[Leica] Re: Advice needed

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

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