Don’t lose your family history
to the new millennium…

Written January 2000 - How time flies

How valuable is your family heritage? How about all those pictures you have stored away as slides, negatives and prints? What would happen if there was a fire or flood?  Could you recovery your photographic memories?  How about your children? How are you planning to share their childhood memories when your children become older with their own families?

Back in the 80’s, when people could buy their first video cameras, many miles of videotape was shot recording family events.  Some families even took advantage of the new recording media and spent the time to have their 8mm and Super8 movie films converted to videotape.  Some even added lively music to the tapes to spice up films that had no sound.

Today, those who never converted their 8mm films are in a real bind.  If the film is still around and in decent condition, they probably don’t have a projector that works to show them.  Not a pretty picture.  But they still have their photos, slides and negatives – right?  Not for long!!!

 Film is Doomed to Extinction

The rate of new technologies, new discovers and new products is increasing daily, especially now with easy access to the Internet. With the arrival of high quality digital video and now digital still cameras the future of 35mm film, in all its configurations, is doomed to extinction!

Just like the 8mm and super8 movie cameras that came before, the 35mm film camera is next!  This includes all its supporting equipment: film processing, slide projectors, darkroom equipment, etc.  When was the last time you saw a super8 projector, let alone a super8 movie camera? Gone are the days when many hours were spent in darkrooms processing negatives and printing pictures.  If you don’t believe me, go to any bookstore and see how many books you can find on 35mm photography.  The clock is ticking.  Don’t get caught unprepared, years from now, when it’s to late to convert, or worse, your photos are accidentally destroyed.  By digitizing your images now, you guarantee their survival for the new millennium and beyond.

  A Unique Copy Stand for Your Digital Cameras

There is one relic whose basic premise of operation can take us to the digital age.  ATSSI calls their clever invention, ShotCopy.  It allows you to take advantage of the high resolution of your digital cameras to easily capture your 35mm slides, negatives or photographs - up to 4x5 inches. ShotCopy is easy to setup and fun to use.

 Scanning vs. Clicking

You might already have a scanner, but have you ever tried to copy a photograph - let alone a slide or a negative?  Either you can’t do it or it takes forever with marginal results.

To copy an image with a scanner - you’ve got to position the photograph just right on the scanner-bed and wait patiently as the scanner head moves slowly across the image. Then you’ve got to crop each image that appears on the screen and save it to a file.  After a couple of dozen, very time consuming, scans the routine becomes quite old. You start to wonder if you are going to live long enough to finish scanning.

How about the space most scanners take up on your desktop?  (Big, Bulky – what a waste of valuable workspace!) Don’t get me wrong – scanners are great for scanning text (their original purpose), but when it comes to photographic images, they fall far short of our expectations.

 The ShotCopy Advantage

ShotCopy, is a small, compact, easy to use copy stand that performs multiple copying functions right from your desktop.  (No complicated setup.) Just drop in a slide, negative or print and click, you’ve copied the image to your digital camera.  With one click of your digital camera, you can gain total over what you can do with the captured image.

Let’s say, after you’ve save the image to your PC, you notice it was under exposed – click - you lighten it.  How about dust or even worse a tear or scratch – click - you remove it.  How about the color - faded and washed out – with a few more clicks you can bring it back to life. During the good old days, with darkrooms and smelly chemicals, this kind of retouch work would be a major exercise in time, patience and skill.

ShotCopy’s brilliant design is simple, straightforward and easy to use. You might even say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  Well, a few years ago it was not possible to use a digital camera to get the high quality results we see today.  Today’s digital cameras have image capture areas of 1 to 3 mega pixels (that is 1 million to 3 million pixels of detail that can be captured to within one inch of the lens).  In a few more years we’ll have 5 mega pixels cameras at reasonable prices. This higher resolution will surpass the best 35mm film on the market today.

Why do you think Kodak markets digital cameras and their supporting peripherals? Many years ago Kodak saw the writing on the wall. They have quietly realigned themselves with the new par dyne shift in photography!  Sure, film photography will be around for a little while longer; but its days are coming to a fast close as consumers understand and appreciate the value of digital photography.

 The Digital Millennium is Upon Us

Let’s talk about the new digital millennium and its continuing impact on photography.  Everything, including video and still photography, is going digital. 35mm photography is one of the last holdouts and it’s in the throws of being set aside.  To give you some idea how pervasive digital has become - what follows is a partial listing of what changes have taken place from the old world called Analog, to the new world - called Digital. This list is meant to give you some idea of how pervasive digital has become.

The digital revolution got its start with the invention of the transistor back in 1947. Once we realized the power of 0’s and 1’s or ‘digital signals’ we revolutionized the way we communicate. Now we can control and manipulate and manage our environment with streaming bands of on and off signals.  The world has never been the same since and it continues to change rapidly as the digital revolution spreads to all areas of our life - through the air, in the products we use and outer space. It’s here to stay.  Once data is digitized – no matter if it is from the written word, the human voice  or any other source, it can be saved, studied, manipulated, controlled and communicated to anyone, anywhere in the world.  The move from a analog to a digital world is changing the way we live our lives; for better or for worse.

 Photography – Then and Now

Take, for example, photography.  Before the digital revolution, to take a picture and get a photograph back then was a major operation.  You have a camera that needs film to work. You go to the store and buy some film. Do you want slide film? Black and white or color? What speed do you want?  Do you want 24 or 36 exposure?

Ok, you get the film home and load it into the camera in a darkened room – hoping to get your ASA set right and the film loaded on the spool correctly so the film is pulled through the camera as you take pictures.  How many of you recall loading your film and taking pictures, only to find out that you got nothing because the film wasn’t loaded properly?

Ok, you’ve finished the roll, rewound the film, put it back into the little black plastic container, and taken it to the store for processing. What size prints do you want? Do you want 2-for-1?  Do you need another roll of film? Do you want 24 or 36 exposures? What speed do you want? Then you would go home and wait.  Most of the time when you picked up your pictures you were not pleased with the results.  Many of your pictures were under or over exposed - or worse - blurred.  With some pictures you wondered why you even took them in the first place. What were you thinking?  Oh well, you’ll do better next time, right?

What about after you got the pictures home?  Where do you keep photographs you have collected over the years?  Some of us, being well organized, put our pictures into photo albums and slide trays all neatly labeled and categorized.  While those of us with busy lives stuffed them into boxes, shoeboxes, and paper and plastic bags.  Occasionally we would run across them while looking for something else.  Many times we would stop and say, “One of these days I’ve got to get these photos organized.” Right!!!

 Can You Afford to Wait?

You’re not getting any younger and we’ve all moved to the next millennium. Let’s call it the ‘Digital Millennium’.  What about all those cherished photographic memories?  Are you going to leave them behind to be lost in a fire or flood or destroyed by the ravages of time? Your photographic images may become more precious with time but they’re disappearing right before your eyes.  The color is fading; they’re getting torn, fingered, and bent up from years of abuse. Your memories of who you were - your family history and your heritage - is decaying with each day that passes.

There is a way out!  Remember, you’re now in the digital age with its digital cameras.  Think about it. You can save your photographic heritage for you and your loved ones that follow you after you’re gone – something that can conceivably be cherished forever once it’s digitized.  After you have copied your analog images to digital images on your PC, you have the capability to do a multitude of things that will make your family history come alive.  What follows are just a few ideas of what you can do when you convert your slides, negatives and prints to digital images using ShotCopy –“The copy stand for the digital age“.

 Digital Photo Album

Initially you will be busy getting all your slides, negatives and prints converted and saved to your PC.  Even if you don’t do anything else your photos are now digitized.  Now they can be copied to a CD-ROM disk and duplicates can be made to share with family and friends.  Now if a fire or flood takes place, one of your multiple copies out there will survive.  Another exact duplicate can be quickly made from one of the copies. Your pictures become immune from fading and cracking. The copies are just as fresh as the day they were initially saved as digital images.

 How about a Multimedia Photo Album?

Ok, you’ve captured all your images to digital now what can you do with them?  How about creating an interactive photo album?  That’s right!  With our PC’s we can add text, sound, and animation to our photos.  Imagine having a text description of who’s in the picture and the event; you can even have a little speaker icon that you can click on and actually hear the person describing the event and possibly a story that would have been lost forever.  Think about it!  I’m sure you have pictures that contain people you don’t know. You also may not know where the picture was taken or what was going on.

 What about Home Movies?

Today, your home movies can be moved to your PC.  Back in the 80’s during the early VCR camera-and-recorder days when regular-8 and super-8 movie film was still being used, some parents spliced their 8mm films together and had them copied to videotape for their kids.  Some parents even had entertaining background music added to offset the absence of a sound on the original film.

Where are your 8mm films today? Do you even have a projector that works, or even a projector screen?  How about the movie film itself? Has it become brittle with age and faded with time?

This particular scenario does not factor in your slides, negatives or prints.  As each day goes by, your photographic history is slipping away – never to be seen again – unless you do something about it now.  It’s time to digitize those precious images before it’s to late with ShotCopy to the rescue.!

 The Right Time and Place

ShotCopy is the best conversion tool that’s available today. It’s cost effective and easy to use when compared to other methods out there.

As we move into another millennium, film will become a quaint memory and slides & negatives will fade away.  Even the equipment for displaying slides and the chemicals needed to make prints from the negatives will be hard to come by. The time is right to make the switch to digital images. 

Once digitized your images are frozen in time, with no more deterioration. You can email your images to the far corners of the earth almost instantly knowing that each copy is exactly like the original.

 The Family Tree

Today, many of us are seeking our family trees.  Some of us are tracing our ancestry and heritage in the hopes of discovering family members whose traits and gifts have been passed on to us through genetics. It’s human nature to wonder where we came from and where we are going.  Digitizing your images now will guarantee that future family members who follow will know and remember you when they go searching for their roots.

 A Major Task

Digitizing your photos (slides, negatives, and prints) is a big undertaking that requires time and persistence.  For those of us who have never used a 35mm film camera and have a digital camera, it’s easy to save and store images and build an interactive, multimedia photo album.  For the rest of us, who have used film in the past, we have a major task of getting our photo history converted to digital as soon as possible.  ShotCopy is a great tool that can help you make the job easier.  It’s flexible, easy to setup and easy to use each time you sit down to do a conversion session. Rome was not built in a day, so take your time and divide the project into multiple sessions of one to two hour. You’ll be amazed at how many pictures you can scan with ShotCopy when compared with other scanning methods.

 Our Guarantee

We are so confident that you will love ShotCopy that we offer you a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee of your purchase price (less shipping and handling) if you are not completely satisfied with your ShotCopy.  We want you to try and see for yourself the value of ShotCopy so you will tell your friends about us.

If you decide to return your ShotCopy, just e-mail us at "returns@shotcopy.com" and ask for an RMA# (Return Merchandise Authorization Number) and we will refund your money the same day the item is returned. No questions asked.  You have nothing to lose by trying ShotCopy for yourself today.