Unable to text 1940/1950's era photos? Won't download. Help?
December 17, 2019 7:18 PM   Subscribe

I have an iPhone 5. I can easily transmit photos I have taken to others. However I have some old B&W family photos circa 1945/1955 that I have photographed onto my phone. I am unable to share them with others via text. On the receiving end, the icon swirls around and the receiving phones say the photos are "downloading" but... nothing happens and nothing is received. What could the problem be? Is there an incompatibility? Something I need to do? Thanks for suggestions.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff to Technology (13 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Could be the images are in an incompatible format (tiff? bmp?) or the files are too big.
posted by zadcat at 7:34 PM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: zadcat I am not savvy enuf to figure out the formatting -- I just took a photo of the original photo.

I did also take a screenshot of the existing photo that I now have on my phone, and sent that; but, the recipient got the same infinite "downloading" icon.

In addition these B&Ws have held up pretty well, so I don't think it's any sepia or red tones.

As for size, I wonder if these would do better as email attachments?
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 7:52 PM on December 17, 2019


You used your phone to take pictures of these old photos? If you did that, the images on your phone would be no different from any other pictures you've taken with your phone. It doesn't matter if they are pictures of old photographs or pictures of the sunset or whatever.

If you didn't take pictures of the photos, it would be helpful to know how you got them onto your phone.

It would also be helpful to know whether more than one person has had trouble receiving texts of these photos. If it's just one person, maybe that person just needs to restart their phone.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:53 PM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


The iPhone mysteriously and without asking you uses iMessage for some recipients and MMS for others. Additionally, on some carriers (many of the prepaid/cheap ones) MMS on iPhones is just broken.

At the very best, when MMS works, the maximum image size/resolution is pretty low.

If this mess is involved, you could send to some recipients and not others.

An Email attachment will probably work, but some people have pretty low file size limitations in their Email too.
posted by fritley at 8:24 PM on December 17, 2019


Response by poster: I don't mean to threadsit, but to answer the question:
--yes, I used my phone to photograph the old photos
--I sent the photos to several people, android and iPhone users, and they all got the spinning icon and the "downloading" message but no photos
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 8:27 PM on December 17, 2019


Can you send any other photos right now? What about sending them via email or another app? I sometimes have problems with my iPhone sending any photos via text at all, even though other text messages go through and my data is working fine.
posted by brook horse at 8:47 PM on December 17, 2019


I’ve had trouble lately because my phone now tries to send groups of pictures as an iCloud link which rarely works. There’s a way to change it in options, but try texting the pictures one at a time and see if that works. I have an iPhone 6s and if I go to pictures and select a bunch to send, a thing pops down from the top with “options” and in there you can choose individual pictures or iCloud.
posted by artychoke at 9:38 PM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yeah, this doesn't really make sense. If you take a picture of your dog and you take a picture of a picture of your dog, both photos will have the same properties as far as resolution and file format and such.

I'm guessing there's an issue with your camera. Have you sent a photo you've taken after you took the photos of photos? If you did, and those were received fine, I would be baffled. However, if you take a photo of a non-photo right now and try and send it to one of those same people, I'm guessing they'd get the spinning wheel and therefore there is something wrong with your camera (or some other part of your phone).

Try rebooting and re-sending those photos and if that doesn't work, reboot, retake, and resend. If that still doesn't work, take another photo of a non-photo and send. If that works, I'll eat my hat.
posted by dobbs at 3:49 AM on December 18, 2019


Best answer: You should have the option to email them
posted by theora55 at 4:58 AM on December 18, 2019


Best answer: I’m going to guess that if you take a selfie and try texting it to those people it won’t work either. Email the photos and choose the full resolution. Apple has not yet hosed up how they deal with emailed photos (full disclosure: I haven’t “upgraded” to ios 13 yet so they may have broken it there). Good luck—old photos are a treasure, since they were not the ubiquitous curse/blessing they are today.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:17 AM on December 18, 2019


Response by poster: Okay, so here's the deal. I don't take selfies. I did not reboot . What I did do is send the photos again via email last night. The person with the iPhone got the photos no problem. I haven't heard back from the android user, but I suspect all will be well. iPhones, sheesh!

These photos are treasures! My brother and me on Santa's lap, circa 1956? And I am pulling away, and Santa and I are staring each other down! Lol

Thanks for the possible reasons and the help!
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 7:50 AM on December 18, 2019


Response by poster: Android email received photos. Still don't know why they wouldn't transmit via text, just one of those tech mysteries.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 9:27 AM on December 18, 2019


Glad you got email to work.

As fritley mentioned, sending media from an iPhone to a mixture of iPhones and Android phones goes through MMS and the behavior can be inconsistent. This isn't good, but it's not that surprising unfortunately.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 12:57 PM on December 19, 2019


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