Photo albums a thing of the past?

Sitec

Seeing as everybody uses digital cameras these days and no one really prints hard copies of photos do you think photo albums will be a thing of the past?
I think its a bit of a shame really.

Noopti

What about online photo albums? Plus with all the interconnectivity between phones, computers, consoles, TV's etc then pretty much anything becomes a photo album.

dominiquecruz

No.

Like the fashion of the 80s, their comeback is nigh. In all seriousness though, photo albums are like books - whilst there will always be hip, techno-advanced e-readers, most people prefer things in hard copy.

alwaysadub

I love nothing better than going through photo albums. I can be a bit pedantic about photos being in the right order:o
I print off my photos whenever i have a fair few and stick them in an album.
Looking at them on a computer just isn't the same!!

Morlar

Noopti wrote: »

What about online photo albums? Plus with all the interconnectivity between phones, computers, consoles, TV's etc then pretty much anything becomes a photo album.

If you look on ebay you can pickup photo albums from World War one.

In 100 years how many of those mobile phones, digital picture frames, computers and consoles and other gadgets containing family photo albums will still be functioning ?

The vast majority of digital photos in private hands are inevitably going to get lost to crashed hard drives and technological obsolescence in my view. Digital camera proprietary raw formats will be left behind several operating systems down the road and as for pictures kept on personal websites - domains expire so does hosting etc. I think in 100 yrs the likes of flickr will probably be partially archived somewhere as for pictures in private hands less will survive in my view. Even the home printed ones on crappy digital photo printers and cheap paper will not last as long as original darkroom photo prints.

pickarooney

I have ten times as many hard copies of photos now than I ever did with manual cameras.

Danbo!

alwaysadub wrote: »

I print off my photos whenever i have a fair few and stick them in an album.
Looking at them on a computer just isn't the same!!

Fair play to you. At least they're probably worth printing though.

Yes, people have millions of images on hard drives these days, but they're mostly ****e anyway, thats the downside of digital. Nothing I hate more than people 'storing' all their photos on bebo. Wow, thats great, 500,000 photographs of you and your mates on nights out, low light, low resolution, blurry, crooked images, everyone squeezed together to try and fit into the frame yet theres miles of room both sides, with every ****ing one of you standing there, pulling the stereotypical retarded mouth-wide-open-smile face, and pointing with both hands in random directions.

Oops, sorry /rant.

Sitec

Stee wrote: »

Fair play to you. At least they're probably worth printing though.

Yes, people have millions of images on hard drives these days, but they're mostly ****e anyway, thats the downside of digital. Nothing I hate more than people 'storing' all their photos on bebo. Wow, thats great, 500,000 photographs of you and your mates on nights out, low light, low resolution, blurry, crooked images, everyone squeezed together to try and fit into the frame yet theres miles of room both sides, with every ****ing one of you standing there, pulling the stereotypical retarded mouth-wide-open-smile face, and pointing with both hands in random directions.

Oops, sorry /rant.

Yah thats another good point some amount of garbage pictures taken. I know one girl that goes out every Friday and Saturday night and take at least 30 photos each night. Up on facebook by luchtime Sunday.:rolleyes:

Minstrel27

It obviously pleases her to do so.

ScumLord

I keep telling people to put they're photos on photobucket or the like if they want to back them up but they still want to have them hard copy and don't like the idea of putting them online. Then I lean in close and whisper "but what if your house burns down" they may not be my friends anymore but at least they understand the importance of backups.

bonerm

I could never go back to using something like a photoalbum tbh. They take up room, are nearly likely to get destroyed as digital data (if you're careless that is), and are a pain in terms of accessing etc.

So digital all the way for me. I just adhere to the 2-up system of digitial filing. Basically have two copies of everything that I keep in two seperate locations. This covers any eventuality (theft, fire, harddrive failure etc)

In terms of what's going to happen to all our stuff that we write, photograph etc I heard a bbc podcast that said people were working developments in legislation to cover this issue. The podcast centred around a case where a next of kin wasn't allowed look at her husbands email after he died by the web provider (she needed to look for some real reason ... rather than just snooping!) so the idea would be that info like this could be "willed" to a next of kin in order to make it legal. It also mentioned that some other companies like Microsoft are experimenting in the fields of "archiving your life". They have one employee who even is paid to do this as his own guinea pig. Basically he lives a paperless life and everything right down to his food reciepts are scanned and archived digitally.

EraseAndRewind

im in the middle of printing out all my photos and putting them in albums...i love flicking through them

Saying that i also have them all backed up in several locations just in case

Thomas828

I much prefer to have all my photos on a CD. They're easier to store and not likely to fade away like hard copies.

Morlar

Thomas828 wrote: »

I much prefer to have all my photos on a CD. They're easier to store and not likely to fade away like hard copies.

I wouldn't have too much faith in burned CD's either. I don't know what the shelf life is supposed to be but they disintegrate over time too.

I think the best option for the moment is seperate external hard disk drives. Even that is temporary. The way I look at is if you have 20,000 RAW photographs - on 2 hard drives. What you actually only have is 2 hard disk drives which are not built to last 100 yrs, 5 yrs or 10 at the outside. Then you have File system incompatabilities, drive interface changes and so on mean that this is only temporary storage solution until something more lasting comes along imo.

Abi

Thomas828 wrote: »

I much prefer to have all my photos on a CD. They're easier to store and not likely to fade away like hard copies.

You could do both. I don't like taking pictures of people, only scenic ones. I've very few pictures of family or friends for the same reason. I've some stuff on discs that were given to me, but never look at them.


I've blown up pictures I've taken of land and sea though, so much less complicated.

CuLT

Morlar wrote: »

If you look on ebay you can pickup photo albums from World War one.

In 100 years how many of those mobile phones, digital picture frames, computers and consoles and other gadgets containing family photo albums will still be functioning ?

The vast majority of digital photos in private hands are inevitably going to get lost to crashed hard drives and technological obsolescence in my view. Digital camera proprietary raw formats will be left behind several operating systems down the road and as for pictures kept on personal websites - domains expire so does hosting etc. I think in 100 yrs the likes of flickr will probably be partially archived somewhere as for pictures in private hands less will survive in my view. Even the home printed ones on crappy digital photo printers and cheap paper will not last as long as original darkroom photo prints.

That is a fascinating conclusion to draw.

Digitally stored images are infinitely replicable at almost zero cost, and the cost is lowering. Storage is becoming cheaper, backups are becoming more robust and efficient.

In ten years, every useless photo people take will be high resolution, crystal clear quality, catalogued and backed up in multiple data farms around the globe and accessible from everywhere.

Professional photography is going to become even more about the art, and even more of a luxury expense than it already is.

It won't matter how many of the cameras or photo frames are working, short of global nuclear holocaust it's going to be impossible to wipe out all that data.

Can you imagine what it would be like if every solider in WW1 or 2 could take instant high resolution photographs and videos, was uploading it all to Facebook and typing up their thoughts on blogs, all from a mobile device?

The information saturation would be unbelievable, probably a lot of guff, but probably a lot of gold too.

partyatmygaff

Thomas828 wrote: »

I much prefer to have all my photos on a CD. They're easier to store and not likely to fade away like hard copies.

The average burned CD (Aside from premium CDs) doesn't last more than 5 years and begins to deteriorate rapidly from then on. They aren't invincible. Properly kept hard copies of photos will outlast a properly kept burned cd.