Personal Entry (Digital Picture)

Do you remember the time when A plate of Fried Noodle cost Rm2.50? Do you still remember the time when satay cost rm0.25 per stick? Do you still remember the time when every soft drink cost Rm1 per can? Do you still remember the time when you carry around a 1.4 inch floppy disk to save all of your date inside? Do you still the time when a rm100 pendrive can only save 128mb of data? Do you still remember the time when your internet speed is 28.8kbps?

The story that i want to tell here is about... do you remember buying those camera film negative or what do you call that thing you put inside a camera so you can took 12 or 24 or 32 shots of picture? I called that film. It's a celluloid roll or something.

Remember that time, you bought one roll and you will have chances to take a limited number of picture. My family is not a rich family. So i remember few years ago, we usually bought that film that can take only 12 pictures. So we will spend the 12 shots wisely. Took only the best scene or the best time. Don't wast film. No candid picture. When i was in matriculation college, i used to spend my time with my friends touring around beautiful Labuan island. Then we would share to buy a film then we would go around labuan taking picture.

Do you remember that all of those picture cannot be seen before they print it in the shop using that old technique of using dark room. So, after you took picture, you would keep the negative film and then sent it to the photo shop. A few days later the picture came out and you would laugh looking at it.

Now situation change. Really change. With digital camera, you can take at least 200-500 pictures for a single memory card. How many time do you run out of memory in your memory card compare to you're running out of your camera's battery? This means, you can take infinite picture until at least your battery flat or memory card full which is rare.

200 to 500 pictures compare to max 36 pictures using that celluloid rolls. Science is amazing. Furthermore, today you did not need to sent the memory card or whatever to the photo shop, all you need is a laptop. Even more, you can immediately look at your shots using your digital camera. You took a picture, then immediately press play and you can see how your shots look like.

It's fun and much more convenient compare to the old times. But still, there are certain problem that people did not think of regarding this technology.

First of all, do you realize that from 500 picture you took, 400 is a picture without meaning? and from 400, 300 is a repeated shots or same picture all over. Now we did not think like the previous time where we only took precious moment to shot a picture. Now we only click on everything and the result is 400 picture does not have any significant value.

This thing can be solve by selecting the most precious picture and you would isolate the best only picture in your computer.

Then, the next problem is about the space you want to put the picture. Previously, 36 pictures, you put into an album, then you would open it back 10 years later and you would feel 10 years younger. You would remember all your precious time 10 years earlier. Now, you have 500 pictures, you won't be able to put it in an album. You would need 50 album and also plenty of money to do that.

Then you will solve the problem by burning it into a CD. How many time did you lost a CD compare to losing a photo album? How many time you got those situation where your CD is unreadable. Further more, did you all aware that people are stopping manufacturing CD and DVD. Now they are going into the blue ray era. Are you aware, a few years from now, all your CD and DVD would not be readable anymore. It is just like Video cassette. Are you able to read it easily today. No device right.

Fair enough, you save it in your external hard disk. The question is, is it permanent? Or is it hard for a virus to get into it and destroy everything. Did hard disk really can work for more than 20 years? Hard disk is so fragile. Anytime you would lost your data by trusting it.

So some people upload the picture to the internet and by far this is the most optimum method to save your picture for a very long time. However, it is still not that permanent. Same as yahoo notebook or whatever program to save date in the net, everything can be change.What if suddenly they go bankrupt and your date cannot be retrieved. I think all the web provider would not say that they are responsible for data lost. No. so this method still have a fatal blow.

Sometime we should not take risk of developing technology. If you have your wedding day capture in a DVD, do you rely 100% that 20 years later this DVD will still be as it it and readable? Take a risk or not.

So photo album still the best method to put your precious moment eternally.

Never underestimate technology. I believed that lots of genius out there are thinking the same thing as i do. trying to find the best method to save your precious data so that for the next 100 or 200 years, the data will still as it is. No defect until you can view it for generations.

As a conclusion, i would say that you should save only the significant picture, select from 500 picture you took, the smaller the number, the easier you would transfer it from different method of file saving. I guess it is much harder for you to tranfer 10gb of picture date comapare to 1gb. So, i am still wondering, whether all the beautiful picture of my youth, my birthday, my friends, my elective posting, and everything will be there when i was 40 years old. Or everything will only be in my mind. My memory. The memory of old time.


p/s: i have burn lots of DVD of my picture. Where is it? I don't know. Now i realize that i have to find it somewhere.