Thread: Photos, Videos, Life's Memories

When I was 23 years old & in my career job; I took a large box of 8mm tapes that were family memories to a video editor. The tapes were from 1961, earliest one, I believe. They were taken by my father most of the time with a little movie camera that I think had a winder attached to it. I could be wrong on this. The tapes reduced down to one 2 1/2 hour VHS. There was no sound, the 8mm video recorder did not have audio.

I was charged $250.00 for the transfer. After that I got my 1st Pc & a flat bed scanner. I loaded family photos 1 at a time. A couple of hours each weekend, made slow work back then.


2 years ago I came across a Kodak printer that recognized multiple photos on the flat bed. It would do beautiful jpeg images of each. I finished last year with over 8000+ family photos, now all digital. I made DVD's & pasted them out to the family.

Tonight I'm re-burning family DVD's on discs that are 8 years old to new DVD disc's. I was told that DVD's need changing after 8 years. I don't know if this is true, but I have the time & blank DVD's are cheap.

In my travels through antique stores for items, I see more & more boxes of family photos just piling up. Beautiful photos on many subjects, many over 100 years old. I really hate to see memories fad away. We will always have YouTubers & Rap videos for eternity, but much of our history & that of our parents will fade away.

If I were a computer wiz I would create a place for all those old photos to live forever. I would not charge anybody, so long as it did not drain me. Anyone could log on & see the world as it was in a time long ago.

A photograph should last forever.

This rings true for me, John-I did the same years ago with all of our old VHS tapes to DVD's. I also spent MANY hours scanning my Mom's old pictures, some going back to the 40's, for an on-line family photo project. Turns out my mom, aunts and uncles were model gorgeous and leading man handsome back in the day. You can learn a lot about family history from old pictures.

Well said. Family photos occassionaly provide answers to the present. We could not figure out why our son developed such long legs until we ran across an old photo of my mom's brother. We now know where that gene resided.

Dave

Sometimes they also raise questions. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings, years ago I asked my mother why my brothers were all over 6 feet, my sisters 5'10",,,,why I was the runt of the litter.

She told me that my siblings were made with love & I was just a quickie at the drive-in theater.

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Sometimes they also raise questions. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings, years ago I asked my mother why my brothers were all over 6 feet, my sisters 5'10",,,,why I was the runt of the litter.

She told me that my siblings were made with love & I was just a quickie at the drive-in theater.

Funnyest thing I have read all year

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Sometimes they also raise questions. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings, years ago I asked my mother why my brothers were all over 6 feet, my sisters 5'10",,,,why I was the runt of the litter.

She told me that my siblings were made with love & I was just a quickie at the drive-in theater.

Thank You John,
that explains a lot about me...

Back to old pics,My wife and I have thousands of them,sad thing is at our age,we have not a clue who most of the people are.
Nobody in the family wants them,I just toss most in the trash.

It's a great idea to transfer stuff but I think you need to think about the medium. Remember floppy disks? Pretty much redundant now. Maybe CDs and DVDs will be redundant soon too. Esp since USB drives are so cheap and huge now. I'd consider how easy or hard it would be to attach a USB drive to a computer in 20 years time. I have an old (15 YO) Magellan GPS, it's a great GPS that I use for camping. Years ago I'd scan topographic maps, calibrate them (by taking lat and long readings at known points) and I could then attach the GPS to the computer and download waypoints, tracks and routes. Problem is, it attached via a serial port. My laptop doesn't have a serial port. I could set up one of the USB ports to emulate a serial port but it seemed to 'fall over' each time I re-attached to GPS. So now I essentially can't use the GPS on the computer, even with a Serial to USB adapter.

DVDs don't actually last that long. In fact, I'm pretty sure photos stored away from moisture and light in a show box would outlive a CD or DVD any day; and be 'readable' without either investing in 'vintage' computer gear or paying for a transfer of data.

Several years ago I go into old school photography; vintage cameras with no batteries using film. I bought a 50's Rolleicord for 200 bucks and then about 8 other vintage cameras; some of them box cameras,all medium format (i.e. big negatives). I had a great time as a newbie re-learning what f stop was, what ISO was and the relation ship between f stop, shutter speed and ISO. I used slide film and also 'normal' film. I scanned some of the photos and had the slide film transferred to DVD by the print shop. Then I bought an old slide projector for 6x6 slides. Then I found a 35mm slide projector on line and got my dad to give me all the old family 33mm slides. I had great fun with the projector. It didn't stop there, I then found a 8mm movie projector on line, spent 1/2 the price of the projector on a new lamp and bought some old silent movies (The Mummy, old cartoons of Popye and woody Woodpecker, etc). we had great fun having 'film nights' at home.

Transfering analogue to digital is worthwhile, but there is a LOT to be said for the purr of a projector and the absolute coolness of the old technology. The prices of old projectors and cameras is going up and up, but you can still get some good buys. It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if you could find those original 8mm movies and play them on a projector?

BTW, some of the old 8mm cameras were indeed windup, like clockwork. You can still buy them in fact you can also still buy film for them, though I think processing is very expensive.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Back to old pics,My wife and I have thousands of them,sad thing is at our age,we have not a clue who most of the people are.
Nobody in the family wants them,I just toss most in the trash.

Send me a PM on it sometime.

Carl, thanks for the information. I also have the photos backed up on 2 different portable drives. I try to keep up with the latest in digital storage, I will transfer them as time goes by.