Saving/Backing Up Your Images While Traveling
Hi,
I am currently into month #4 of a seven month trip to South America including Antarctica. Prior to departure there were many discussions here and on other forums instituted by me regarding the amount of media to carry, the amount of backup storage to carry, and procedures to follow so that at the end of the day you brought home that which you created.
The media I carried was as follows: 5 x 16gb Sandisk 45s cards, 4 x 500gb Toshiba hard drives ($100+ each from Amazon), 500gb Sanho Colorspace - never used, and my computer.
My average day shooting was 1500-2000 images; some days when we stayed ashore and skipped lunch (you cannot take any food ashore in Antarctica) I shot as many as 3000 images in one day. Of course, since I was attempting lots of BIF shots at 8fps, I actually used all five cards on one day. Otherwise, I generally used 3 - 4 cards. I always had the Sanho with me if I needed a sixth card I could create it by dumping a card into the Sanho - never happened.
I had two backup/workflow procedures depending upon the time involved.
#1 - "no time until nighttime": I returned to the ship either at lunch or at dinner and the first thing was to copy the card to my computer into my "Original RAW Capture" folder with a subfolder for that day. All of the images transferred at lunch were then copied into an "Original RAW Capture" folder on one of the external harddrives; I started the backup copy process while I was getting ready to go ashore for the afternoon. Therefore, when I went ashore I knew I had two copies of the morning CR2 images - one in my computer and one on an external; the cards were formatted for the afternoon.
When I returned at the end of the day I again followed the described process so that when completed I now had two folders with 2000+ CR2 images.
BTW, copying was generally done in Breeeze Browser Pro. I would open the card to quickly check that the card in fact contained 5 - 600 images and then I would do a copy from the card to the appropriate folder. I also used BB to copy from the computer folder to the external folder.
So, now I have 2000+ images in my computer folder.
Using BB as described by Artie I triaged the images and almost always without intending it to be so had approximately 20% of what I shot as first generation keepers; sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more. I have 4500 images from the Cheeseman trip for the second round of triage.
After a daily triage I am left with several hundred CR2 images.
I have designated one of my external hard drives for my Lightroom catalogs. Using Adobe converter I convert all of the first round keepers from CR2 to DNG (there are already several threads regarding to convert or not to convert - I convert - enough said!). Additionally I make a second and third copy of the DNGs to separate external hard drives.
Once I have three copies of the DNGs I then delete all of the CR2s on my computer and the temporary external backup. Possibly excessive to have two unused backups; I am simply being overcautious.
The second triage will be done in Lightroom where I can have a quick play with the images to determine keepers for serious processing. Hopefully 4500 will be come 1000 or less.
#2 - "traige now": Using BB I view the contents of the card and tag the keepers. I then copy the keepers only from the card into my original raw folder on the computer - this avoids copying the whole card and then deleting 80% of what you copied; of course I verify that the copy is complete before removing the card. I then follow the procedure described above for conversion and backups. Only after I have the LR DNG copy and one backup of the DNGs do I format the cards.
For the entire trip thus far, 24 October to the present, I have 6000 first round images.
As an aside to this discussion:
The 26-day trip to Antarctica including several days in the Falklands, South Georgias, the Orkneys, and of course the Antarctic Penninsula. The adventure was organized by Cheeseman's; it was a trip of a lifetime; and if you have the time and wherewithall it is simply an unbelievable way to participate in an amazing adventure. There were experts in all of the important categories - photography, ecology, biology, avian etc - and the super expert for several of the categories was and is Rod Planck. Rod has been a Cheeseman's expert photographer for the past 15 years and I am sure he will be on the next Antarctic adventure in two years. Several of the couples on our trip were on either their second or even their third trip to Antarctic with the Cheeman Group.
My gear included the 5D2 and the 7D, 300 f/2.8 + 1.4 and 2.0 extenders, 70 - 200 f/4, and he 24-105 f/4; both bodies performed without any problems the entire trip. As an aside, every night when we returned to the ship I laid out all of my equipment on a towel. The lenses were removed and the cameras were opened and placed face down with the card and battery compartments open so that the warm air was able to enter the various openenings. The coldest we ever encountered was 5 below for a day ashore and Rod beleived that the "plastic bag" approach really wasn't necessary until the temps were in the 15-20 below category.
For the tripod enthusiastists, I must admit I am not one who enjoys being tied to a tripod, when I did use the tripod with the Sidekick it too performed flawlessly.
Hope this helps some of you! :D
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Originally Posted by Jay Gould
