Al!!! I can't believe you said that - because I *do* have cataracts! Oh, no big deal, you might think.....except I'm only **40 years old**!!!!! The opthalmologist told me a few years ago I had the beginning of cataracts (when I was in my 30s), and I had a routine exam this year. I'll tell you - I had a hard enough time dealing with turning 40, but when he told me I have CATARACTS to boot....well, now that made me feel old. Especially when he says the cataracts are progressed enough that the insurance will cover removal - they're at the stage that it is an option to have them removed. I asked him if computer monitors are the reason why, since I spend 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week in front of a computer at my job, plus a lot of hours of personal time for doing school work, personal stuff. He said there has been no conclusive evidence that the computer monitors are causing an increase in cataracts BUT he has seen a definite rise in the number of younger people with cataracts over the last few years, whereas previously cataracts were limited to the elderly for the most part, and he personally feels there may be a connection between the computers and early cataract development. And yes, I wear sunglasses when I go outside, even on cloudy days up here in Michigan, my ugly "old man" sunglasses - since I know sun exposure is a contributing factor to cataracts - so that's not it. My night vision is getting a little tough - halos around any sort of light.

I bought an Epson v200 flatbed scanner. It scans slides and negatives also. It was around $50 and does an excellent job. It is so fun to have those old pictures in a digital format! Oh the fun things you can do with them. I like to colorize them just a bit, such as the wedding flowers, or the gold on the wedding rings. Having your own scanner is fun.

As another wedding photographer, please consider this advice. First a little disclaimer; it would be 10X easier for me to shoot a wedding and hand you a CD of all the images. That would literally save me about 10 hours of work AFTER the wedding day processing images and also money to provide you with the proofing. I could charge you for the dig. negs and the copyright release and be done with it, moving on to the next wedding much faster. Here's why you should consider NOT buying digital negatives. Color Calibrated monitors of the photographer will give you the colors you think you're going to get. This will almost surely NOT happen by taking a CD to WalGreens or Walmart. Archival quality prints from the photographer means they'll last. ...and probably the biggest reason to order prints from the photographer is the post processing involved. This includes, aspect ratios, color-correction, sharpening, saturation, contrast, noise-reduction, dodging & burning, B&W and Sepia conversions and MUCH more. Like I said, I spend about 8-10 hours doing this processing for the average wedding. Unless you want/know how to do this yourself, digital negs may not be as good as it sounds. Few, if any, photographers are going to spend this time processing images to hand over to you on a CD. They are going to give you the untouched, unprocessed digital images. ...in short, they aren't going to look as good as you'd expect. Why would they, they haven't been 'developed' yet in the digital darkroom. The professional digital wedding photographer has skills that extend way beyond the camera into the areas mentioned above. ...just something to consider. My goal with wedding photography is to leave Brides & Grooms with a feeling of satisfaction and amazement! I feel strongly that a good portion of the "art" of digital photography is finished in the post processing. A photographer selling you unprocessed digital negs is selling you an unfinished product, in my opinion. Now, if you happen to be a whiz on the computer and are capable of and have the time to process your own digital wedding negs, then go for it! By the way, if you are a bride /groom who has purchased digital negs from your photographer and have realized that the prints don't look like you expected... I offer to process those images for you (as long as you own the copyright) for a minimal fee. Get in touch! daniel@dgmphotography.net -daniel

I guess I'm a sentimental old fool (at 53, LOL). Here is my experience... I have a few picture books printed online and they are great. However, IMHO, they can't compare to actual printed (or developed) pictures. I was tasked with writing a biography of my M&D's life, and believe me, it wasn't short! To do this I used verbal accounts from my M&D; a few thousand slides from my M&D, GP's and Great A&U; hundreds of photographs; my Great Aunt's daily journals; and tape recordings we sent from overseas to my GPs'. I digitized and transcribed almost all of it. Even though the slides were decades old, the digital quality was amazing. The scanned photographs, even the old, old, B&W's, were generally good quality. I only used a few pictures that were taken with a digital camera. The best part of the whole process was the obvious telling of their life story by my parents to me. As an adult you hear stories you weren't aware of as a child or wouldn't have been privileged to. The second best was handling the old photographs. Actually feeling them in my hands, turning them over to see if there was any writing on them, thinking of all those who had looked at them before me. Right up with this feeling was the handling of letters and my Aunt's journals. It's as if I could re-touch family members deceased through the pictures, letters, and journals. The nostalgia cloaked me with love when sifting through the pictures, holding each one in my hand and remembering. The biography is now complete and published. It's an amazing story and there are pictures, journal excerpts, and even conversations from the tapes that were transcribed (like when my sister was born and my Dad got the other four kids' reactions and my Mom talked to my Grandparents right after the birth). This is a long winded way to say that I prefer, much prefer, holding and looking through actual photographs to looking at the pictures printed in a book. If they are in a photo album, you can still take them out, look at the back, handle them, scan them, kiss the faces of your loved ones, hold them next to your heart. It's just not quite the same, for me, when it's a picture printed on a page of a book.