It’s 2018!
In the fast-paced digital age that we live in, it’s nearly impossible to find ways to play old VHS tapes, film reels, or Digital 8 tapes.
Our society is obsessed with throwing out the old and making room for the new and improved. However, this does not mean you need to throw away all those beloved, slightly embarrassing, old home movies of your cousins singing Christmas carols or your uncles playing basketball in short-shorts.
You can keep those gems, along with old photos and any other forms of media you have, by digitizing and making them 21st century friendly!
By choosing to convert to digital, all your home movies, film reels, photos, and more can be transferred very simply and SHOULD be done because of these factors:
1. Age
If you were to ask anyone born after 2003 what a VHS was, you will get a very confused look, followed by your own fits of nostalgia. Due to the new technology that comes out every year, tapes and records have become a thing of the past, and all you can do is try to keep up.
Aging doesn’t affect just you, though. It can also have negative effects on your media.
With time, slides become overexposed to light, moisture, and other factors causing damage that cannot be reversed. Wear and tear can destroy your photos. And sadly, film can deteriorate over time.
While you can’t stop time, you can stop these terrible things from happening by opting to convert to digital. Conserve your family’s memories forever by converting your irreplaceable media to digitized files.
2. Weather preservation
No one wants to think about a natural disaster striking their home, but unfortunately, it does happen. Fires, flooding, inclement weather – all possible enemies that could attack at any moment.
Because of the Mother Nature’s unpredictability, you should be prepared when it comes to salvaging your family movies or photos. Converting your films or negatives to digital today can prevent any damage that could happen tomorrow.
3. Organization
If you’re anything like my mother, you hold onto your old family movies, photos, and tapes like they are national secrets.
You let them clutter up your basement and storage areas until, finally, you decide to do something about it. This is a disaster for your photos! And no one needs to be a hoarder.
When you digitize your film reels, your VHS tapes, and photo negatives, you can do so much more with them instead of letting them get damaged. Once you convert to digital, you can sort them by tagging folders, adding backstories to them, or even just mentioning who is in each one.
This way, when you need to find specific ones again, you aren’t stubbing your toe on your favorite Bee Gees cassette tapes to get to the home video of your son’s fourth-grade talent show.
4. Easier to share with family and friends
“Oh! That’s so cute! Send me that.”
It’s as easy as that; the click of a button, and your entire family or friend group now has a copy of the picture you just took.
Imagine being able to do this with home movies or even that box of negatives that you never got developed. When you convert your media to digital form, you make sharing your memories as easy as pressing send.
No more arguments about who gets to keep the copy of this photo, or whose house that image gets to hang up in. When you digitize, each person can have their own file, without paying for several copies to be made.
5. Easier to enjoy
No one enjoys organizing a hoarder’s stash. Instead of forcing yourself to go down into that cluttered basement where all your film reels and photos are being stored, simply pull out your laptop or phone and flip through images and videos that were taken years before.
Digitizing your favorite items allows you to enjoy them whenever and wherever you want. You can also get creative with your new files and create photobooks or compile home videos together and play them at your next family gathering. The possibilities are endless once you convert to digital!
6. Granting peace of mind
No more worrying about your treasures when your messy grandchildren come over to play or when you find yourself elbow deep in buttery popcorn the minute you also feel an overwhelming sense to find that picture from senior prom with your best friends.
When you convert your photos, negatives, or home movies to digital, you no longer need to be paranoid about damaging them. You can relax knowing that all your memories are safe, easily accessible, and easy to duplicate.
7. Identifying the unknown
Say this article convinced you that it’s finally time to gather all your media and convert to digital.
But wait, who’s that man in this picture? And what about that woman in this one?
You call your parents after sending them the file. Then, they tell you this magnificent, 30-minute story about your grandfather’s favorite fishing spot that you hadn’t heard before.
When you digitize, you are not only reliving all of your wonderful memories, you’re learning about parts your family history that you may not have known before. Choosing to convert to digital makes this possible!
8. The nostalgia factor
Searching through old photos and videos may seem like an annoying task, but five minutes into watching a home video of you and your siblings at a family barbeque in 1989, you’ll be glad that you finally brought yourself to look through them.
Nothing beats finding images or recordings of moments of your life that you may have forgotten about. Reliving that joy for just a second is worth digitizing your files!
So allow yourself a little trip down memory lane and take the time to convert to digital!
I promise that you will not regret it.
