h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's a lot of loose talk around this site, to the effect that:

1. Paper books are better than digital books, and people who 'like the feel and smell of REAL paper' are somehow more virtuous than those of us who are happy reading on a computer screen. (I worry about that smell part, I think it's an addiction...)

2. On the other hand, digital photography is MUCH superior to analogue photography, because it's:

a. Easier. (Trained monkeys...) and
b. Trendier. (What? You don't own a...?)

Now, I'll ignore the book business for right now, and concentrate on the photography. Here's a photographer/history buff who can demonstrate exactly what an analogue photograph can do that a digital one can't:

http://thephotopalace.blogspot.com.br/2013/01/french-wwi-images-found-still-in-camera.html

Oh, and if you click on that link, you can see some cool photos. They were taken during the Great War, almost a century ago. But nobody had seen them.

You see, they were still IN THE CAMERA. Until our blogger bought the camera in an antique store. He found the plates inside the camera, and printed them out. Talk about voices from the past.

Here's an old airplane, wrecked. Here are soldiers. Here's a French village. Here's a bomb, for pity's sake. Wow.

Our blogger explains why that wouldn't have happened with your digital thingamabob. But the chemicals and light had done their magic, and there it is... One image is a stereoscope. (Oh, yeah, I know about that computer imaging that produces 3D - yawn...)

This fellow is busy collecting primary-source history. Go here if you want to see some of his collection from an amazing trip someone took through the Russian Revolution:

http://thephotopalace.blogspot.com/2013/01/wwi-and-russian-revolution-photos-found.html

Now, we're really grateful for the digital revolution. After all, it is thanks to that revolution that we can now see these great photos. They can be stored in our electronic archives. But think about it: if somebody hadn't exposed some film to some light about a century ago, we wouldn't have had these images to store. I'm grateful for old technology, and the camera-toting pioneers who used it.

PS I know that Create has a challenge coming up: to dig up old family photos and write about them for h2g2. So you can help with the project...

Loose talk, indeed.

Those are amazing photos.

The smell isn't an addiction, it's a way of life

Old photos of family you say? I've got a glass topped coffee table that also works as a bit of display case, inside is.my grandad's national identity card from the war. He's there grinning out at us in his policeman's uniform. Somewhere I' e also got an old photo of my dad when he was in the navy. We all three of us loom lime with a time machine we could pass ourselves off as each other.

Keep that in mind when Create gets the Challenge going, will you? I'm hoping there will be a big response when they ask everybody to raid the photo caches.

Another curious thing, if you search Google images for my real name you'll get more photos of my dad than me. 3 of him, 1 of me, in the top 500 results. He doesn't even use the internet

4 million plus with my real name - none me
photowiseagain! none me

PHEW! the cia/fbi/mi4.5 still ain't found me

One of the photos I like of our clan is the one with five different generations of them. Not quite a world record (that's seven, apparently), but a nice pic all the same!

Yeah, those multigeneration photos are wonderful to have. Just think how that will help your great-great-great-grandchildren make their family trees.

You can't find me under an RL name, either, though you can find my dad and even my ancestors. But, thanks to h2g2, the 'real' me takes up 42 google pages. That's how long it takes before the Gheorgheni, Romania, footie team sneaks back in.

What a great story, so glad you posted it. You always sive good story.

My father was fascinated with cameras from a very early age, and collected old ones, and old photos -- particularly if they had planes, trains or automobiles in them.

I so wished I could have keep some of the pictures he had, but those went to my brother, after my Dad passed, and I may have to go to Texas to get them scanned into a computer. My brother hasn't done diddly with them yet, even after much prodding.

Oh, I know that story. Yeah, make him share.

One of the things my sisters and I have done has been to copy and share some of the good photos. In fact, for Create, I think I know just the one...

Like you Dmitri, much as I love modern technology I do wonder what will be available to historians in the future - piles of melted/shredded plastic

The plate camera took me right back to my Dad who developed his own photos from plates, in the bathroom(darkroom)

Websailor

I've only ever developed pictures from film - fun, but it leaves a funny taste in your mouth, I find. I enjoyed doing it, though.

That must have been a fascinating hobby.

He took some stunningly clear pictures with the plate camera. There is one I particularly remember of lightning. I must trawl through my photos one day and see if I still have it.

Pressure to have a clear out over many years might mean it has gone but you never know, I can be stubborn when I want

Websailor

If you can find it, that could be a great addition to this upcoming Create challenge.

I enjoyed taking and developing b&w photos at one time, especially with a relatively old-fashioned Holga camera (plastic, made in the East Bloc). It's fixed-focus, so you get a great depth of field - not quite pinhole, but interesting.

I ended up once developing a fun picture of some bears getting amorous in the Phladelphia zoo. Interesting effect.

It will take weeks to plough through a huge drawer full of photos. It is something I am finding difficult to face since my husband died - too many memories, but I will get round to it one day.

Websailor

I can understand that. My grandmother used to have a drawer full of photos - when we started looking, the stories started coming. Good times.

But perhaps you can look at a few at a time. The challenge isn't for a month yet.

I will think about it.

Websailor

First of all - marvelous photos indeed. What a lucky find!
Also, I definitely understand the point he's making, about how the 'old media' can preserve the past better. It's a good point, no doubt...

And yet, I can't see myself going back to photography on film, as much as I sometimes miss using my lovely big Canon camera, and having a bit more control over stuff like focus and exposure (I was never an expert, far from it really, but the interface was user-friendly enough to enable me to try stuff out). The reasons are fairly simple:
(a) Ease of use. Not just the 'trained monkey' aspect of it, too (if I could afford what is for me a rather frivolous expense, I would get the digital camera equivalent of my trusty Canon), but the fact that you can take a whole lot of pictures, and that a picture can be seen as soon as it is taken. For someone who, like me, is not an especially good photographer, this is a serious improvement, since I don't have to wait until I finished the film and had it developed to find out that that one picture of a cool building, or cute animal, or family member or whatnot, came out wrong (at which point I have nothing to do but be disappointed) - I see so right away, and can try again. And again, and again, if need be.
(b) Expenses. Films cost money, as does going to have them developed - and of course, you need to make time to go to the store and have them developed and then pick them up, and that is also a sort of expense (although that last one's a bit of a weaker point for me personally, seeing as I'm a freelancer). Back when I used my lovely Canon, I would also need to pay a little extra to get the photos on a CD, so I could upload them to the computer, which leads me to point C:
(c) Sharing and access. Yeah, going through old photo albums is awesome, and even just digging through old piles of photographs in a box, which in my house at least is kind of more common than organised albums. Seriously, I love it. But it's limited to those people who can physically be there and see the photos with you; if I want to share the photos I've taken with other friends, or with family members who live in another country, digital copies are much better. Or scanning old photos to share them with the world, as I do on my blog - and in fact, as this very person did. Sure, digital copies are a rather flimsy thing, but without them, those lovely WWI photos would remain in his museum, only accessible to those who can physically visit it.

I feel about all that stuff the same way I feel about paper vs. digital books: both versions have their advantages and disadvantages. I personally use the one which is at the moment most convenient to me (which happens to be digital photos, for the reasons stated above, and paper books, because I can't afford a digital reader at the moment, because a lot of the stuff I want to read does not have a digital version at the moment, and also because of flimsier reasons like the fact I simply enjoy used book stores and buying old things, or the fact that it's nice to see your bookshelves fill up with physical copies), but see no point to put down the other versions.

None at all. The digital photos have all the advantages you mention.

Considering what everyone's using digital cameras for, I'm satisfied that this will be an ephemeral record, as well. After all, very little that people are pointing their mobile phones at will be worth looking at that far into the future.

The advantage of digital (phone) cameras is like that of the VHS-recorders: Once you have taped something you don't have to watch it