The survey we did of our email groups taught us some useful information.
There were specific problems that missionaries and their parents discovered
in dealing with digital cameras, memory cards, transferring photos, bad
cameras, etc. We found that many preferred a website to keep their photos
"safely stored".
There are many online internet services, however there are weaknesses
with most of them, including:
- Some have a time limit you have to search to find. Mothers have gone
to retrieve photos only to find that they are No Longer There! - - deleted
because of the time limit.
- Other websites require family and friends to subscribe, and photos
cannot be shared with others unless they are either paid members and/or
belong to the same 'group'.
- A photo website has literally disappeared off the internet; gone out
of business? Who knows? It just isn't there anymore.
If missionaries can't use the internet to upload photos to their
free internet photo site, they typically have these two options:
- Burning their photos to CDs. If they burn 2, they can keep one and send
the other one home where the parents can upload them to the photo internet
site. CDs can go bad, especially the ones marked RW, or Re-writable. They
also can get lost, scratched or broken. CDs we burn ourselves are not as
long-lived as commercial 'burn-once' CDs because they are made of a softer
material.
- Some missionaries are choosing to send home their camera's memory cards.
Parents can then upload them directly into the internet site with a card reader.
They can then order prints, and also send photos back to the missionary
through emails. Please refer to our website section for digital camera
information. Some memory cards have been lost or damaged in the mail.
Missionaries also have time limits, so those who are allowed to upload
photos to an internet site do so while emailing their parents at the same
time.
Through website searching and comparing, we have found one website that
meets the following:
- Free service, no hidden fees backed by a company that has the financial
resources to keep the website in business.
- No expiration date or maximum time limits on photo storage.
- Easy to use, safe and secure.
- Photos are stored forever. Servers are backed up, and photos stored in
the Granite Vaults in the canyons outside of Salt Lake City. No other website
offers this level of redundancy which translates into photograph security.
- If missionaries are able to access a website, they can upload their
digital photos directly into their own free internet account. The photos
will be safe and secure, and when they come home, they can enjoy them.
- Will print digital photos for as low as 12 cents.
- Gives ideas on what you can do with your photos, including items for
missionaries.
- Offers products that can be used for personal & family history,
genealogy, display or just fun.
To ask for help with the site, or to find out more, you can either
contact Betty or visit our
Photo Website
and set up a free account. When you set up a free account you will get 1 free
8x10 print and 20 free 4x6 prints just for signing up. You don't have to buy
anything either.
In addition to the information above, this site offers very high
resolution scanning of your old photos, which they put on the website
and send to you on a CD. Our returned missionaries who used the old 35mm
cameras are now sending in their photos to be scanned and stored. Nothing
can harm them if they are stored in a secure website, and you can share
these old photos with other family members or friends.
The nice thing about having photos stored on a website is that they will
still be there if a computer crashes at home. They are secure and won't be
harmed if there is a house fire, tornado, hurricane, mud slide or flood.
Hey, we had a "flood" destroy our photos when our oldest child was 13 years
old. We had just moved into an older home, and stored our boxed things in
the storage room in the basement. We took off for a long awaited family
vacation. A week later when we came home, we discovered that our water
heater had "sprung a leak", and emptied itself all over our boxes.
Everything was mush...totally ruined!
CD's can go bad. Our daughter had her wedding slides on a CD. When they
returned from their honeymoon, they sat down to watch it, and it had gone
bad. They only got streaks on the screen. No backup had been made. To top
it off, our son-in-law's mother lost one of his precious baby photos. He
had very few to begin with.
Memory cards can also go bad or end up "empty". All photos can be lost.
Batteries in digital cameras that don't use memory cards can go dead,
erasing all of the photos on the camera. This happened with the digital
pictures of our first grand child.
Related information can be read in the sections on the previous page
entitled: Digital Dos and Donts and Choosing a Digital Camera.
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