Let's talk about digital pictures

[Bulldawg]

Since it is apparently illegal here to talk about anything other than the OP, I decided to start a thread about digital pictures.

I am a prolific photographer. I might take 8-10 pictures per mile if the views are there. I often return from overnighters with 100-200 pictures. I also take a lot of pictures of my kids and the things they do. Now, I don't want to print every single picture I take. Some I do like to have printed, others I just want to be able to use in slideshows, make desktops, screen savers, etc.

Now lots of people print all their photos to keep from losing them. But what I do is use two mirrored Terabyte servers. They are mirrors of each other and I have NO FEAR whatsoever of losing my pictures. Digital images don't degrade over time as many photos will. JPEG has been the industry standard for years and I don't see it changing without backward capability for those billions of JPEG files out here.

So, what do the rest of y'all do?

[greentick]

burn each hike's pics to CD and distribute to everyone on the hike. Then I have a few sources of backup. I dont take as many as you but still end up with a couple of hundred.

[Bulldawg]

Well, a previous poster on another thread suggested that CDs rot. Apparently at a rate much higher than a photo rots. I don't know. I used to burn photos to DVDs. But when you factor in the time, I still like the double backup method I have.

Does anyone know if CDs or DVDs really rot?

[taildragger]

I don't think rot is a good technical term, but like any source of memory, I assume that there is some corruption over time.

Personally, I like to keep my pictures in a raw format. I'll change the format to JPEG, or JPEG2000 when needed, until then, I'll keep it in an uncompressed form as long as I can in order to ensure full quality.

[Bulldawg]

I don't think rot is a good technical term, but like any source of memory, I assume that there is some corruption over time.

Personally, I like to keep my pictures in a raw format. I'll change the format to JPEG, or JPEG2000 when needed, until then, I'll keep it in an uncompressed form as long as I can in order to ensure full quality.


How much is quality affected by the JPEG compression? I forgot to mention I said JPEG, but is that the same as .jpg which is the format my camera currently uses?

[Thrasher]

I just have an external hard drive that I use with an automatic backup program for my computer. A RAID system like you described sounds good as well. If you want even more protection of your photos you may want to consider some kind of fire protection. You can get a safe that is fireproof for a few hours and you can keep a hard drive in it that is connected to your computer. Sentry has a waterproof/fireproof hard drive and they will try to recover your info for you, but the hard drive cost $400 and it's only 250gb. The other option I've though about would be having a hard drive that you backup your photos on every month or so and keep it at another location such as a family members home or maybe in a safety deposit box.

[Bulldawg]

I've thought a good bit about getting a 40-60gb hard drive every few months and storing them in a safe deposit box. Those things are so cheap nowadays, not a bad idea. I also thought about a tape drive and storing the tape in a safe deposit box also. I think they make some pretty damn big tapes now, but the drives are out of hand price wise!

[taildragger]

from wikipedia

Lossless editing

A number of alterations to a JPEG image can be performed losslessly (that is, without recompression and the associated quality loss) as long as the image size is a multiple 1 MCU block (Minimum Coded Unit) (usually 16 pixels in both directions, for 4:2:0).
Blocks can be rotated in 90 degree increments, flipped in the horizontal, vertical and diagonal axes and moved about in the image. Not all blocks from the original image need to be used in the modified one.
The top and left of a JPEG image must lie on a block boundary, but the bottom and right need not do so. This limits the possible lossless crop operations, and also what flips and rotates can be performed on an image whose edges do not lie on a block boundary for all channels.
When using lossless cropping, if the bottom or right side of the crop region is not on a block boundary then the rest of the data from the partially used blocks will still be present in the cropped file and can be recovered relatively easily by anyone with a hex editor and an understanding of the format.
It is also possible to transform between baseline and progressive formats without any loss of quality, since the only difference is the order in which the coefficients are placed in the file.


For most images, I cannot tell the difference, however, images that have a wide dynamic range and different textures of white, I can tell. I don't think that I have a random picture that I can tell on, but the ones that I setup the aperture, shutter speed, iso, etc...to take that perfect shot, those are the ones that I can see the difference.

[taildragger]

I think that a raid, or storing to a server at a separate location would be the best ideas. If you've got a techno-nerd friend, chip in some for a big hard drive on his comp, and get access to it so you can store photos from anywhere, and you can access them from anywhere.

[Thrasher]

I'd stay away from tape drives, they are too expensive and sequential access only instead of random access. For updating your photo collection I just don't think they'd be a good solution. Stick to the regular hard drive.

[Thrasher]

storing to a server at a separate location would be the best ideas. If you've got a techno-nerd friend, chip in some for a big hard drive on his comp, and get access to it so you can store photos from anywhere, and you can access them from anywhere.

I like that idea best.

[Spogatz]

I have 2 ea 2 TB external drives separate from my computer. I only shoot in RAW and keep 3 copies of all of my photos, one on the computer drive and 2 backups. If I have to burn them off the drives I make 3 copies of the DVD's. I've been burned before by not having good backups of my pics and it will not happen again if I can help it...

[Bulldawg]

I have 2 ea 2 TB external drives separate from my computer. I only shoot in RAW and keep 3 copies of all of my photos, one on the computer drive and 2 backups. If I have to burn them off the drives I make 3 copies of the DVD's. I've been burned before by not having good backups of my pics and it will not happen again if I can help it...

Basically the same set up I use, except I don't leave anything on my computer. It's just a 80GB laptop, not enough room. And as I said, I have over 50K pictures going back about 8 years.

[Ramble~On]

I make back up discs and keep originals on a 500 gb external.

[zoidfu]

I think that a raid, or storing to a server at a separate location would be the best ideas. If you've got a techno-nerd friend, chip in some for a big hard drive on his comp, and get access to it so you can store photos from anywhere, and you can access them from anywhere.

Just use photobucket.com- that's where all of mine are backed up

[Hoop Time]

Just use photobucket.com- that's where all of mine are backed up

That is fine for sharing, but not for backup. If photobucket.com goes belly up, you're screwed. Web sites have never been the most dependable, stable businesses and in this economy, there is even more reason to be concerned.

[ofthearth]

Was going to quote a couple of things and ask some questions and ended up quoting just about the whole thread. Great topic!!!!!!

Does not seem to be a bad idea to start a new thread as then people know if they want to open the thing up and check it out.


Since it is apparently illegal here to talk about anything other than the OP, I decided to start a thread about digital pictures. So, what do the rest of y'all do?

I was going to mention what TJBaker(Radar) does. I think he carries enough storage with him so he can show pics when he is on the trail. I also think he up loads to SmugMug (?) along the way as backup and so others can view he material on the web. I thought that was a great buckup plan but as someone pointed out there are problems with that as a sole backup.


burn each hike's pics to CD and distribute to everyone on the hike.

Great idea! I wonder if posting them to the web would not accomplish a number of the goals/problems discussed here. (backup-other people would have access-less work for you). Just thinking out loud here and looking for input to see if I've over looked something (not unusual :rolleyes:). I've been trying to figure out how to do a photo journal as writing is not a strong point. Can't read my own writing, keeping up with pen paper. Keeping it dry etc. Has anybody used the sound/record function on their camera to keep up with names and locations? Problems??????


I don't think rot is a good technical term, but like any source of memory, I assume that there is some corruption over time.

I think Bulldawg's friend :eek: used the term rot and while I agree rot is a not good technical term what the person was trying to convey is a problem. Another problem I run into is trying to keep software/hardware up to date. Had thought the web got around this problem but..................


ofthearth/chair