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Has anyone her personally converted old slides or film negatives -- b&w or color -- to digital? (I see that Amazon sells a bunch of different devices to do so.) Or used service to do the work for you? If so, tell me your story. (I've found a pile of old stuff that I'd like to save ...)

kingsnake wrote:Has anyone her personally converted old slides or film negatives -- b&w or color -- to digital? (I see that Amazon sells a bunch of different devices to do so.) Or used service to do the work for you? If so, tell me your story. (I've found a pile of old stuff that I'd like to save ...)

Ditto. I have a lot of old slides.

I bought a film and slide scanner at Frys electronics in the early aughts. I spent nearly 2 weeks of nights and weekends scanning all my 35mm film.

I returned the scanner for a full refund as I was totally unsatisfied with it. It was a very nice scanner. Nearly $1000.

They got them now for anywhere from $50-200. Amazon's top-rated model, the "Wolverine" is $95. In my case, I paid $1000 for a b&w laser printer -- HP 4L, I believe -- around 1995. Best investment I ever made ...

If scanned tons of positives (slides), and I believe some negatives. I've had good luck with it.

http://hikearizona.com/photoset=5405
http://hikearizona.com/photoset=5398
http://hikearizona.com/photoset=5456
http://hikearizona.com/photoset=4243
http://hikearizona.com/photoset=4420&start=0

Not the best photography, but the scan quality turned out decent. These were mostly with Provia 100 and an old Nikon FE.

I used a consumer quality slide scanner that was worth a couple hundred bucks. I believe it was a Fuji. There's also the option of going to a place like Tempe Camera and getting them drum scanned, but that's pricey. Or go the Chumley route and scan your stuff for free ;)

@chumley
Is that why we now have gems like this? http://hikearizona.com/photo=366107

@azpride
There are some on here that are the result of that process, however the photo in question is an even worse example because it was taken on that amazing technology known as "Advanced Photo System". I had those cartridges output to another emerging technology ... Kodak Photo CD ... at Walgreens for a couple of bucks a piece. Luckily, HAZ supports photos saved in the proprietary PCD format.
That last sentence may be a lie.

My brother used a slide/film scanner we had bot at Costco a few years ago. He scanned over a thousand slides from the late 50s and 60s to the computer (however, not all sizes will scan so we took those to Costco for development - Costco cleans them up somewhat). I have been editing the slides via Photoshop which can be a bit of a chore if there is lots of dust and of course, some slides the color needs to be adjusted completely.
But we're happy with what we have because you still get the visual. We particularly appreciate the travel slides from all around the world and of course the family photos.

I also took many of my parents movies from back in the day to Costco and they did a pretty good job with those too. You can add music but be careful of what you choose. And be sure to put an x on the boxes you had done so you don't accidentally redo them. For me it was hard to get them in any kind of chronological order without looking at the film which you can also do on the slide/film scanner.

If you convert old film negatives or slide positives to digital, whatever you do, don't throw out the originals. Stored properly, those will last "forever".

Whereas your digital copies are extremely suspect. I recommend at least three digital copies, stored in different locations, and here's the kicker ... backed up to new sources about every 5 years!

Did you know that some CDs and DVDs degrade in under a year!? So that CD backup you made 5 years ago might be worthless. Whatever was on it may be totally inaccessible. Some CDs can last for over 100 years, but it's very difficult to tell what quality they are when you buy them. Doesn't matter the brand, CDs are made by all kinds of different manufacturers and different batches of the same exact brand may have totally different life spans. Most CDs and DVDs will last only 10-20 years. Some more, some less.

The average hard disk drive (magnetic) has a life span of 5 years. Generally 20% begin to fail after 4 years. You could get more life out of them, but are your pictures worth it?

New solid state drives (flash) will last the longest ... if you don't use them! Otherwise, SSDs have a finite number of read/write cycles before they too become unusable. For a SSD in a computer that is used every day, it will likely last 20 years or more. A rarely used thumb drive should last longer.

Of course you could simply lose these things due to carelessness, fire, etc. That is also true with your film and slides though. That's why it's a good idea to have several copies once you go digital. Cloud-based backups are an option as well if the cost isn't too high for you.

The key is that if you burn CDs of photos, you better reburn often or find another backup option to complement it.

@chumley

What about those storing photos on HAZ, what is that shelf life? ;)

friendofThundergod wrote:@chumley

What about those storing photos on HAZ, what is that shelf life? ;)

Depends how often you click the "donate" button on the home page. :whistle:

@friendofThundergod Depends on if Joe comes to his senses, or keeps doing Isis hikes ...

@chumley
I have 6 years worth of photography stored on a 5 year old external drive -- no backups. Playing with fire.

azpride: "Develop the state of mind of conciousness of corruption of the body, for thus passion will grow less; and of the conciousness of the fleeting nature of all things, for thus the pride of selfhood will grow less." Not a Buddhist, but one of my favorite quotes.

@azpride
[-X
I suspect that you have a closet full of hard drives at work that nobody would notice go missing. But you also probably don't know how old those are.

64GB flash drives for $25 on Amazon.
256GB for $40.
1TB for $90.

Time to go shopping.

kingsnake wrote:azpride: "Develop the state of mind of conciousness of corruption of the body, for thus passion will grow less; and of the conciousness of the fleeting nature of all things, for thus the pride of selfhood will grow less." Not a Buddhist, but one of my favorite quotes.

You should print that out and tape it to your GPS