All the recent fires in California have made me think a lot about what “stuff” matters most to me in my condo/apartment…if my building were to catch fire and burn to the ground. It’s a possibility for all of us, after all. There are few things that are truly irreplaceable, and one of those irreplaceable items is a life’s worth of photographs and negatives I have stored in boxes.
At the minimum, I should probably move my negatives in a fireproof box of some sort…which I’ll probably do. But, to take a step beyond that, I want to convert ALL my old negatives to digital format, so I can put those images on my computer, and also securely store them and share them online. Not only can I protect my images, but I’ll be able to view/share them online and easily order reprints of photos from a long time ago. How cool would it be to get an email containing a link to a photo album from 15 years ago? Anyway, does anybody out there have some experience converting their negatives to digital? I know my local photo processing place can put them on CD for me, and there are a bunch of websites that claim to offer this service. But, I’m looking at converting many thousands of pictures and I need a quality/reliable service to help me do this. Any advice? (please comment if you have some tips) 
*Update: I contacted the helpful people over at SmugMug, and they recommend Digital Pickle for converting negatives to digital. Any other recommendations? Also, in terms of photo storage/sharing, SmugMug seems like the hands-down winner - I’ll likely be using them.
Did you like this? If so, get FREE blog updates by email!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jeremy Osborne // Oct 25, 2007 at 11:10 pm
My photographer, computer nut dad has probably done this. Waiting for his response to my question about this. The only experience I secondarily have is with slides, which you don’t seem to have.
2 Todd // Oct 26, 2007 at 12:50 am
Jeremy: no slides, just negatives. Thanks for any tips you could give me!
Leave a Comment