaroid and Kodak, forgotten about Mamiya, Minolta, Yashica, etc. Sigh. Currently I am enamored of the M42 Kuribayashi Petri lenses; they remind me of that old German rangefinder (Voigtlander I think) that my dog disassembled, but which I never really understood and never got that many good shot out of. Given that the Pentax is so dissed these days, it stimulates me to nostalgia that creeps into fantasizing. I do appreciate that you are "herding cats" at times. Thank you.

[normhead]

Could you please elaborate on some details? My imagination fails how this could happen...

I assume it was a rangefinder with bellows. I'm not sure what those bellows were made of, but they may have been quite tasty, at least to a dog.

[barefootdesigns]

normflex, may I presume that you are talking about my Voigtlander rangefinder? If so, it did not have bellows. It was a tiny little camera which looked a bit like a little Leica (which I realize only now that I've been up on line trying to identify it but can't). It was one from @ the '50's I think. The little old camera guy told me that although it wasn't very expensive, being used, it was a good camera--and I loved it because it could actually fit in my pocket, a very cute little camera. Being new to photography at the time (early '60's), and having no manual for it or Internet to look it up, I just stumbled along, but never really got the hang of all the focusing and metering. It was definitely a crap shoot and I was pretty poor so never could just shoot away. After my cur ate it, it was several years before I managed to afford my wonderful Spotmatic with the f1.4, 50mm Takumar. That camera provided me an integral education, given that it had a light meter and a DOF button. I took a lot of satisfying pictures with it until one day the winder stripped out. I just wore that poor thing out.

[Alex645]

Currently I am enamored of the M42 Kuribayashi Petri lenses;
Given that the Pentax is so dissed these days, it stimulates me to nostalgia that creeps into fantasizing. I do appreciate that you are "herding cats" at times.

Carla...."herding cats"? That sounds like something Snape would describe at Hogwarts.

I assume youʻre talking about teaching a class full of teenagers? I have been fortunate to teach all ages from high school, undergrad, graduate, and other teachers, and the majority of my students, taking art, photography, or video as an elective were as engaged as long as I made it engaging. When I was a student (high school, undergrad, then grad) I loathed teachers and profs that obviously were sleep walking through life. Dead wood. I recently got an email from a student I taught 10 years ago, and sheʻs now getting her doctorate and told me how much she hated high school but my photo class was the one class that gave her hope. Messages like that fuel me to make a difference with the silent cats in the class.

Petri. The first SLR that I remember was my cousinʻs fianceʻs Petri as a kid. I remember seeing the shutter speed dial and thinking how cool that was. Then you put your eye up to the viewfinder and you get that distinct mixed smell of metal, leather, and probably adhesive. Everyone knows the "new car smell", but photographers smashing your nose up to the back of a camera also knows that "new camera smell". Wow. Geek out.

I think part of our earliest memories are linked and reinforced by photos taken of us and the cameras used to create those images.

[Cynog Ap Brychan]

Mostly cloud storage

What happens to cloud storage when the owner passes on or no longer pays a fee?

[barefootdesigns]

What happens to cloud storage when the owner passes on or no longer pays a fee?

It rains on your parade, I guess.

[MikeStnly]

What happens to cloud storage when the owner passes on or no longer pays a fee?

Even if you back up to DVD, what will happen to them? Will they just be thrown out when you are gone?

I'm planning to go through all our old photos, toss the crap, scan the good ones of each of the three kids and give them a personalised DVD. They are all close to 30 now, so it will be their problem to retain it. I will include photos of their grandparents back into the 40's. What more can you do?

[normhead]

Even if you back up to DVD, what will happen to them? Will they just be thrown out when you are gone?

I'm planning to go through all our old photos, toss the crap, scan the good ones of each of the three kids and give them a personalised DVD. They are all close to 30 now, so it will be their problem to retain it. I will include photos of their grandparents back into the 40's. What more can you do?

Print them photo-books. I have pictures taken of my Grandmother taken back in 1917 when she was 20. For archival purposes, anything but paper is probably going to be obsolete in their life times.

Many of my digital files are already long gone.

[DMITRY1]

Took a photography course recently. 12 people in the class - 6 Nikon DSLRs, 3 Canon DSLRs, 2 Fuji mirrorless, 1 Ricoh GR II[moi].
Results clearly illustrated that it's not the camera that matters, it's the person behind the camera.

Taking another photography course now. 7 people in the class - 4 Canon DSLRs, 1 Nikon DSLR, 1 Sony mirrorless, 1 Pentax K-70[moi]. I don't think anyone had ever seen a Pentax before, except for the instructor.

[Lord Lucan]

What happens to cloud storage when the owner passes on or no longer pays a fee?

I first read that as the owner of the cloud service itself, and such a scenario is as likely to happen with them as with the end user. Most retail cloud services (which can even be one-man outfits) purchase server space from larger, wholesale, cloud service companies, and if the retail cloud service goes bust or its owner does a flit - end of story. That has happened. The retailer might have relied on the wholesaler to do backups, but good luck with dealing with the wholesaler afterwards to get them back. Data (including backups) can be also be physically lost in crashes or to malicious hackers anyway.

Cloud data is not secure. At best I would use it as a back-up for my own storage regime (but I don't) and it is certainly unwise to use it as your only form of storage.

It is hard to understand why cloud storage has become fashionable at a time when hard drives (including removable ones) have become so capacious and inexpensive. IT professionals and others in the know are generally cynical about cloud; my son works for a large cloud provider and he and some others there wear a T-shirt that has the acronym "TCIOSEC", which means "The cloud is only someone else's computer". Whether "someone else's computer" is more secure than your own depends on how careful a person you are.

There are many cases of people and companies losing data permanently :

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Amazon EC2 Crash - SiliconANGLE

Amazon's Cloud Crash Disaster Permanently Destroyed Many Customers' Data - Business Insider

What happens when cloud data is lost?

Cloud Computing Users Are Losing Data, Symantec Finds

My story, not cloud, but email, I was with an ISP who suddenly stopped handling email and lost some for me. They claimed they sent me a notice by email, but I never got it because they sent it to the previous and now defunct email address that I had used when setting up with them 10 years earlier, not to my then current address with themselves. Idiots. It shows the sort of thing that can happen. That was Demon, now owned by Vodaphone.