Photo industry issues digital warning
Photo industry issues digital warning
The explosion in popularity of digital cameras in Australia has prompted one of the country's peak photographic industry bodies to launch the biggest campaign in its 25 year history.
The Photo Imaging Council of Australia (PICA) is trying to encourage digital camera users to print copies of digital images that they want to keep, as well as alerting them to the risks of simply saving them on their computers and disks and forgetting all about them.
PICA says images will be lost due to technological change (formats today will not be formats of the future) and a lack of back up when computers fall victim to viruses or crashes.
"The importance of the photos you take shouldn't be dismissed lightly. They play a most significant role in family history and become more valuable as the years go on. The only sure way to hold onto your memories is to print them," says Paul Curtis, Executive Director of the PICA.
"It is no use just taking digital images. Images aren't photos until they are printed.
"The reality we are facing is that Australians will take more than a billion photos this year - 30 percent of these with digital cameras (more than 80 percent of images taken with digital cameras are never printed)."
The Photo Imaging Council says there are two options when printing a digital image.You can take the memory card in your digital camera to be processed at a film/camera outlet in much the same way as you would process a film cartridge.
Otherwise, you can print the shots yourself at home or in the office using photo quality paper. New technology allows digital cameras to be connected directly to printers.
The Photo Imaging Council says printing shots using anything other than photo quality paper (such as A4 paper used for photocopying or printing text) means running the real risk of fading or degradation of the image.
Digital cameras have taken the industry by storm, with suppliers increasing their output to meet the ever-growing demand. 10 percent of Australians now own a digital camera. 900,000 digital cameras will be sold in this country during 2003 (compared to 700,000 film cameras) and that number is expected to jump by 33 per cent next year.
The other significant development has been the surge in sales of mobile phone cameras. One million of these phone cameras are expected to be sold in Australia during 2004.
"Why run the risk of losing precious memories - births, holidays, weddings, family gatherings? When a memory card is full, print it out. Don't just download it onto your computer or retain it on disk and hope it stays there forever," added Curtis.
"Photos are among our most treasured possessions. We see unfortunate evidence of this every fire season when the first thing people often try and save is their family album. Trying to grab and carry out the family computer could be significantly more difficult."
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