Thanks all for the input concerning disposing of our slide collections.

First of all – I’m not planning on leaving this world right now. But as one approaches the
big-60, the reality of it all starts to sink in. The inevitable will happen sooner or later – anyway enough of this “reality” stuff.

I think everyone had some good ideas. The biggest problem with 15,000 slides is the fact that – well, that a lot of slides. Many of the slides are the product of the “auto-advance” cameras.

Back in the 1960’s when I first started taking photos, you could only get one, maybe two “coming” shots and one “going away” shot because you had to physically advance the film. Then came the march of technology – instead of two or three images per train I could rip off seven or more. Now…I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad, as many times the “perfect” ¾ angle view was not the “best” to my eye when I reviewed the photo sequence. So, in part that’s why, in part, we end up with so many photos. For a while I had a 4x5 view camera that I bought so as to slow down the whole photo process. Well, the learning curve and expense put that project to a halt. Then along came “digital”, now I can rip off seven or eight photos and not worry about any storage – except hard drive storage.

That brings me to another part of the dilemma and this one’s been covered many times on various groups also. What is the “best” way to store images – slides & negatives or pixels.

I don’t believe there’s any answer to that one as both have valid pros & cons. So… what I’ve decided is that as I go along in my own personal projects or in assisting other folks in their projects – is I scan my slides in fairly large files for what I consider “Good” images vs. 3 to 6 meg scans for “Regular” images. I realize that evaluation is subjective to the final product. Is it an “artsy” project, “historical”, etc? I used to scan to CD’s but you really don’t get that many images per disc. I haven’t tried DVD’s but I don’t think they are too much better. I save all my scans on a 500GB external hard drive. Mainly because you can fit well – 500GB’s worth of files [that’s a LOT of disc’s] and for $50 to $100, it’s not that expensive to make a duplicate hard drive and store it in a safe deposit box. It doesn't take an OS, so in the future [ at least 5 or 10 years] one should be able to take the external HD and USB it into whatever “new” OS system’s are around. Who knows how long “legacy” formats like .Tiff will be around but…that’s a chance that I’ll have to take. After all I still have the originals – right?

Now, what to do with all those slides. First of all, I have about 12,000 of the slides indexed in a Microsoft Access database. I have basic location/date information and an ID number. That way who ever ends up with the slides has at least SOME knowledge of where the images are. Without that info the images are nearly worthless without the photographer.

I’ve decided to pare down the collection by selling off many of the slides. I’ve chosen Ebay to sell them as the “Dealers” I’ve contacted are not interested in such “New” material. I disagree with this mentality, as most of the photos I have are already ten years old and from Montana where by in large, few railfans can afford to spend the time on a regular basis to wait to get a photo for the “train” which may be a once a week item. I’ve lived out in all those places in Montana for years and was the only one out there taking photos – anyway…back to selling the slides. I think it’s better to sell off some of the slides to whom at least one would assume is a “railfan” and let them either horde them as some do, or share them with others as some do. At least they are still original images and not all stored in one place. Consider this – if your place was to burn tonight, how much of your stuff would remain.

As for donating to museums and historical societies. I think these can be categorized in the “Good, the Bad and the Ugly” I haven’t checked out the Museum of the Rockies yet, but so far I’ve not been impressed with most locations in Montana. The Montana Historical Society – well, appears to be somewhat political and has funding problems. There’s one Historical Society in Montana that charges $30 for a Not-for-Profit use of one image and $50 for a “For Profit” image. They have some great stuff but I’ve never seen ANY of their images in print because quite frankly their prices are out of sight of most authors. I want to make sure that where ever some of the images are donated – they will be reasonably affordable to others. If they are not available – why not just destroy them now as not one will ever see them anyway.

My strategy is to diversify the dispersion – of course one can’t guarantee that something “bad” will not happen when your collection is out of your hands, but there’s no guarantee that that won’t happen now. I figure by trying to get various parts of the collection in various formats in various locations at least there’s a good chance some of the images will survive for posterity.

BTW: I you want to check out the slides I’m selling – they’re listed on Ebay as

1,060 Color Slides Great Northern & Milwaukee Road Photos from Central Montana on these former RR lines – Item number 230132711367

Talk to ya later,
Dale Jones