I just spent 5-10 minutes trying to get my bluetooth speaker to attach to my iPhone so I could listen to some music. Every time I turned the speaker on it was pulling music from some device somewhere in the house but not the one I wanted it to. After a few failed attempts I gave up. I did not feel like fishing out a wire and the dongle that adapts the iPhone to an old style phone plug so I could just use a wire.
Earlier today I wanted to scan a document to email to someone. I loaded the HP printer scanner and then realized that my new MacBook Pro does not have the software for that scanner loaded into it. And since that HP is about four years old there are no updated drivers that work with the latest Mac software. So I had to go get one of my old Windows laptops that I knew had that software in it so I could run the scanner.
An hour later I tried to make a new folder on one of my external drives so I could store some data on it. Guess what, the new MacBook does not have the software on it to get full use of the Seagate drive like the old MacBook does. So I had to fire up the old MacBook to see what the name of the software is and go to the Seagate web page to get the driver.
Don’t get the idea I don’t like tech, I do, but I like stuff that is simple to get to work right and lasts a while. Bluetooth usually works OK, but can be a PIA. Wires are simple and always work. Software drivers and getting software to work in the system you want it to work in can be easy, hard, or impossible. That older HP combo printer scanner is likely not going to work as a network scanner unless wire it into the network or wire it directly to the computer I want to send the scan to. It works fine and is not that old.
My point here is that if you take photos today that you want to enjoy a few years from now you had better be very careful how you save the files. If you take high quality photos and want the quality to be the same in the future you have to be especially careful to make sure that no software changes your files.
- To make sure your file exists and is readable in the future you need to save some copies. This is what I do. I put the files on a plug in drive. I then back it up on a second drive locally. (In the future I am only going to use drives formatted for Mac as I do not trust that the driver for the drive will be updated in future years.) I keep copies in either Apple Photos or Adobe Lightroom CC or both. Usually the raw in LR and the jpeg in Apple Photos. I also have a third back up drive I update about once every six weeks that I store in my motorhome safe. Then as a final measure I keep a copy in drop box. Drop box is the only on line service I have found and used that does not screw around with the size of your files when you load and download them. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Flikr do. Oh I almost forgot Flickr. I have a lot of my files on Flikr and some on Google Photos. And I sometimes make photo books or have prints made.
- I have had significant problems in the past loosing large numbers of my photos. I used to back everything up to one hard drive. It failed. I lost several years of full sized files and my only copies were on Apple Photos. Just last month I went to update a file from 2017 in my main back up drive. The whole year of 2017 was missing. In this case I had a back up copy of the back up copy on another drive. Some of the files did not want to be copied and I had to play with this for a couple hours. So at this point in time I am hyper careful.
- I have had several on line back up systems change dramatically for the worse. I used iPhoto and Aperture on Mac. I liked both of them. But then Apple discontinued both and substituted Apple Photos. Apple Photos is still not nearly as effective at editing files as the previous system except using on line. Apple’s system of on line photos is pretty good now most of the time. I used Google Picasa to edit thousands of work photos. It was the best quick edit and file organizer you could get at any price and Picasa was free. Then Google canceled it. Adobe Lightroom on the other hand has improved. I use both Lightroom CC Classic and Lightroom CC. Both work well. The on line CC system keeps adding features and you can use it fairly well in conjunction with the CC Classic. Flickr used to be free. Now you have to pay to use it. All of these systems have at one time or another played with the size of the files except drop box and Adobe Lightroom CC Classic.
- I would say my files are now very secure. But I am tired of it taking so much effort. Plus I have no illusion that raw files will work ten years from now. By then your raw files will be from an obsolete camera and you will be using a many generation newer OS. The best you can hope for is jpegs will still work. I think jpegs are mostly safe.
Here is how I did it 14 years ago. I bought film or the people that developed it sent me free film. I would send it off to Seattle Film Lab. At the time I used my Olympus OM2n and a couple of Olympus pocket film cameras. When I finished a couple of rolls or even just one roll, I would send it to Seattle Film Lab in a prepaid mailer. They would develop it and send the negatives, prints, a CD of the scans, plus a free roll of film. That would take about a week. The thing is Seattle Film Lab would edit the photos before I got them. I rarely edited what I was sent back. When I went on vacation I would use slide film so I could project the shots on a screen in full resolution. I used Kodak Kodachrome in those days. You couldn’t edit slides. You either got them right or you did not. I made photo albums. I saved the negatives, CD in files in a file cabinet. My prints from 2004 look just fine and have not faded. The CD’s I got back then still work. And if I had not sold my projector I could use slides. The only thing that endangered your back up files was your house being destroyed. So if needed today you save a copy of scans in a location not in your house.
I do not plan to go back to just using film. But anyone that tells you getting great photos is easier or cheaper today is contradicting what I have learned. iPhones or good Androids take great photos and video and are easy to use. They give better results than old pocket film cameras. But big digital cameras with big lenses and big files are very expensive, need careful care, go out of date in about 3 years, and storing the files is complicated. If you don’t already try both higher end digital and film and use what you like the best. I waver back and forth.
Bob Nuttmann 