Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/02/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Two copies of external hard drives or a Raid 5 setup + external hard drive. Any front end indexing program that suits you. Cheers Jayanand Cheers Jayanand On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net>wrote: > Advice needed! > > I am in the middle of the process of digitizing 60 years of personal > pictures. So far I have digitized about 20,000 negatives and slides, stored > as JPEGs, into 100 GB of disc storage. It has taken over a year of sporadic > work and has worn our one high end scanner, a Minolta DiMage 5400. Using > ICE, each image takes about 6 minutes to digitize. My wife is collecting > the > best prints to put in albums. > > Here are my questions: > > 1. What is the best way to store the digital files. I estimate that by the > time I finish, I will have 200 GB, maybe much more. I started using CDs > until I saw how many I was collecting, migrated to DVDs, and now am simply > using hard discs. > > 2. Based on information from Apple, I created iPhoto Libraries to keep > track of the images. Apple maintains that iPhoto can handle 250,000 images. > That seems a lot. Has anyone tried stuffing that many images into an iPhoto > library? Are there any good alternatives? Remember, these are not > professional photographs and the program will have to be used for viewing > images as well as cataloging them. > > 3. What do you do with the scanned negatives and slides? Bury them? Store > them in archival sheets? It is improbable that the negatives will ever be > needed again, but there is always the chance. I suspect that the digital > files will last longer than the original color film images since I noted > considerable deterioration in the older Ektachrome and Fujichrome slides. > > I learned three things during the scanning process: > > 1. Edit before you scan. It is amazing how many duplicates or near > duplicate images are in the collection. Cutting a roll of 36 exposures down > to the best 10 or so saves two hours of scanning time per roll. > > 2. Don't scan everything at the highest resolution. A lot of personal > pictures, while interesting, will never justify enlarging beyond 4" x 6". > High resolution scanning takes at least twice as long. > > 3. Keep careful records of each set of images, preferably when the pictures > were first taken. The only way I could date some files was by estimating > the > age of my children shown in the pictures. I probably was off by two or > three > years. If you travel a lot, locations are hard to remember too. > > Help. > > Larry Z > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >