Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

[loccdor]

People are as strange as you make them.

 

[retina_restoration]

People are as strange as you make them.

I don't think it was suggested that anyone was "strange".

 

[loccdor]

I don't think it was suggested that anyone was "strange".

A bit of a play on words.

 

[Sirius Glass]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251212-why-your-early-2000s-photos-are-probably-lost-forever



I thought this was an interesting read

I only recently added digital photography to my photography, so I do not have the loss that you are referring to.

 

[pentaxuser]

Yet, you appear to have a keen interest in exchanging thoughts with people on photography in the online realm. It's not so far-fetched that some extend this to their photography. In fact, it's much the same. You can expect absolute strangers to have just about the same interest in your opinions as in your photos. I think it shouldn't keep someone from sharing if they so desire.

I see a lot of difference between sharing thoughts on a photographic forum about matters that are problem specific and sharing much more personal things like photos but I was only stating my feelings on the matter I was not in anyway suggesting that others should view the matter in the same way

pentaxuser

 

[djdister]

That BBC article is obviously written for people who don't know how to save files created since 2000. I still have my very first digital image files from circa 2001 or so, and all digital images created since then. How is that so hard?

 

[retina_restoration]

That BBC article is obviously written for people who don't know how to save files created since 2000. I still have my very first digital image files from circa 2001 or so, and all digital images created since then. How is that so hard?

My digital archive still contains the first digital film scan I ever had done (professionally) from 1995.

 

[GregY]

Do you not digitize your work to share online??

in my case i take an iphoto of a physical print.

 

[pentaxuser]

Luckily, Shakespeare and Picasso and Cartier-Bresson and Mozart and thousands of other people didn't agree with you.

I believe that what I said and the context in which makes it somewhat different from your analogy.

pentaxuser

 

[albireo]

That BBC article is obviously written for people who don't know how to save files created since 2000. I still have my very first digital image files from circa 2001 or so, and all digital images created since then. How is that so hard?

Did you read the entire article? One of her points was that consumer backup solutions were not as standardised as they are today, they were not as cheap, there was no USB-C, so things ended up backed up, when they did, on a pot-pourri of different media, most of which still physical. Unless you put your mind to doing this backup thing methodically, that is, and many people people in her age group then didn't care about RAID-0.

I suspect the vast majority of people started methodically backing up when Apple Iphones and iCloud did it for them by default.

The author also moved around a lot so things got lost in the process.

 

[pentaxuser]

Wow. Should I point out the irony of the fact that you freely share your opinions on this forum? That's not much different from the sharing of other things you create.

What an empty place the Internet would be if everyone had that opinion. I think of all the work I have encountered on Flickr over the past 20+ years and how it has influenced my ideas about photography. (In good ways)
The Internet is the one gallery that everyone has access to. You don't need to convince some snooty "art professional" that your work has merit and deserves to be seen, you can simply present it for others to view. By choosing not to share what you do, you rob yourself of opportunities.

I'll quote Picasso:
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

I repeat what I said to Don You have to look at what I said and the context in which it was said and in that context I am not sure what those opportunities are of which I am robbing myself

To rob myself of an opportunity(ies) I'd have to be able to recognise what it or those are and I cannot see what it or they might be

I have to say I don't experience any sense of lost opportunities from not placing my photos in the gallery

pentaxuser

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well I don't. If by work you mean "taking photos" then like AERO, all of it is on negatives and a lot of it on prints which people I know well enough are free to have a look at. There may be a case for sharing a negative on a forum for discussion if you have a processing issue which you can't resolve by yourself after asking some questions but other than that very limited need to share "online" I see little point in sharing with a world of absolute strangers anymore than I see the point of stopping a stranger in the street and asking him if he'd like copies of my prints which is in effect what you are doing when you go "online" in my opinion anyway

pentaxuser

I'd like to think we're more friendly than absolute strangers that we just bumped into in the street. Most people like to share the results of their hobby with other enthusiasts more than checking with them to get answers to your problems. Maybe we can be more friendly if you;d start by adding your picture and real name to your avatar?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

In the years 2000-2005 where I lost the most photos, those are the years of my first digital camera. 2005 marks the time when people were starting to post online without the trouble of having to build HTML from scratch or limit their storage usage.

Though physical backups existed in those days, they tended to be slower. A lot of people were burning CDs as backups. Today, it's much faster, and sometimes even automated and in the background. Back then, you usually had to remember and be intentional about doing it.

The result was my father who was still using film cameras during those years and going to 1 hour photo labs still has all of it in nice boxes of 4x6. Me who spent all my time playing video games might have a few pictures if I dig hard enough but most are lost. This was pretty normal for someone in their teens.

I;ve got dozens of DVDs of old pictues. I usually dumped two DVDs so I;d have a backup. Some of my DVD's have failed, though, so the extra backup has helped.

 

[djdister]

Did you read the entire article? One of her points was that consumer backup solutions were not as standardised as they are today, they were not as cheap, there was no USB-C, so things ended up backed up, when they did, on a pot-pourri of different media, some of which still physical. Unless you put your mind to it to do this backup thing methodically, that is, and many people people in her age group then didn't care about RAID-0.

I suspect the vast majority of people started methodically backing up when Apple Iphones and iCloud did it for them by default.

The author also moved around a lot so things got lost in the process.

"Consumer backup solutions" are not needed. I've had hard drives since pre-2000 and when I moved to a new computer I just transferred my files from the old hard drive to the newer one. Sometimes I copied files from 3.5 floppies, Zip drives, CDR/DVDR and etc onto the newer hard drive, without once touching "consumer backup solutions" and without RAID. Now I have my own NAS that uses RAID, but again, how is that so hard? There has always been a way to move files from a variety of physical media onto new physical media, with very little exception.

I'm surprised that a BBC article has a title like a TikTok or YouTube video.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Wow. Should I point out the irony of the fact that you freely share your opinions on this forum? That's not much different from the sharing of other things you create.

What an empty place the Internet would be if everyone had that opinion. I think of all the work I have encountered on Flickr over the past 20+ years and how it has influenced my ideas about photography. (In good ways)
The Internet is the one gallery that everyone has access to. You don't need to convince some snooty "art professional" that your work has merit and deserves to be seen, you can simply present it for others to view. By choosing not to share what you do, you rob yourself of opportunities.

I'll quote Picasso:
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

I agree. Also, what trust should readers have if opinions given are not backed up with samples of work or samples explaining the recommendation? How do you know they know what they're reecommending is valid or just a guess?

 

[retina_restoration]

To rob myself of an opportunity(ies) I'd have to be able to recognise what it or those are and I cannot see what it or they might be

Sure, and that's your choice to make.
For myself, I choose "yes" more often than "no", because when I say "no" to something I can guarantee that nothing will happen, so I prefer to leave the door open for whatever can happen.

 

[koraks]

more personal things like photos but I was only stating my feelings on the matter

Well, I think one's feelings about a matter are quite personal things by definition, so I feel the difference isn't all that big, really.

 

[mzjo]

Very interesting to read all your views after having read the article. I am a slightly older generation, I have a lot of negatives saved from the 1960's onwards, also several boxes of slides taken by my dad in East Africa (family but also wider subjects). My contribution doesn't start really until the mid 70's and a lot is quite frankly rubbish but I keep them. I lost about 15 years of colour negatives when they stuck to the file sleeves (my b&w negs both home developed and lab developed didn't suffer!). So, for me, the notion of losing digital photos through storage failure of one form or another is far from the whole story. All photographic material can be lost. Even those digital photos printed on the family inkjet are far from eternal. The solutions for keeping photos, digital or analog, are many and are very personal. I refuse to store photos on cloud storage (although I have nothing against sharing digital copies, analog or digital primary matter, when it seems appropriate; I'm just very shy about sharing my rubbish with experts). That's my choice. I'm not professional or even semi-professional, just a bloke who takes pictures! I'm also the only one in the family who uses a camera rather than a phone to take pictures and my wife regularly commands me to download the contents of her phone! (This is where photos get lost). As well as all the colour negs lost (but most of the prints survive!) I also lost a whole year of digital photos (mine) and I don't know how. It was probably a false move clearing a card! It was a thin year and some of the most important ones have been recovered!

Conclusion: everyone is different, everyone's experience is different, everyone's ideals are different and the technical solutions vary accordingly. That's our choice and we have to accept the consequences. Failing to back things up shows that you're not really afraid of losing them. All technology can break down (as can human-beings) but to blame our failings on the tech is a bit soft.
And yes, I have lived through marriage breakdown (one of the worst things for photo storage in my experience), house moves, country changes and a few other things. It doesn't change my opinion.

 

[gbroadbridge]

It all boils down to the fact that anything someone considers important at the time is preserved, else it is left to fend for itself.

I have photos going back to when I started my photographic journey around 1974, no negatives survived before the mid '80's (although prints were saved by my parents). Negs since then were scanned by the best available tech at the time - most of the negs are sad or lost, but the scans survive.

Many don't deserve to survive, but too much work to cull them.

Other non photo things along the way survived many years, but then I decided they were of no interest to anyone so they went back into elemental form. Sometimes now I regret those culls

It was no hardship along the way to keep things I felt important preserved - tech may change but there was always a migration path. 30 years ago I had many HDD's backed up to CD's, which evolved to backup DVD, which evolved to Bluray, and then to multiple NAS, and now multiple NAS/AWS.

It's all documented in my estate should anyone care about the backups after I croak.

All the photos that are important to my family are printed and stored in albums - which is the ultimate backup that is easy to peruse.
They can toss as they see fit when I no longer care.

 

[MattKing]

It all boils down to the fact that

I think it also boils down to a bit of a cautionary tale: When the paradigm shifts in a fairly major way, be cautious about assumptions and choices based on past experiences.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

When you die, your wife's next husband will throw out all your stuff.

 

[pentaxuser]

I'd like to think we're more friendly than absolute strangers that we just bumped into in the street. Most people like to share the results of their hobby with other enthusiasts more than checking with them to get answers to your problems. Maybe we can be more friendly if you;d start by adding your picture and real name to your avatar?

Sorry but the point I was making but clearly unsuccessfully, has nothing to do with your second sentence above nor is it a declaration that I consider the site to consist of less than friendly members. Nor was I suggesting that others should not share their pictures. It's their choice

I simply chose not share any prints I make for the reasons I mentioned and furthermore because I consider most of my pics to be private within a small circle of friends and relatives only and largely of no interest or benefit to others. By the same token I chose not to present a picture of myself as you seem to have asked that I do

When I first joined I saw many nicknames being used and under those nicknames pictures of Humphrey Bogart and others so while not seeing the point in using pictures of others I did chose a nickname which seemed to be the "done thing"

Given what has happened to privacy in the interim 20 years and what I perceive as the current trend of privacy exploitation it makes complete sense to me to be more careful than ever and I cannot see why my real name and picture adds any useful information to others in terms of the reciprocal benefit of my presence or otherwise, here on Photrio

We are probably destined to not be able to reach any agreement on this matter so like any other matter on Photrio we may have to agree to disagree and leave it at that

pentaxuser

 

[pentaxuser]

Well, I think one's feelings about a matter are quite personal things by definition, so I feel the difference isn't all that big, really.

Thanks and OK

pentaxuser

 

[gbroadbridge]

When you die, your wife's next husband will throw out all your stuff.

I hope so

 

[4season]

A lot of my early digital photos are gone because I simply didn't have sufficient storage space to keep them. IIRC, my Powerbook Duo had a 340 megabyte hard drive, which was considered pretty large in the 1990s, but it filled up very quickly once I got a digital camera. The advent of Zip and CD-R disks helped, but we're still talking about 100 and 600 megabytes, respectively. Even circa 2005, I was having to make do with a pair of 2-gigabyte SD cards with my first serious digicam, and it was a struggle even when shooting only JPEGs. I didn't appreciate the significance of it's raw output capability, but even if I had, write times were terrible when shooting raw, like ~4 seconds per image.

My memory of SD card pricing circa 2005 is hazy, but I could've sworn a 2 gb SD card cost around 80 USD.