Memory Format Archive

Your photo, video, and audio memories were probably captured over many years, by many different people, and in many different formats. You might have a combination of photo prints, negatives, slides, video tapes, and many digital files on computers, memory cards, CDs, and DVDs.

Every photo project should start with gathering all these materials because it helps us grasp the scope of your project and work efficiently. To help you identify the different types in your collection, many common photo, video, audio, and digital formats are explained in the list below.

Photo Prints

The first photograph taken with a camera was created in France in 1826. After that, photographers experimented with several interesting materials including tar, iron, lavender oil, glass, and even potato starch. We’ve come a long way in the last two hundred years to the incredible convenience, affordability, and faithful color we know in modern photographic prints. Photo prints should be scanned at 600PPI (pixels per inch) to capture the full details of the photo.

Photo Negatives

The earliest photo negatives were made on glass plates, but most negatives are a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film. The first film base used from 1889-1951 was cellulose nitrate. When cellulose nitrate film deteriorates it becomes brittle, sticks to itself, and gives off an acrid odor. It’s also extremely flammable and susceptible to spontaneous ignition, so handle with care.

Acetate film was introduced in 1910 and because it isn’t flammable it’s often marked with the phrase “Safety Film.” When acetate film degrades it gives off a strong vinegar smell and the film shrinks, destroying the image. Polyester film was introduced in 1955 and is inert, considered an archival material, and has a life expectancy of 500+ years when stored properly.

The reversed image on a negative is used with a photo enlarger, light-sensitive paper, and chemical processing to create a photo print. The following pages cover all the common formats and many less common types. Black and white negatives are a simple inverse of the image, but color negatives typically have a strong orange tint. Negatives should be handled gently by their edges and never with bare hands to avoid leaving oil and fingerprints on the film. If you have a negative and a print of the same image, you should almost always scan the negative because you can usually preserve more of the image at higher resolution and with better color fidelity. Negatives should be scanned at 4000PPI (pixels per inch) for optimal preservation and maximum reprint sizes.

Photo Slides

Most photographic film creates a negative that is used to create prints, but slide film creates a positive image on a transparent base that is mounted as a slide and viewed with a slide projector. Slide film is sometimes called reversal, transparency, or positive film. The first Kodak slide projector was introduced in 1937, and they endured for decades as a popular way to enjoy and share family photos. Most slides use the same 2 × 2 inch mount, so the distinguishing feature is usually the size of the image area. A few formats use noticeably larger or smaller mounts, which make them easy to identify. Kodak was probably the most popular producer of slide film, but you might see slides from other manufacturers including Fuji, Agfa, and Ansco. Kodak stopped selling slide projectors in 2004, which means it’s harder than ever to view slides. It’s important to preserve them with archival scanning at 4000 PPI so you can enjoy and share them again.

Video

Home movies have been accessible since the 1920s, and for decades the standard formats were reels of black and white or color film that were chemically processed and viewed with a reel to reel projector. In the 1970s the Betamax and VHS formats introduced cassettes that were easier to use and provided recordings that could be viewed instantly on a television with no chemical processing in a photo lab. The 1980s introduced smaller video cameras and smaller video cassette formats. The big development of the 1990s was the transition from analog video to digital video. Since the early 2000s most video is stored digitally on memory cards, hard drives, or DVD and use of video tape is virtually non-existent. Recommended capture resolution varies by format and what can be captured is limited by the quality of the original format.

Audio

A picture is worth a thousand words, but audio recordings are a powerful and immersive way to remember special people and important events. Early audio recording equipment was rare, expensive, and difficult to use, but over the years recording audio has become more accessible, less expensive, and easier than ever. Some common audio recordings include interviews and speeches, weddings and funerals, concerts and commencements. Many audio recordings rely on magnetic tape which degrades over time, so it’s important to digitize and preserve these memories as soon as possible.

Memory Formats

The world’s first digital camera was invented in 1975 at Kodak, but digital photography wasn’t accessible to consumers until the late 1990s. The earliest digital cameras stored images internally and had to be transferred to a computer with cables. In the following years, digital cameras started using familiar formats such as floppy disks and CDs as removable storage. Before long, new digital storage formats emerged for digital cameras, fueling multiple “format wars” through the years. Just like film photography, many formats have come and gone. While we can’t predict the future, it’s almost certain that digital media formats will continue to evolve to be smaller, faster, and higher capacity to satisfy our memory making demands.

Digital Storage

The formats on the following pages aren’t used to capture digital photos or digital video, but more digital files require bigger and better storage. In recent decades, the technology has evolved from measuring kilobytes, to megabytes, to gigabytes, to terabytes. Each new unit of digital storage was 1024 times larger than the previous unit. Over the last 50 years, hard drive storage capacity has increased four million to one, price has dropped 300 million to one, and data density has increased 650 million to one. It’s a safe bet that digital storage capacity will continue to increase while cost and physical size continue to decrease.