It is less than six years since we got our first digital camera, we are now on our third.

The first was on special via American Express at the end of 2006, did Laos, Vietnam and China (including Hong Kong and Macau) as the first trip and did not survive being dropped on to a rock at Port Fairy, Victoria 18 months later.

The replacement went from Vanuatu to India between mid 2008 and the end of 2011 by which time the on/off button was depressed and the sealed lens unit had deposited stuff on the inside of the lens. It was going to cost more to fix than buy a replacement.

So the current camera has been running ever since, nearly six months. Already it has lost all but one of the decals from the shooting mode dial (though the electronic version is still complete) and the protective covering on the front face is peeling away.

But digital cameras have revolutionized photograph taking. In the old days you bought a film, loaded it into the camera, carefully weighed up whether it was worth risking a frame on that view and then when you had taken all 36 photographs out came the film to be sent off to the developers.
Shots could sit in the camera for weeks or even months before being seen again as a matt print.

Now we appear to have the cost of buying new cameras every few years but the photographs themselves are reasonably cheap. Take in now and put it on the Internet for all to see seconds later. Take as many shots as you like and throw them away, instead of taking 100 photos in a week on the big holiday you can now afford to take twice as many in a weekend.

Then you had the prints which you stuck in those big books (albums they were called) which needed big bookcases to hold them and added several boxes to the inventory when you moved.

So we decided to digitize all our old photographs.

We started with a few wedding photographs and our trip to Iceland, which we gave to a photographic shop in Melbourne. The results were encouraging but the cost was 'not cheap'.

With the move to Malaysia we went for 'possession down-sizing'.
Every photograph was removed from its album, numbered and catalogued (in Excel spreadsheets) with the where and approximate when. They all fitted into one box.

We discovered that no-one appears to digitize prints unless you send them away and we did not want to risk losing them. So in the end we bought an Epson flatbed scanner with the intention that I would do them myself.

After some playing we reach the situation where all that it is required is to place the photograph on the glass plate, close the lid, press one button once on the scanner and wait for the jpg file to appear on the computer where you want it with the name you want, and remove the print from the scanner.

There are of course issues with certain photographs.

The colour correction is turned on as it generally does a good job of putting a bit more life in faded prints. However there is a least one green sky in the collection and some indoor or strangely lit scenes get blue shifted.

Photos which in albums with a tacky adhesive occasionally adhere themselves to the neighbours but you can sort this pretty promptly if you're on the ball.

Then there is the odd photograph which rotates once on the glass plate. One can only surmise that these photographs contain some sort of magnet and are aligning themselves with North. Even if you turn the ceiling fan and air-conditioning off and hold your breath when you let go of this one, it turns to its preferred orientation. Eventually you are forced to hold in in place with a ruler, close the lid as far as possible and then deftly whip out the ruler quick as.

Another type are the ones that stick to the lid when you open it after digitization. The magic of the print not being there, the sliding noise as it moves down the now near vertical lid face, the thunk as it jams itself into the hinge and the lid manipulation to extract it. If you are really lucky one slips through entirely and then continues down the small gap between desk and wall.

But the most problematic of them all is the print which flattens itself perfectly on the plate and refuses to let go. Most prints will have a slight curve to them and will happily ride over the raised edge when you slide them off.

These guys hit the edge and stop. You can slide them around all day like ice-skaters on a rink but they will not leave. They refuse to let you get you finger nail under a corner as well.

Eventually you win and they are evicted but precious digitizing time is wasted.