My mom still believes that that her roll film camera is much better than the digital camera that I have. The explanation that she gave was that even though digital cameras can store tons of photos on the memory card, she rarely sees any of them being printed !!
I did try to explain that photographs taken with the film fade with age and the digital ones retain the clarity and the color even after many years.
That said, if the hard drive which stores these photos crashes, you loose the photos forever, unless you have made a backup.
I use Flickr Pro account to backup my photos. The Pro account allows permanent archiving of high resolution images. Again not relying completely on an “online” service, I have backed up the photos on my 30GB iPod too !! (I need to buy an external hard drive soon :))
You can easily share photos using Flickr and other similar services. But how to share photos to people who don’t have access to Internet ? Getting the photos printed does make sense in this case.
One way to get the digital photos printed (at least in India) is to copy the photos onto a USB stick (or write to a CD) and take them to a photo studio. Alternatively some of these studios have an online service which allows you to upload the photos and order for a print.
Having already uploaded all my photos to Flickr, I went in search of a online photo printing service which integrates with Flickr.
Flickr does have an option of “ordering prints“, however there seems to be only one non-regional partner named QOOP. The company is based in California and they have to ship printed photos to India; this might turn out to be a time consuming and expensive proposition.
After little bit of “googling” I found 2 online photo printing services based in India
- iTasveer – http://www.itasveer.com/
- Picsquare – http://www.picsquare.com/
Both the services, once authorized, allow you to pull photos from Flickr.
iTasveer seems to be a better service compared to PicSquare. The user interface of iTasveer is much more easier to use/navigate compared to Picsquare.
Also iTasveer is much more faster and has additional tools to modify the photos (crop etc).
On the pricing front, iTasveer is more expensive compared to PicSquare (PicSquare is running a promotion program till June 30). If you are also planning to print your online digital photos, I would definitely recommend iTasveer. I only hope they reduce the pricing a little bit.
How do you manage your digital photos ? How do you back it up ? How do you get the photos printed ?
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I have not been backing up my phots as often as I should. When I do, I usually burn a disk and then back that up and store them in two different place. I print less and less as the years go by, but I find I miss the old fashioned photo slbum you sit on the couch and browse.
Incremental backup is definitely a pain. Organizing and backing up photos is definitely not straightforward.
I for one like Flickr even because of the powerful tagging feature.
The last point that you mentioned is what exactly has happened with rising popularity of digital cameras 🙂
My Mom is the same exact way. “My 1993 Kodak is a lot more reliable than your stupid Sony Cybershot”
Oh the Baby Boomers…
🙂 meanwhile let me comment that canon is much better than sony cybershot 😀
that said when it comes to camcorders I prefer Sony over Canon ..
I have recently tried Picsqare and their service is good!
Benedict, thanks for the input, I just saw your post on picasquare. As you have pointed out, the site is too slow as is the Flickr Integration. I hope they improve on that soon.
Yes, thats true; Picsqare can be in top list when it comes to Value for Money.
If you have albums with Picasa, Flickr or Facebook, you can easily print them through Sendmyfoto.com and send your prints in India. I use their album integration feature to pull all my photos from various albums and print quickly.
The features are cool, and sendmyfoto.com has the lowest printing prices ever. Their service is extremely good and I get a chance to send my photos to my folks back in India. Good job Sendmyfoto !