PHOTO TALK
Prepared by the staff of Marshall’s Camera
Auburndale, Florida -A13

So how perfect are the pictures that detail your life?

QUESTION: Help! I have so many pictures stored in so many different places that I have lost track of where all the places are. What can I do so that when I want a particular picture it can be found without turning the house upside down?
ANSWER: Storage and retrieval of images has been a problem since the invention of photography. Evidently no one has found the universal solution.
I can only offer suggestions to help you with your dilemma. First of all make sure that the pictures are stored so they will age as slowly as possible. All printed pictures change over time and the conditions under which they are stored determines the rate of change. Whether you store the images in boxes or albums make sure that the storage materials are rated as archival quality so that no gases are emitted that will harm the picture dyes or pigments. Picture albums into which the pictures can be placed may be purchased or albums can be made up by buying plastic pages that go into three-ring binders. Albums that have sticky pages are to be avoided as the sticky material appears to damage the pictures over time.
Heat and humidity also encourages the deterioration of the images so make sure that the pictures are not kept in extreme conditions of heat or dampness. Cool and dry are the best conditions for picture storage.
Planning a system so that storage and retrieval of pictures is simple requires both planning and some effort. If your picture output is limited to one or two rolls of film a year then no system is needed as a life time of pictures can be kept in a dresser drawer. However if you are taking more than one roll each week then a system would be helpful.
The first decision, which you may have already made, is whether the pictures should be kept in boxes or albums.
The next decision is whether all the pictures you take be in a sequential order or should you separate them out by subject. Some people keep a set of albums for each child or grandchild while other people just keep adding albums in a continuous series.
Taking and storing pictures affects not only you and your children but also the generations that come after you. Keep this in mind while you are preserving the present for the future. Take the time to clearly date all the pictures.

Also make an effort to label all the people in a group so that your descendents will not wonder who that strange person was that appeared once and then was never seen again.
Also, if a decision is made to create a plan for storing your pictures, then this plan should be written out clearly and stored with the pictures so that those that come after you will appreciate your wisdom, forethought, and also be able to find those pictures without problems.
Digital photography might appear to solve many of the problems of picture storage as images can now be left on the hard drive, stored on cd-rom, dvd, or some other storage medium. But, although one set of problems might be diminished, another array of concerns appear. Digital photography makes pictures taking so inexpensive that the number of pictures generated at each occasion sometimes seems to be limited either by the size of the media card or the length of the battery life. Thus, when pictures of a particular topic or subject is desired, the search can be very tedious and long. So far no universal solution to this dilemma has been found.

QUESTION: We are shopping for a digital camera and saw a combination digital video and still camera. The ability to take both good still pictures and video with just one camera is a good idea. Why aren’t cameras like this more popular?
ANSWER: The cameras that are primarily designed for video (moving pictures) do very well for video but, at this point, do not make high quality still pictures. The cameras that are primarily designed for high quality still pictures take very short, low quality video clips.
Even if the picture quality issues were finally resolved the camera manufacturers would still face the problem of selling a camera with too many features.
Most people today prefer either still pictures or video pictures. Maybe the power of advertising can change the mind of the public so that still pictures made from video would sound alluring but so far that has not been the case.
A combination video-still digital camera is a confusing concept to most people. Such a camera does not seem simple to understand and operate which is of primary importance to people shopping for a camera.
Unless a design breakthrough occurs we will see a clear distinction between digital still and digital video cameras for the immediate future.
Marshall’s Camera offers a Beginning Photography Course for both film and digital photography . See our web site: MarshallsCamera.com for details.

Copyright 2004 by Marshall Ledbetter