When I got my first computer I got a scanner with it. I said to my mum that I could scan in some photo's for her for a trial. My mum at the time had borrowed my grandma's old photographs (which were very old black & white prints) and gave me them to me to scan in. I set about the task and stored them on my hardrive. As time when by (8 years or so later) I got my imac - the best computer ever. I transferred everything onto my mac from my pc and thought no more about it. Recently my gran had a fire and lost a lot of stuff including her photo's and was heartbroken (lots of picture of my grandad who passed away 10 years ago). When I found out I went into the depths of my computer and dragged up the pictures, burn't them on to a cd and went round to her nursing home armed with a spare dvd player I got free with a new tv. I plugged it in loaded the disk in and started a slide show of all her pictures. You should have seen her face light up.

My grandma still has the dvd player and can look at her pictures any time on her tv and they are such high quality. I think it helps her live on thanks to this technology.....

Ahh, the wonders of technology.

Make backups! :)

This is a lovely story. This could be used as a good argument to technophobes.

I did something similar. The clever thing about it is that anyone in the family who wants can have a set of gran's photos rather than just the one who claims the shoebox. Glad to hear it worked out so well.

I would still prefer the originals though any day. It means so much more.

I couldn't agree more. But it's the next best thing.

The idea that the actual photo you're holding was held by long-dead family makes an original very special. Over the years I've inherited sets of family photos and because the owner is dead there is no way I can ever find out who they portray. But I could never just throw them away.

It's different with scans. You get the message "Are you sure you want to send Aunt Doris to the recycle bin?" and you stop for a moment and think about it.

G'night Doris. Sleep well.

I saw a scene on that Alistair McGowan thing where Richard (of Richard & Judy) makes quite an insightful comment about "overrated!" digital cameras. I know it was all supposed to be humour (duh) but at the same time it was a very good point!

The point was that photography has lost its value now. Whilst in the past you had a relatively (compared to now) collection of photos that you'd pass around in 10..20...30...years time - now you have an LCD screen. Sure you can print them out, but does anyone actually do that??

All you get now is a crowd of 5 people around an LCD screen saying "hey there's a picture of Dave falling over drunk... and he's still on the floor as we speak"

Cool story....at the end of the day it's the image and what it means to the person viewing it that's important...be it on a computer screen or 60 year old photographic paper.

Vicar spouted:
You get the message "Are you sure you want to send Aunt Doris to the recycle bin?" and you stop for a moment and think about it.

If only I had a keyboard that could do that in real life.

Cloudane spouted:
now you have an LCD screen. Sure you can print them out, but does anyone actually do that??


yup, the important ones. Most photo processors print from cards onw. I used to work in london camera exchange and we'd get tonnes of people coming in for processing from digital cameras. Cameras on phones are slightly different but 'real' digital cameras ie ones intended for taking photos not pictures of you and your mates ina pub usually seem to get photos printed from them.