If you use memory cards like film...how do you store / organize them?

[manaheim]

Do you mean just filling up a memory card and not deleting the shots after transferring to a computer? Just keeping it and starting fresh again? I can't see any good reason to do that.

My wife likes to keep photos on her cards, "So she can show people the shots" when she has her camera with her. I've tried to explain that she is wasting space and she can show anyone anything she has if she would just put them on her facebook or flickr and use her phone. It's like talking to a wall.

Lol!!! I've talked to people like this and "talking to a wall" is EXACTLY what it's like.

To op... This approach makes neither technical or financial sense. If there's a good argument for it, I'd love to hear it because I certainly can't think of one.

 

[LouR]

Let's see... For about the same price, and taking into account the throughput speeds I want, I can get either a 32 GB CF Card or a 1 TB Hard Drive.

Soooooo, the card is more cost-efficient than the hard drive, um... how

Plus, who needs backups, right? Just keep everything on one device and hope for the best! That's the way the REAL PROs do it! :er:

And for the files that get edited / processed on the computer, no folders or organization is used? Assuming that's not true and that they do indeed get made and used (which takes all of what - a freaking 5-10 seconds?), how does the CF card-archiver save time on that aspect again, especially compared to the time it takes marking and organizing and storing the CF cards so they can be dealt with in the future?

To each his own, but that all sounds pretty lame-excuse-bullschitt-stupid to me, like something a total noob or clueless luddite would do - no offense intended to those who choose to, of course. After all, it's no skin off my nose how they do things.

I just gotta say though (because I'm an opinionated old fart who just says what he thinks, and you're welcome), to me it's like watching someone dig a ditch with a spoon clenched in their teeth while making up reasons why that's better, less effort and less costly than the production methods commonly used by pretty much anyone who's armed with even a minor clue and a freaking shovel.

Sure, no offense as you insult people you don't know, have no clue how long they've been doing their own business or anything else simply because YOU don't like their methods. You know what you can do with your "opinion".
No one said a thing about not being backed up, no one said a thing about cost and if you can edit down a shoot in 5 seconds, welcome to the forums, Flash...
Actually, as for cost, I have two dead externals filled with images I can't get to-that cost me over $200. My newest 1 TB cost me $110, I get 4gb cards on sale for $13 or so.
"To each his own, but"...methinks that first letter of your name is wrong...

 

[gsgary]

I am one of those rare people who fills the cards and stores them.
I just write on them with a Sharpie and keep them in plastic containers from Office Depot. Lately it seems they don't come in their own protector.

Why

 

[LouR]

I am one of those rare people who fills the cards and stores them.
I just write on them with a Sharpie and keep them in plastic containers from Office Depot. Lately it seems they don't come in their own protector.

Why

you too.

 

[Kolia]

I just looked at the price of SD cards to see if my cost calculation made sense when I selected to store on HDD.

A 16GB SDHC class 10 card (Sandisk UHS-1) is 23$

That is more than 1$ per GB. I paid 189$ for my 3TB media HDD plus about 200$ for a 3TB external drive for backup.

A 3TB stack of SD cards would cost over 4,000$...

More than all my photo equipment. It almost covers the price of my PC also !

 

[Buckster]

Let's see... For about the same price, and taking into account the throughput speeds I want, I can get either a 32 GB CF Card or a 1 TB Hard Drive.

Soooooo, the card is more cost-efficient than the hard drive, um... how

Plus, who needs backups, right? Just keep everything on one device and hope for the best! That's the way the REAL PROs do it! :er:

And for the files that get edited / processed on the computer, no folders or organization is used? Assuming that's not true and that they do indeed get made and used (which takes all of what - a freaking 5-10 seconds?), how does the CF card-archiver save time on that aspect again, especially compared to the time it takes marking and organizing and storing the CF cards so they can be dealt with in the future?

To each his own, but that all sounds pretty lame-excuse-bullschitt-stupid to me, like something a total noob or clueless luddite would do - no offense intended to those who choose to, of course. After all, it's no skin off my nose how they do things.

I just gotta say though (because I'm an opinionated old fart who just says what he thinks, and you're welcome), to me it's like watching someone dig a ditch with a spoon clenched in their teeth while making up reasons why that's better, less effort and less costly than the production methods commonly used by pretty much anyone who's armed with even a minor clue and a freaking shovel.

Sure, no offense as you insult people you don't know, have no clue how long they've been doing their own business or anything else simply because YOU don't like their methods. You know what you can do with your "opinion".
No one said a thing about not being backed up, no one said a thing about cost and if you can edit down a shoot in 5 seconds, welcome to the forums, Flash...
Actually, as for cost, I have two dead externals filled with images I can't get to-that cost me over $200. My newest 1 TB cost me $110, I get 4gb cards on sale for $13 or so.
"To each his own, but"...methinks that first letter of your name is wrong...

Mama always said... Clueless is as clueless does.

 

[LouR]

Let's see... For about the same price, and taking into account the throughput speeds I want, I can get either a 32 GB CF Card or a 1 TB Hard Drive.

Soooooo, the card is more cost-efficient than the hard drive, um... how

Plus, who needs backups, right? Just keep everything on one device and hope for the best! That's the way the REAL PROs do it! :er:

And for the files that get edited / processed on the computer, no folders or organization is used? Assuming that's not true and that they do indeed get made and used (which takes all of what - a freaking 5-10 seconds?), how does the CF card-archiver save time on that aspect again, especially compared to the time it takes marking and organizing and storing the CF cards so they can be dealt with in the future?

To each his own, but that all sounds pretty lame-excuse-bullschitt-stupid to me, like something a total noob or clueless luddite would do - no offense intended to those who choose to, of course. After all, it's no skin off my nose how they do things.

I just gotta say though (because I'm an opinionated old fart who just says what he thinks, and you're welcome), to me it's like watching someone dig a ditch with a spoon clenched in their teeth while making up reasons why that's better, less effort and less costly than the production methods commonly used by pretty much anyone who's armed with even a minor clue and a freaking shovel.

Sure, no offense as you insult people you don't know, have no clue how long they've been doing their own business or anything else simply because YOU don't like their methods. You know what you can do with your "opinion".
No one said a thing about not being backed up, no one said a thing about cost and if you can edit down a shoot in 5 seconds, welcome to the forums, Flash...
Actually, as for cost, I have two dead externals filled with images I can't get to-that cost me over $200. My newest 1 TB cost me $110, I get 4gb cards on sale for $13 or so.
"To each his own, but"...methinks that first letter of your name is wrong...

Mama always said... Clueless is as clueless does.

Ah, a Mama's boy.
Look, pal, I could not care less how you do your own work, but you are getting on my last nerve with your pompous and ignorant attitude and insults about how I do mine. Guess Mama failed to tell you how to talk to people.

To the OP: Depending on what and how you shoot should determine how you store or save work. I would not recommend keeping every card if you shoot portraits or weddings; dedicate a good hard drive to each. If you shoot just for fun or, if like me, you do fine art manipulations and rarely shoot 200 pix a day, maybe keeping the cards would do fine. Ignore these self-important blowhards and do what suits your own situation best.
@ Kolia: I use 4g or 8g and never pay full price. Someone always has them on sale for less than $15. Factoring in all the externals I've blown through, not to mention a $400 CPU that failed to reach its destination for repairs, I'm probably still ahead a few bucks and don't have a gazillion DVD's to go through.
I've been doing it this way since UPS lost that CPU and I'm fine with it. I don't come to y'all's house and tell you how to spend. Either answer the boy's questions or find someone else to belittle.

 

[Kolia]

The OP asks the community "How do you sort your SD/CF cards for archiving ?"

Community's reply is "Archiving SD/CF cards is a bad practice for the following reasons..."

No agreeing with someone doesn't mean we don't care or that we don't actually answers his/her question.

 

[Overread]

Cut the insults/jabs and general insulting at each other!
Share your views, explain your reasons and respect the views of others - you don't all have to agree and I'm getting a little sick that every time someone doesn't agree with another's viewpoint it turns into a fight on this forum.




My personal view is that its just not a sane move to shoot photos on a digital camera and keep the photos on the card all the time and buy new cards each time one fills up. Memory card are not cheap and you'll be paying a lot of money to go this way whilst offering yourself no real advantage in other storage methods outside of having some very specific requirements. Simply hooking the camera up to the computer or using a card reader and copying the photos over takes typically about as much time or less than it does to boil a kettle. Letting you save a large sum of money which could go toward better things like new cameras or lenses etc..

Here is my personal workflow:

1) Shoot photos - changing cards as needed until the shoot is finished. I don't delete photos in the field and instead simply ensure that I've more cards than I'll typically need on a trip.

2) Transfer the photos over to the computer, for this I now have a dedicated external harddrive mostly just for photos for this purpose.

3) I then backup the photos from that harddrive to another harddrive, giving me (at that point in time) 3 copies of each photo. (I oft save this step till after editing, but honestly it should happen both before and after - after only adding in the edited file versions of course).

4) I'll then typically start editing the photos and going through the ones I want to keep etc....

5) I'll delete and format the cards only when I next need them (this acts as a temporary backup against a random crash or error on the computer end).


Personally I can't see a gain to simply keeping cards loaded with photos and I note that most people who have adopted this workflow are simple those who have not yet learned how to use any alternative workflow. Honestly whilst it is their own choice in the matter I feel that one should inform them and at least try to teach them a new approach since the costs for anyone shooting regularly are going to be very high. As stated a few times earlier the cost of memory cards is much higher than that of bigger harddrives. Furthermore as cameras get more and more advanced the MP gets higher and higher and thus the file sizes keep increasing. Once a 521MB card was all you needed, now 8 or even 16GB are pretty common and those once exotic 32GB from a few years ago are now looking pretty practical as options.

Edit you need
1TB = 1000 GB
You thus need 125 8GB cards to give you the same storage space as a 1TB harddrive
At $15 per card that's $1875. A VAST amount more than a 1TB harddrive (heck you can get a very good lens or camera body or heck both for that sum of money)

 

[The_Traveler]

Holy Crap yes.
Overread is so right.

Are you guys so damn insecure that you have to be right and win at everything?
Just post some pictures and shut the hell up.

 

[CCericola]

Putting cost aside. Just like a negative, memory cards can deteriorate and go bad. And on top of that technology changes so fast. I have zip drives full of files from college. I had to beg and borrow and steal to find a plug and play zip drive to get all my files and many ended up corrupted. Can you imagine trying to go back to a memory card to get a photo and the whole thing is kaput? Eeek! Even CDs and DVDs can fail, so keeping filled cards for archival purposes is not the best idea. I have film negs from circa WWII that are starting to fade even though they are kept in the dark in a film archive box.

That said. if you want to keep cards, fine. Just please, please also back them up another way. Or use an offsite backup service like Carbonite.

I also print 8x10's of everything I want to keep and keep them in archival albums. Technology can fail anytime and I like the fact that no matter what I have a paper copy. Unless my house burns down. Then I'm SOL.

 

[Overread]

I also print 8x10's of everything I want to keep and keep them in archival albums. Technology can fail anytime and I like the fact that no matter what I have a paper copy. Unless my house burns down. Then I'm SOL.

I have to say that this is a part of the backup process that I think more of us should atop. Prints are something we oft don't do these days and I think its a mistake, not only because prints give a much more tactile and visual product from our labours; but also because of the nature of digital data. Sure a print will never be "as good" as a RAW file in terms of data storage, but if you've got a print you can scan and reprint it or just scan it in; plus you'll have some great prints to show people your photos on something other than a tiny mobile phone view of your photos scrolling past.

 

[Ballistics]

Sure, no offense as you insult people you don't know, have no clue how long they've been doing their own business or anything else simply because YOU don't like their methods. You know what you can do with your "opinion".
No one said a thing about not being backed up, no one said a thing about cost and if you can edit down a shoot in 5 seconds, welcome to the forums, Flash...
Actually, as for cost, I have two dead externals filled with images I can't get to-that cost me over $200. My newest 1 TB cost me $110, I get 4gb cards on sale for $13 or so.
"To each his own, but"...methinks that first letter of your name is wrong...

Mama always said... Clueless is as clueless does.

Ah, a Mama's boy.
Look, pal, I could not care less how you do your own work, but you are getting on my last nerve with your pompous and ignorant attitude and insults about how I do mine. Guess Mama failed to tell you how to talk to people.

To the OP: Depending on what and how you shoot should determine how you store or save work. I would not recommend keeping every card if you shoot portraits or weddings; dedicate a good hard drive to each. If you shoot just for fun or, if like me, you do fine art manipulations and rarely shoot 200 pix a day, maybe keeping the cards would do fine. Ignore these self-important blowhards and do what suits your own situation best.
@ Kolia: I use 4g or 8g and never pay full price. Someone always has them on sale for less than $15. Factoring in all the externals I've blown through, not to mention a $400 CPU that failed to reach its destination for repairs, I'm probably still ahead a few bucks and don't have a gazillion DVD's to go through.
I've been doing it this way since UPS lost that CPU and I'm fine with it. I don't come to y'all's house and tell you how to spend. Either answer the boy's questions or find someone else to belittle.

If you don't have a gazillion 4 or 8GB cards, you wouldn't have a gazillion 4 or 8GB DVDs.

Kodak 50-Pack DVD Blank Cake Box - Walmart.com

This is 50 8.5GB DVDs for $25. 50 SD cards at $15 is $750.

I can understand that you don't change the way you do things, but the reason why you are attracting the disagreeing posts, is because you portray your methods as efficient, when
they just are not. You also make it sound like you are saving time by storing the cards, which is just not the case. I don't think you understand how easy and fast it is.

You put your SD card in the computer, a popup from bridge comes up asking to DL the images. You click yes, type in the name of the folder and click OK. That's it.

It's honestly faster than it is to read that sentence.

 

[LouR]

Mama always said... Clueless is as clueless does.

Ah, a Mama's boy.
Look, pal, I could not care less how you do your own work, but you are getting on my last nerve with your pompous and ignorant attitude and insults about how I do mine. Guess Mama failed to tell you how to talk to people.

To the OP: Depending on what and how you shoot should determine how you store or save work. I would not recommend keeping every card if you shoot portraits or weddings; dedicate a good hard drive to each. If you shoot just for fun or, if like me, you do fine art manipulations and rarely shoot 200 pix a day, maybe keeping the cards would do fine. Ignore these self-important blowhards and do what suits your own situation best.
@ Kolia: I use 4g or 8g and never pay full price. Someone always has them on sale for less than $15. Factoring in all the externals I've blown through, not to mention a $400 CPU that failed to reach its destination for repairs, I'm probably still ahead a few bucks and don't have a gazillion DVD's to go through.
I've been doing it this way since UPS lost that CPU and I'm fine with it. I don't come to y'all's house and tell you how to spend. Either answer the boy's questions or find someone else to belittle.

If you don't have a gazillion 4 or 8GB cards, you wouldn't have a gazillion 4 or 8GB DVDs.

Kodak 50-Pack DVD Blank Cake Box - Walmart.com

This is 50 8.5GB DVDs for $25. 50 SD cards at $15 is $750.

I can understand that you don't change the way you do things, but the reason why you are attracting the disagreeing posts, is because you portray your methods as efficient, when
they just are not. You also make it sound like you are saving time by storing the cards, which is just not the case. I don't think you understand how easy and fast it is.

You put your SD card in the computer, a popup from bridge comes up asking to DL the images. You click yes, type in the name of the folder and click OK. That's it.

It's honestly faster than it is to read that sentence.

A) Don't have Bridge. I initially edit through Sony's Editor.
B) I don't need every image loaded. Going thru the Raws thru the editor the first time allows me to either keep and file or delete.
C) Since they are saved to folders as TIFFs, where I then can pull them into PS and have at it, keeping the Raws separate and on marked cards lets me get back to them as they were taken. My latest HD is already ready to implode, which means I have to yet again get another one, transfer all the folders and add it to the stack, which is a hell of a lot bigger than a stack of cards.
What is fast for you may not be for anyone else. Just like not everyone makes fried chicken the same way, one way of doing something is not necessarily the only way.
Lastly, no one, whether me or any other person you deem less than intelligent (which I certainly am not), should have to go on a defensive because their methods don't meet another's approval. The OP asked a legitimate question, I answered and you all think I'm the moron. Seriously?

 

[Overread]

You know you can just manually copy RAW files from the card to the computer right - I do it myself, no software I just select, right click copy and right click paste to put them into a folder. I then make a folder within that one for the "KEEPS" (which are the edited versions). With simple folder management you can easily archive a lot of photos on a single harddrive without much worry.

And as said the long term costs are significantly less with this approach unless you are shooting very little indeed. If you are then I can somewhat see that you could get away with shooting and not needing new harddrives, however the OP is asking about storage and organising methods which suggests that their data build up is considerable. This is showing that their current method of operation is simply not the most suitable -- partly shown again by the fact that its a very rare approach to the matter.

That is why you are seeing so many comments against it and why people are not readily providing card organisation suggestions.