Research out today shows over one third (36pc) of people have lost holiday photos from a memory card without having a backup. As more and more people use digital cameras, there’s a growing demand for new ways to store photographs for fear of losing them.
Data recovery company Kroll Ontrack carried out the research, which also revealed that more than half (54pc) of those surveyed on average take between seven and 30 days to transfer photo files from a camera to a computer or other medium.
“We receive hundreds of requests every year from people who have lost holiday photos and are desperate to recover them,” said Ciaran Farrell, business development manager at Kroll Ontrack Ireland.
“Downloading and making a back-up of digital photos is essential. The longer photos are left on a memory card, the higher the risk of them being lost, damaged or the card being overwritten.”
Kroll Ontrack advises keeping memory cards in your camera or a protective case until you can make a copy, as well as checking the quality of backups before deleting the original photos, and immediately transferring photos from your digital camera or other storage device when you get back from holidays.
A Dublin-based company called picturebox.ie is offering a novel solution to storing digital images, with its video editing service.
As owner Con Kennedy explains, it transforms digital photographs, old-fashioned photographs and home movies into a DVD presentation. It digitises all content first of all; then puts it all together with titles and music.
“There’s a demand for DVDs to mark major birthdays and milestones, as well as summer holidays. For one customer’s 80th birthday recently, we collated around 100 photos and made a movie out of them using their music of choice,” he says.
“We can return the footage digitally suitable for viewing on a website, on an iPod or mobile phone.”
By Sorcha Corcoran
