Enthusiast
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Vancouver USA
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Well, there is a saying in digital photography- "If you don't have a picture you can hold in your hand, you got nothing". At least with film, even with all of it's uncertainties until developed, at least you have the negative. I am a diehard film guy but use digital because of need and ease of transferring files for my business plus it is nice to be able to make sure you "got the shot" instantaneously. So if a file is important I download it from the camera first to my laptop and then my PC. Now I have two copies of it on computers and it is still on the camera for three. Next I make a copy of the file to a CD from each of the computers (two separate CDs). Then and only then, after checking all four saved copies of the file to make sure they work do I delete the original file from the camera. (I store one of the CD copies off site in another location incase of fire. Film should be scanned and a copy stored off site for the same reason.) In fact I am so fanatical about making sure I have the file as the cost of memory cards have come down and the storage capacity has gone up in the last few years I am considering not erasing the original file from the card at all and just buy new cards as needed.
The other big problem with digital is you may have a file today that you store and forget, but when you want to bring up the file five or ten years from now (when the kids you took pictures of are all grown up) will you be able to retrieve it? Just look at history, the eight track tape is memory only a few of us even know and both the cassette tape and VHS are brain dead with the plug pulled; what about the 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" floppies? I bet a lot of you have never even seen one. So what's next, probably the CD that I have my precious files stored on, and even if I go out and buy up a couple of extra CD drives just to have them around for when the one in my computer breaks sometime in the future will I be able to get software to run it after my old hard drive that knows how to communicate with the CD crashes and can not be replaced as technology marches on? You get the picture (no pun intended); if you have a decent hard copy of the picture in hand at least you can scan it and print a new one.
Like I said I am a diehard film guy that likes working in a darkroom to the distinctive smell of fixer, but……
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