DIGITAL CORNER
By Bob Dean
Data Management
Data management is the industry buzz word for how you handle the images you have in digital format. Data management starts with selection of memory card size and goes all the way through the file structure and the back up process you develop. These decisions are really driven by the type of shooting you do. Consider the following notes and decide what fits your needs.
1) Select a memory card size that meets your needs. I personally feel that either 1 or 4 GB is a good size. These hold up to a few hundred images in RAW format. Anything bigger could mean that your entire two week trip is on one card and could be lost or damaged. Anything smaller means you have a lot of cards that may get lost.
2) If you’re on a long trip using more that one or two cards, once you fill a card you have the choice of transferring it to a laptop or other portable device OR carrying enough memory cards so you can bring home your images on the cards. These cards are very rugged and immune to things like airport x-ray machines. Prices are dropping so this is much more of a realistic approach than it was just 2 years ago. As with any decision the “pros” have a variety of opinions. Some just use the cards; others make two or three copies on DVDs or other more permanent memory devices. I like just using memory cards.
3) Once you do get home, you really do need to consider your storage plan. A key decision is back up. Backing up data can be summarized in two words “DO IT”. Computer hard drives are electro-mechanical devices that will fail – some day. Now the question is what is the right way to back up data?
4) A starting point is to do a quick edit of your images as we discussed last month. Then with your RAW images edited to remove the true discards, store them in a file on your hard drive in the most compact manner you can. I like to do this by trip. Then I copy that entire file to a high quality write once DVD, not a rewritable one, they are much less archival. Make two copies if you’d like. Blank DVDs are cheap and two copies provide good insurance. Keep the two in separate places if the images are really special. Then you can rearrange your files on the hard drive. This is where a good batch processing program (like Lightroom ™) can be helpful. You can annotate each image with the DVD identifier in one step.
5) Now once you have started to do your image processing with Photoshop, you can also make copies on other DVD’s of the resultant jpeg or psd files. That’s up to you, but you’ll have your original RAW images on a fairly archival media. Do remember however that DVD’s are not permanent like old Kodachrome™ slides. They tend to deteriorate so it’s a good idea to rewrite new ones every few years.