Originally Posted by Overfocused Really, dual slots or not, the best practice is to always dump a copy of your card somewhere. To your PC, or a netbook you take with you and you can do it even while shooting. I take my small notebook to shoots and dump on site to its HDD. Or if you need something smaller, you can back up while in your pocket: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?srtclk=sort&ci=3369&Ns=p_OVER_ALL_RATE|1&N= 4138043893 For the prices of some of those portables, you can get a 10"-14" netbook/notebook with great battery life, USB3, a USB3 reader, 2-4TB HDD storage, and it will last for much more total data copied. And you can use photoshop and whatever else on them if you wanted. And encrypt the entire HDD in case it gets stolen. This is how geeks think, lol. Anyway, my notebook's battery lasts 8 hours doing general light computing so it can pretty much fill any entire drives' capacity in 1 charge. It probably can do 2,3,4 terabytes of transferring before drained but I don't even have 4tb between all of my computers combined so I can't test it :) And thanks for the reference to that guy for physical card problems in the future! That's a valuable resource and I'm happy you lost no photos :)

My first thought when reading your post was for the security of the gear. While your system is operationally sound, my concern would be that there are some people who would view this as a free tech gear buffet.

One of my primary's I shoot for had gear stolen right off the church pew!

Sam

Originally Posted by Sam My first thought when reading your post was for the security of the gear. While your system is operationally sound, my concern would be that there are some people who would view this as a free tech gear buffet. One of my primary's I shoot for had gear stolen right off the church pew! Sam

Yep, in my opinion the "best practice" is to keep your precious memory cards on your person AT ALL TIMES. Mine are tethered to my CF wallet, in my pocket, NOT in my camera bag that gets put down from time to time. (I also use a Spyder Holster, so "putting down" my camera isn't really an issue either. The camera is LOCKED to my body...)

I would also have great reservations about leaving a backup un-attended, but I'm sure that nobody is encouraging that. I'd absolutely rather go home safe with a single copy of my images, than leave a memory card out of my sight during the reception just so I can go home with two copies. Of course again I'm sure nobody is recommending leaving gear un-attended, just the good practice of backing up your data on-site.

=Matt=

So glad to hear you were able to get the images recovered, Angie. Losing a whole shoot due to a technical malfunction, or worse, operator error, is every photographer's worst nightmare.

The "eggs in one basket" issue isn't just one for the pros, either. I have harped on it with everyone I know, particularly all of the friends and acquaintances I advise on their Disney World vacations, for years. There are too many horror stories out there where folks have rather foolishly shot their entire week-long, once-in-a-lifetime vacation on a single 64gb SD card, only to find all their pics gone when the card fails, or the camera is lost, stolen, or takes a bath on Pirates of the Caribbean.

With a pro shooting a wedding, however, the issue is far more serious. Even those who split their pics onto multiple cards can find that they've lost some irreplaceable, unreproducible shots like the bouquet/garter throw or some spontaneous action if just one card fails. Not every pro uses a body with dual card slots, either.

Stories like this frighten me, however. They make me mighty glad that I'm just an amateur and don't earn my living as a photographer.

Originally Posted by Overfocused Really, dual slots or not, the best practice is to always dump a copy of your card somewhere. To your PC, or a netbook you take with you and you can do it even while shooting. I take my small notebook to shoots and dump on site to its HDD. Or if you need something smaller, you can back up while in your pocket: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search...1&N=4138043893 For the prices of some of those portables, you can get a 10"-14" netbook/notebook...

The one think really nice about the portable hard drives though is how you can slip them into an over-sized pocket and keep it with you at all times. Can't do that with a netbook. And I agree with the dual slots, if you are a serious wedding photographer and not using a dual-slot equipped camera and not making in-camera duplicates of your files, well....