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Preserving film negatives
I'm looking for some thoughts on preserving photos. Over the past 40 years I've taken, at best guess, some 20,000 photographs, nearly all them candid shots of births, birthdays, vacations and everyday family memories. I have kept all my negatives in protective sleeves in notebooks. Now that I am nearing my 70's, I want to preserve what I have for future generations and family genealogists by puting them on CD's or DVD's. As such, I have a number of options: (a) I can have a professional photo lab do the work--relatively high resolution(equiv 5x7 size) but way too expensive. (b) I can have a store like Wal-Mart do the work--cost is less than $1.75 per roll but relatively low resolution (equiv 4x6 size) but they are not set up to dust, handle the film carefully and catalog the images consistantly. (c) Purchase a scanner and do the work myself--scanner prices range from $200 to $1000+. From my limited research, the market offers dedicated 35mm scanners and flat-bed models--some with film feeders and many without but I shudder at the time and work involved. Flat-bed models require more coordinated placement and handling of the film on the scanning bed. Dedicated scanners are usually limited to one size film. Both are perceived by me to be slow or slower than I would like, and color correction is a concern. Other concerns include how long CDs and CD players will be around before the standard CD technology meets the fate of the 3-1/2" floppy; storage format: JPEG, TIFF, BMP etc.; best media: CD or DVD, brand, single vs multi-layer, +R vs -R format, etc.
I would appreciate any thoughts that would help me make a decision.
Thanks Ron
October 29, 2005
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