Digital vs Prints - What would you rather for your family?

[Nevilleblack]

I remember as a kid growing up and looking through all the photo albums my mom and dad owned. Pictures of them young, getting married, pictures of me growing up - you know. I loved the way they looked at felt in those old sticky photo albums.
Now that I have a kid everything is pretty much digital. We take pictures of my kid and family every day. Its starting to fill up my HD a lot. I printed a few just to have hard copies because I prefer that to digital. My wife loves keeping EVERY shot even the 'ok' shots on the PC. I like to pick a few out or one from the lot. The best of the best. She hates that. I tell her, whats the point? He might as well have a pic of him every second of the day. Im worried that in the future, he will look at 100000's of pictures and just find it boring and tedious. Not so special. I think there is something about printed pictures thats just so much better. It feels special and means more imo.

My question is:
Would you rather have 1000000's of digital pictures on your many hard drives and CDs?
Or would you rather select few of the best printed into a physical album?

[mbellot]

My question is:
Would you rather have 1000000's of digital pictures on your many hard drives and CDs?
Or would you rather select few of the best printed into a physical album?

Both. :D

That is the beauty of digital. I have 2+ TB of HD space but still print plenty of pictures for hanging and albums.

[SoaringUSAEagle]

Yep, both for me as well. Print the real good ones, but keep them all to reflect back on someday....

[tracyvb]

Both. I really like looking at prints but you don't always get the really funny ones with the REAL story printed. ;)
On the other hand, when my grandpa drags out his old slide projector (at every holiday) :) it's kind of a pain to wait for it to all be set up and the technology is so old that it might be just as easy to have prints.

[mathogre]

I keep digital versions on the computer, but in the last year and a half I've been making photo books. They're great! The most recent one came yesterday, hard bound with a paper jacket. It's different from the past, and it's better.

Btw, my photo books are made through my Macs and iPhoto. There are companies that make books for folks with Windows PCs also.

[TheHoff]

I keep digital versions on the computer, but in the last year and a half I've been making photo books. They're great! The most recent one came yesterday, hard bound with a paper jacket. It's different from the past, and it's better.

Btw, my photo books are made through my Macs and iPhoto. There are companies that make books for folks with Windows PCs also.

Agreed! Apple's books are my preferred method of printing now, too. Their recent books are excellent quality.

[Kendoway]

Now that I have a kid everything is pretty much digital.

Considering the rate of technological advancement in our society, I'm sure that in15 years Canon will have cameras that stream the image directly into our brain, no storage or printing needed :p

I too like printing, and I'm working on my first Blurb book.

[tharmsen]

Please, allow me ramble. :)

I asked for a DVD of our wedding photos. I refused to work with a Photog that wouldn't give us digital originals (that excluded a quite a few in our area surprisingly). I didn't ask for any prints, we made our own photo albums online with a cool Flash app and sent books to all of our family members.

Prints will go the way of the do-do in the next 20 years or so I imagine. When our walls in our homes can display digital prints, when every device we have from toasters to cars have video display capabilities... we will have limited use for prints.

I haven't gotten a news paper on my door step in 8 years. I haven't had a telephone book in my house for at least that long. I haven't written a check or licked a stamp in several years. I've been buying digital picture frames lately. Everything I do is digital.

I have some prints around, of course. But one of these days even the pictures on our walls will be digital and swap out to change mood/time of day/etc.

Give me digital.