File storage?

pahl · February 5, 2007

I have been using .jpg files on my camera because it was easy and RAW did not let me get as many photos on a SD card.

I have been playing around a bit with RAW and like what I see so far.
I am going to start shooting the basketball games all in RAW.
The trouble is memory.

I have three 1 gig SD cards.
With jpg files I can get 300+ photos on a card.

The weekend basketball tournament are 2 or 3 games. This has been working out great with my memory cards as I just about have one full at the end of the game. Then I switch cards for the start of another game.

Shooting RAW I am only going to get around 90 photos on my little 1 gig card. I will fill up all three of my little 1 gig cards with just one game.

Other then buying more or bigger memory cards what options do I have?

Sometime I only have 10 minutes between games.

I have been looking at thing like the 40 GB PhotoBank USB Digital Image Storage Device. How good do these work? How fast do they work?

Guess I have the option of bring the laptop and dumping the memory cards too.

What is everyone else doing when shooting a lot of photos in one day?

Once I have the RAW files on the PC I am going to run into storage problem on the desktop/laptop too. My pentax software lets me extract the jpg files with the RAW files. One basketball game file is going to have the RAW/jpg files, the converted tiff files and the files I save as crops.

My plan is to get a very large hard drive and/or burn each game file to a dvd.

I can see were the RAW file is going to give me so much more to work with, but man they are going to take up a lot of space and I only have a 6 meg pix camera.

cmason · February 5, 2007

1GB cards are so cheap now, having a handful is easy. Even 2GB cards are running $30-$50 now.

I have 3 1GB cards as well, and I shoot RAW only. If I shoot two cards worth, I typically switch to JPEG on the third, with the thought that JPEG is better than nothing at all. I also have a laptop, so for situations where I will be shooting longer that 3 cards, and where power or my car is convenient, I bring the laptop and dump photos to it.

ian408 · February 6, 2007

Get a couple of extra memory cards. I usually shoot with 2G cards. You can
chimp in the field too (deleting the junk). Another alternative is to be more
selective about when you snap--this is the least desirable though.

claudermilk · February 6, 2007

A photobank device would be a good option. Limits the number of cards to juggle. The thing to keep in mind is they are not all created equal, some are better than others. There's two main varieties: those with a screen and those without. I have the PD70X which falls into the second group: no screen, but it's still one of the fastest, most reliable ones available. The other I'd look at in that group woult be the Nexto. The main advantage of these two is very fast transfer rates and good battery life. In the second group, it seems the Epsons are still the best out there (I am unaware of any others & am not counting Canon's new one as they are ignoring their biggest market & AFAIK it's still not on the shelves yet).

I frequently shoot dance concerts and can fill my 1GB card in one piece (3-5 minutes); I rotate my three cards between camera, downloading on the PD70X, and spare. I've had great success using this method for many shows, and a weekend event (three 14-hour days solid shooting :wow:crazy). No time for chimping, just shoot, dump, reload, repeat.

allensfoto · February 6, 2007

I am looking forward to somemore answers as well i would like to hear what is out there and who thinks what works best... i do the three 1gig card juggle my self ..

claudermilk · February 7, 2007

You mean I wasn't obvious enough?

IMHO the PD70X is one of the best solutions available. It does exactly what I need it to and is rock-solid. I forgot to mention it uses standard AA batteries, so getting spares is easy, is cheaper than the proprietary ones, and is much more convenient than the embedded ones you cannot swap in the field.

pahl · February 7, 2007

claudermilk wrote:

You mean I wasn't obvious enough?

IMHO the PD70X is one of the best solutions available. It does exactly what I need it to and is rock-solid. I forgot to mention it uses standard AA batteries, so getting spares is easy, is cheaper than the proprietary ones, and is much more convenient than the embedded ones you cannot swap in the field.

Sounds good to me. I have done searchs for PD70X and can not seem to come up with anything. Could you please give me a link to were I buy one.

Thanks for the replies...

Art Scott · February 7, 2007

Personally I would opt for more memory cards...they are cheap and a lot lighter and take up less room than a portable disk drive of any sort.
Never have used anything smaller than my 2gb lexars and they were way too small at times now I have 2 8gb cards and the last one cost me only $115 + $5 s/h from New Egg....if you are using one camera then just number the cards and shoot them in proper rotation or just rely on your cameras numbering system to keep in order...
Remember if you drop a SD card it will still work....if that portable drive hits the concrete...well it could be dead in the water and everything you saved to it also....

just my 'umble opinon.

Jeffro · February 7, 2007

It's all about cost vs reward (profit) to me. Ask yourself this, do you need to keep the RAW file (I'm talking event photo shoots here) after you have processed it? RAW is really good, especially for tough lighting and such, but once you have the finished jpeg loaded to smugmug it's really not neccessary to keep the RAW or the jpeg. You can always get the jpeg back from smug. You are already paying for storage...right?

I don't like to spend too much on "over head" for event shoots. The less time I spend, the fewer pics I have to sell to make a profit. Spending a fortune on storage devices is not cost effective to me. I keep last season's photos on my hardrive, but I don't need to keep every season.

JESTER · February 7, 2007

I agree totally with Art. Just carry a few more cards and number them. Shoot them in order and download in the same order. I do it all the time. They aren't that expensive anymore if you look around.

claudermilk · February 8, 2007

Huh, looks like they've completely discontinued it now--the places I've always referred people to have both removed it (eastgear and hyperdrive). Looks like just the new Space model is available (http://www.hypershop.com/shop/index.php)--I'd check on current reviews of that as there were some teething problems reported over at FM a few months ago when it first hit the shelves.

So, my next suggestion would be look for the Nexto as that is supposed to be a very good alternative.

As far as cost/space ratio: Nexto OTG 40GB is listed at about $166 (at eastgear.com) vs say the cheapest 2GB CF at newegg (Transcend at $20 each) for about $400. If I stick with a card I trust, SanDisk Ultra II @ $37.99 each, that's $760. Plus I have a stack of 20 cards to juggle. You decide.

An anecdotal story comparing the imagebucket device + 3 cards vs a big ol' stack of cards: Shooting a dance event (I keep going back to this event...) I had no trouble keeping where I was straight, my shooting buddy was juggling something like two dozen cards of varying sizes all day and ended up a) using a lot ot table space to keep them straight, and b) got them mixed up anyway, nearly losing a couple card's worth if images by putting them in the "done" pile instead of the "to burn" pile (he also had 3 of those portable DVD burners & some assistants running them).

Hmm, looking more to make it more uneven, the Nexto Ultra 160GB is $320 at eastgear--that's 80 2GB CF cards (so $1600 or $3039 from the above quotes!). Bumping to 8GB CF cards doesn't help (20 Transcends at $89 or $1800).

So, from what I see to get equal storage space in the field if you go with the pile o' CF cards you will spend a fortune in comparison with an imagebucket device. Even the more expensive Epson looks like a deal here. That doesn't even get into how to carry them around (1 moderate-sized box vs numeroud little boxes). I dunno, seems like a no-brainer to me.

wmstumme · February 10, 2007

Cheap File Server

pahl wrote:

...Once I have the RAW files on the PC I am going to run into storage problem on the desktop/laptop too. My pentax software lets me extract the jpg files with the RAW files. One basketball game file is going to have the RAW/jpg files, the converted tiff files and the files I save as crops.

My plan is to get a very large hard drive and/or burn each game file to a dvd...

Not sure if this is right on point, but...

I'm doing all this on a pretty tight budget (okay--I'm cheap). But my computer is also on the low end--so I don't have much storage space on it--but I still like to have access to all the photos (even if I don't access them all that often) and I just never seem to get around to cutting CDs or DVDs.

So, I ran across a program by a guy on the site www.serverelements.com that uses a cut down version of linux that will turn an old PC into a file server. Basically you create a boot disk with this program, and it creates a file server that is accessible to any other computer on your home network. I'm using a very old first generation pentium with about 48 megs of RAM to host this. With Hard drive prices so low--for less than a $100 bucks you can get sometimes around 250 gig--you can have a ton of storage and be accessible from several computers.

There are several versions on that site, but I just use the free one (NASLITE) and haven't had anyproblems in the more the a year that I've had it. It lets me clean my photos off my normal PC once I'm done messing arround with them. With images being several meg in size each, it doesn't take much to fill up some serious space...

Just something to think about.

Will

cletus · February 10, 2007

wmstumme wrote:

So, I ran across a program by a guy on the site www.serverelements.com that uses a cut down version of linux that will turn an old PC into a file server. Basically you create a boot disk with this program, and it creates a file server that is accessible to any other computer on your home network. I'm using a very old first generation pentium with about 48 megs of RAM to host this. With Hard drive prices so low--for less than a $100 bucks you can get sometimes around 250 gig--you can have a ton of storage and be accessible from several computers.

You might also want to look at FreeNAS. Same idea, but based on FreeBSD.

rosselliot · February 10, 2007

I'm going to europe over spring break, and I'm gonna get the Epson 3000 or 5000 I haven't decided which one, and I think that would be great, it's a ton of storage and you get instant gratification on that great screen! you might just look into it...

- RE

AlpineMan · February 10, 2007

I can also vouch for the PD70X. I bought mine used in ebay. Very fast backup device. This is also called the Hyperdrive HD80 here in the states. But it looks like it's been replaced by the Hyperdrive Space. The Space should be as good as the HD80, if not better.

Glenn NK · February 12, 2007

I've spent some time in four photo forums, and the consensus seems to be is that 2GB cards are a nice balance of price, capacity, and safety.

Safety is a key factor - one poor guy was using an 8GB card, and it corrupted when nearly full - that's a lot of photos to lose, even if they are RAW.

Treven · February 14, 2007

I have a 2-gig Hitachi microdrive for my Sony 828. I'm finding that I can fill up the card, in half a day, shooting raw. I'm planning on getting a 3-gig Hitachi microdrive before going to Costa Rica this fall.

ivar · February 14, 2007

Treven wrote:

I have a 2-gig Hitachi microdrive for my Sony 828. I'm finding that I can fill up the card, in half a day, shooting raw. I'm planning on getting a 3-gig Hitachi microdrive before going to Costa Rica this fall.

Any particular reason you prefer the microdrives over solid state memory? just wondering...

File storage?

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