Any photographers with crowded computers, ipads or other tablets had experience of using any photo sticks in particular the ones with both usb and ipad connection. I’m looking to download a large number of photos to free up memory on ipad to enable update.
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Are you referring to this sort of thing:Originally posted by cloughie View Post
If so, I wonder how rugged they might be. They certainly look to be somewhat overpriced for what they offer. Why bot just use one of thiese when needing to connect to a lightning connector?
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Interesting question. This page might help - a bit - https://top10photosticks.com/gb?gcli...xoCE1kQAvD_BwE
Looks as though there are a variety of different device types. If some are copying from memory - such as SDHC cards, they presumably need power. Some look as though they plug into device ports - USB - lightning etc., so could get power from those, while oddly one which looks as if it is iPad compatible announces that it's incompatible with iPad Pros!
So now I know a bit more, but I can also see a few snags.
I generally just use large memory cards anyway, though I guess if some of these have more storage they might serve a useful purpose. However, I have had failures with memory cards - in particular some large ones - so I would be wary of putting a lifetime's worth (or even a week's holiday's worth) onto a large backup stick. It might be better to just use more small memory cards, and then upload the data to more permanent storage when you get home.
Until recently I never re-used camera cards, as I have considered them cheap enough. It amazed me that other people were re-using these over and over, and one friend did this so often that eventually his memory card failed and he lost a whole bunch of photos he'd really wanted. However, my newest camera - like several of the others - can take RAW+JPEG - and that just really eats up the memory space. I think this is now pushing me to the point where I'll actually delete most or all of the RAW files unless I'm sure that the photos are really worth keeping or tweaking. For example a 256 (approx - actually 240) Gbyte SSD from Integral typically costs about £30 (from MyMemory) - see https://www.mymemory.co.uk/integral-...BoC2NEQAvD_BwE and can be put in an enclosure for around £6-£8. Total under £40.
Then re the memory cards - currently 64 Gbyte cards cost around £18 - see https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext...0480254&sr=8-5 or
sometimes cheaper - see https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B012PL86...NsaWNrPXRydWU= - as low as £10. So do the maths - there isn't too much to choose at the moment - but it does depend on the speed of the memory card (some video cameras and high res cameras with video will need fast cards). Bigger and faster cards are likely to be more expensive, such as this 512 Gbyte card - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B012PLFD...NrPXRydWU&th=1 nearly £90 and obviously that wouldn't copy over to a 240 Gbyte SSD.
Remember also that if one uses really big cards, if anything fails, you'll lose a lot of photos or videos. That applies whether you use large memory cards or those backup photo sticks.
I'm not totally rejecting HDDs - hard drives - typically a 1 Tbyte drive might cost around £40-£50 and a 2 Tbyte drive could be between £50 - £70 - though these are best left at home. Dropping one of those (yes - I've effectively done that ....) will wipe out a lot of data very quickly.
My approach of using a lot of memory cards does lead to another problem though - sometimes finding photos can be hard if they're not backed up onto a connected drive - but generally that's not such a big deal.
It's probably a good idea to format each memory card before use and give it a name - such as Africa-21 or Canon-19 otherwise one has a lot of cards called No Name.
Currently I'm looking for a video of a train I took a few years ago ....
It'll turn up....Comment
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Though now tempting fate I've used the same memory card for my document photos from archives for last 5 years - a miserable 20000+ photos so guess I'm no where near a heavy userComment
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OK - but where do you back them up to?Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
My latest RAW files are running at around 25Mbytes each, and even the JPEGs are of the order of 4-7Mbytes. In the past I used to get some quite decent photos with under 1 Mbyte for each photo. OK - even at 25 Mbytes per photo those would just about fit onto a 500 Gbyte drive.
I'm not going to encourage you to tempt fate - maybe you should buy at least one more memory card. They don't last forever I believe, though I'm unaware of having problems with mine.
A slightly different way to lose photos - and memory cards - have your camera stolen. Someone I know had a (presumably quite expensive camera) and went on holiday. Came back with a lot of photos, but they were all taken on a mobile phone as the camera she had taken with her was "mislaid" - probably stolen - on a bus somewhere in her holiday location.
Whereas I have bought several "relatively" cheap cameras (still over £100) so that if they were stolen I wouldn't worry too much about that - and whilst we may have other problems on holiday, losing a camera has so far not been one of them.Comment
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onto my laptop when I get home then just prior to next visit I format the memory card - the laptop is backed up at irregular intervals - in days when I commuted between UK and IoM copied to my Manx system on arrival or vice-versa.
14Mpixel cameras are less than £40 second hand and perfectly acceptable to A4 sized docs - if good typescript tesseract can give near perfect OCR (tho such documents are unfortunately rare in my research (except occasionally for WW1 internment) generally 18th C hand for which I'd love to find an OCR system - I always carry two cameras with me on visits to archives so have a spare mem card in the spare cameraComment
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Not quite the same problem, but maybe relevant - the difference between the maximum size and a reasonable minimum size for (essentially) the same data. Keeping all the data on a camera card in both RAW and JPEG formats may be completely unnecessary - though only the end user can really decide that.
I recently produced a video based on my experiences with a software package. As recorded - from a screen capture - I think it was quite large. After considerable processing - using video tools - such as Final Cut Pro X a file over 60 Gbytes (!!) was produced. This was then compressed down to enable a copy to be sent over the internet. That reduced the file size considerably, though it was still large enough to present problems. Finally I compressed it using Handbrake - which often compresses video files to a very acceptable quality level, but does so more effectively IMO than Apple's own software, and the eventual file size was slightly over 20 Mbytes - 22 Mbytes I recall.
Yes - the video version was slightly higher quality than the final result, but not a great deal. The ratio of the max size to the final size of the data was about 2800:1 IIRC. If all the intermediate data had been kept a considerable amount of storage would have been wasted. This was not a blockbuster film - but a 5 minute video.
It's not always totally unreasonable to keep intermediate data. In the case of video that may assist with future edits - but there really isn't any need to keep huge amounts of data which doesn't serve any useful purpose, or add much extra quality.Comment
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Would Cloud storage be an option? Less likely to get mislaid or lost and free (I think) or at least 'given' with Amazon Prime - other Clouds are available.Originally posted by cloughie View PostComment
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Depends. I have known data to become irretrievable with some cloud systems.Originally posted by gradus View Post
I'm still considering Clouds. Normally I avoid them like the plague. To me they present an obvious privacy/security leak. However I'm now wondering whether they do in fact have a use. If I were prepared to send a photo through email, or post it on a web site then I would be slightly less concerned, and that might have a benefit that it would allow the same photo to be accessed on many different devices.
I'm really keen to avoid any software which "looks after me" by copying data up to an external site - and maybe back again - when I have no idea when it is going to do that or which data is being transferred. Other people are less cautious, but that doesn't make me wrong.
Also I'd want to be sure that any file transferred and stored was returned back to me in an identical form to the original - not slightly modified (resized) or compressed and decompressed with a lossy storage algorithm.
As an extra safeguard for backup copies I might consider that, but I'm still not sure I'd do it if that meant losing the original copy.Comment
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