Posted by Kent Staubus on December 9, 2006 at 1:30 PM
I bought the Nikon D80 and "stuff," and have been using it for a week now. Story:
http://www.railroadphotoessays.com/forum/showthread.php?t=789
http://tinyurl.com/ycvlxn
I take a dozen or so shots daily, usually a lot more once the snow arrives. My plan is to look through them on my monitor when I get home and keep only the ones I want. That shouldn't be too many, LOL! Maybe half a dozen at most, depending. Some days probably none. But what to do with them? I need to organize them using some software, maybe Adobe Lightroom? I can tag things by date, town, and subject. I can accumulate a few on my hard drive until I have enough to fill a Delkin gold CD. I'm trying to keep this simple so I'll do it. I hate fooling with computers. I'm finding that most of the images shot with the 10mp D80 need little fussing with in PS. Right now I'm shooting in jpeg fine and using PS Elements 3.0, but intend to switch to Nikon NEF (their RAW) when PS CS3 comes out in a few months.
What I need is a whole new work flow, a system. Something that will let me sort out the few gems of the day (if any), do some fast PS work, then catalog them so I can FIND them when I need them, and then archive them. I intend to print my best 25 images every year and archive the prints too, since I don't really trust digital all that much over the long haul. (I'm looking at 100 yr. archivability.)
Does the work flow I've outlined above sound like a viable one? What might be better?
My current system is much easier, sort of. I've been shooting slides. I take them in, have them processed, then take them home and put them in a big plastic storage tub in archive safe sleeves. I have about 5 cubic feet of slides! The problem is when I go to write an article for the magazine I work for. I can't find anything in that huge pile of slides! I can spend a day looking for stuff. I need to go through those, do a LOT of tossing, scan the few good ones, and incorporate them into the gold CD filing system. Man, that's a lot of slide! Groan.
Kent in SD
Posted by Walter Rowe on December 9, 2006 at 5:31 PM
Tim Grey has a great book on workflow called "Photoshop CS2 Workflow".
Peter Krogh has a great book on managing your image files called "The DAM Book".
Realistically, you need a combination of the two. Peter's book talks about managing the physical files from importing from the camera, to processing, to archiving in folders on your computer and backing them up. Tim's book talks in more detail about the processing part of the workflow using Adobe Camera Raw for first pass editing and then Photoshop CS2 for finely tuned adjustments.
For real nuts and bolts Photoshop CS2 work, there are several great authors including Bruce Fraser and Scott Kelby and many more.
Posted by Rod Barbee on December 9, 2006 at 7:26 PM
Walter pretty much sums up the best starting points. I highly recommend Peter Krogh's book as well.
One thing I would suggest is storing on external hard drives rather than cds or even dvds. Hard drive storage prices are a lot cheaper than storing on other media and you have the added benefit of having your images right at hand and not needing to load a cd or dvd. Plus, cds will fill up fast and you'll be needing a lot more physical storage space just for the disks themselves. And you'll have to have an easy way to retrieve them. And you'll need to check them periodically, say at least once a year--even for the golds--just to make sure that they're still good.
Seriously, external hard drives are probably the best way to go. Be sure to back them up to redundant drives as well. It's still cheaper and easier than cds. DVDs are the next best as they'll hold a lot more than CDs.
Posted by Kent Staubus on December 9, 2006 at 9:44 PM
Rod--
I'm really thinking of the LONG term storage. Say, 100 years. I just don't see hard drives as an option because they are mechanical devices. At one point EVERY hard drive I've owned has eventually failed. I'm thinking of making two gold CDs and one high quality "regular" CD for storage. The thought of having to recheck them every ten years or so drives me crazy, because I know it will never happen. This is why I'm utimately thinking of making archive quality prints of everything I really want. I already make platinum prints from some of my 4x5 shots, mostly of family portraits, because of their proposed 500 year life. This has to be the single biggest problem with digital--totally uncertain archivability. The second hassle is the cost. From my calculations, there is absolutely NO savings with digital.
Kent in SD
Posted by Andy Richards on December 10, 2006 at 9:12 AM
Kent:
On storage, I probably am doing "overkill," but I use an external HD and two DVDS (on "offsite"). To me, the most difficult part of process is -- as you comment -- doing it. It is tedious. You will, IMO, need some type of database/thumnails program to organize them. Otherwise you don't have a way to see what is on each CD without loading it and looking. I know you like the gold CDs. But you will find that they accumulate fast, with that size image. This will be especially apparent when you start shooting RAW images. I was amazed at how much more space there is on a DVD.
As far as JPG vs RAW, I would encourage you to shoot RAW from the beginning. I believe (although I haven't used Elements for years), there is a "plugin" from Adobe that allows you to open RAW files in Elements. I used to use the Nikon software to open them before I got PS. The advantage, as you know, to RAW, is that you have the original capture data. As you get more and more accomplished with PS, there will likely come a time when you will want to go back to an image you shot early on and try to do something with it and will be dissappointed that you didn't save it in RAW
have fun, and best regards,
Andy
Posted by Guy Tal on December 10, 2006 at 11:23 AM
Every form of digital storage you can buy today will become obsolete much much sooner than 100 years. You should count on transferring your files to new media (possibly new formats as well) every couple of years to make sure they last. With digital images you can do so with no loss of quality.
I heard some people argue that they can no longer read 5.25" floppy drives and that in 10 years they won't be able to read CD's... well, duh! If you have vital information still stored on 5.25" floppies and didn't have the foresight to move it to another storage media about 10 years ago you really have nobody to blame but yourself.
Guy
Posted by Don Miller on December 10, 2006 at 11:56 AM
To further Guy's discussion, I suggest choosing a media that is easy to "move forward". Some people believe that writable CD/DVD may only last 10 years. I've switch to duplicate off line hard drives (not raid). There is no workable long term storage. So in 5 years I will copy my (then) tiny 500 gig drives to current technology.
I also keep the best online, as a third copy.
I was using the Imatch database to categorize. The discipline part seems to be the hardest part of storage for me. files, but I haven't been disciplined in keeping it current
Posted by Kent Staubus on December 10, 2006 at 2:19 PM
Every form of digital storage you can buy today will become obsolete much much sooner than 100 years. You should count on transferring your files to new media (possibly new formats as well) every couple of years to make sure they last. ....If you have vital information still stored on 5.25" floppies and didn't have the foresight to move it to another storage media about 10 years ago you really have nobody to blame but yourself.
It looks like archivability really is digital's Achilles Heel, and that's the most important factor for me. Starting about 1955, photographer O.Winston Link shot the Norfolk & Western Railroad, the last Class 1 still using steam, with his 8x10 LF cameras and b&w film. He created an outstanding archive of American railroading. In 1886, Solomon Butcher moved to central Nebraska and began a business as a traveling photographer, selling portraits to families but also took thousands of photos of everything he saw. He too created a unique archive of images from his time period. And then there is Matthew Brady and his plates of the Civil War. Really, this is what I'm after. It's why posting photos on internet forums really isn't what's driving my own photography. What I want are photos that show what life was like on the Northern Plains from roughly 1980--2020.
Another example. While cleaning out my grandmother's things in 1992, my mother found a shoebox. It was full of photos made with my grandmother's Brownie from about 1928 until the late 1940s. Not only did the shoebox have photos of relatives long departed, but in the background are the cars, livestock, homes, and so on that put my family history into perspective. My dad's mother had similar photos made during the early 20s until about 1944. These show the poverty and hardships of living on a semi-mechanized farm of that era. My dad, a toddler in the photos, is shown wearing simple dress-like clothing made from flour and seed sacks. Their toys were generally home made.
My thinking is, if my grandparents could create long lasting negatives and prints that could sit in a shoebox for 50 years using 1920s technology, why can't we do that today with our thousand dollar-plus cameras???? What good is a camera system that can only create images that have a life of five years or so? Is this really progress, or is it a symptom of modern society and its ephemeral orienation?
I still intend to shoot some silver b&w with the 4x5, and 4x5 in general. Not only do I like the quality and aesthetics, but also the somewhat more stable archivability. I'm thinking that ultimately my best option is to simply make quality prints of what I really want to save, and store duplicate copies. I really doubt that my kids will keep transferring digital files thrity, forty years from now. Even my 17 yr. old can't reliably remember to flush the potty.
Thanks for putting me on to the RAW/NEF advantages, the books, and so on! I've been able to clearly see that I have two issues. One is searchability and the other is archivability. Looks like prints are ultimately what I need to be looking at for my very best shots. Fortunately, those are far fewer.
I agree about the longevity of digital images and their media- both from the standpoint of technical support and durability. The answer as, Guy points out, is to keep moving the images forward onto new media as time passes.
As for the (very valid) shoebox analogy, that's water under the bridge not only for your digital files, but also for your color negs and slides. Silver negs may last 100 years in proper storage, but in our experience with older slides and color negatives, the shoebox is a pipedream for those as well. I recently contracted to scan and restore a bunch of slides from the 1964 Alaska earthquake- all shot on Kodak slide film and stored in archival sheets and cabinets in a museum. Controlled atmosphere no less. The color in every single one of them was faded and shifted. At the same time I reviewed color images taken right at the end of WWII, and their condition was shocking. In another ten years when film scanners are as scarce as B&W printing paper today, anyone who hasn't already scanned theirs to digital formats may well be in the same boat as owners of 5.25" floppies.
Bottom line, whatever medium you choose, you have to stay on top of change if you want your images to last. The shoebox will still work if your descendants care to open it in time to recover the images from obsolescence.
Posted by Walter Rowe on December 10, 2006 at 3:18 PM
As for long term storage, I agree with Rod about hard drives. The per gigabyte cost is overwhelmingly in their favor, and you will need to continue to move your image archives forward as storage technology advances. And the time required to retrieve images off of optical technology (CD/DVD) is so long that it is impractical. I use two external HD's (master and backup) and frequently synchronize them as I add more images to the master.
Windows has a simple tool called RoboCopy that, with the right options, will compare the drives and only update/copy the files that are changed/new. And it will remove files (if you choose) that you have removed from the master. It keeps the two drives perfectly in sync. I run it on-demand as I finish adding, editing, applying metadata, etc, to new images.
Posted by Bill Pelzmann on December 10, 2006 at 8:36 PM
Duplicate external drives are certainly my first choice for storage and backup. But, if these are your only copies, you are living dangerously.
I agree that retrieving many GIGs of images from optical media is VERY slow. However, I write DVDs for additional redundnacy.
Last January I was copying one 500 GIG drive to an identical external drive. The copy stopped with an error message. My original drive was trashed (no recovery was possible) and less than 50 images had been copied to the new drive. It took the entire weekend to reload the images stored on DVD and I lost a lot of editing, but it was far better than not having those backup DVDs.
Posted by Grace Blair on December 11, 2006 at 9:21 AM
Lightroom needs to establish a method for archiving, catalog moving, backup work flow similar to what is possible with iView. We shouldn't need a multitude of software programs to do initial photo editing, adding metadata and then managing storage and file finding! Aperture has started in this direction for the Mac but it still needs some work.
Posted by Walter Rowe on December 11, 2006 at 10:29 AM
I have three drives, actually, and I sync to both of them frequently so I always have three copies of all my images on HD media.
Discussion
12 replieshttp://www.railroadphotoessays.com/forum/showthread.php?t=789
http://tinyurl.com/ycvlxn
I take a dozen or so shots daily, usually a lot more once the snow arrives. My plan is to look through them on my monitor when I get home and keep only the ones I want. That shouldn't be too many, LOL! Maybe half a dozen at most, depending. Some days probably none. But what to do with them? I need to organize them using some software, maybe Adobe Lightroom? I can tag things by date, town, and subject. I can accumulate a few on my hard drive until I have enough to fill a Delkin gold CD. I'm trying to keep this simple so I'll do it. I hate fooling with computers. I'm finding that most of the images shot with the 10mp D80 need little fussing with in PS. Right now I'm shooting in jpeg fine and using PS Elements 3.0, but intend to switch to Nikon NEF (their RAW) when PS CS3 comes out in a few months.
What I need is a whole new work flow, a system. Something that will let me sort out the few gems of the day (if any), do some fast PS work, then catalog them so I can FIND them when I need them, and then archive them. I intend to print my best 25 images every year and archive the prints too, since I don't really trust digital all that much over the long haul. (I'm looking at 100 yr. archivability.)
Does the work flow I've outlined above sound like a viable one? What might be better?
My current system is much easier, sort of. I've been shooting slides. I take them in, have them processed, then take them home and put them in a big plastic storage tub in archive safe sleeves. I have about 5 cubic feet of slides! The problem is when I go to write an article for the magazine I work for. I can't find anything in that huge pile of slides! I can spend a day looking for stuff. I need to go through those, do a LOT of tossing, scan the few good ones, and incorporate them into the gold CD filing system. Man, that's a lot of slide! Groan.
Kent in SD
Peter Krogh has a great book on managing your image files called "The DAM Book".
Realistically, you need a combination of the two. Peter's book talks about managing the physical files from importing from the camera, to processing, to archiving in folders on your computer and backing them up. Tim's book talks in more detail about the processing part of the workflow using Adobe Camera Raw for first pass editing and then Photoshop CS2 for finely tuned adjustments.
For real nuts and bolts Photoshop CS2 work, there are several great authors including Bruce Fraser and Scott Kelby and many more.
One thing I would suggest is storing on external hard drives rather than cds or even dvds. Hard drive storage prices are a lot cheaper than storing on other media and you have the added benefit of having your images right at hand and not needing to load a cd or dvd. Plus, cds will fill up fast and you'll be needing a lot more physical storage space just for the disks themselves. And you'll have to have an easy way to retrieve them. And you'll need to check them periodically, say at least once a year--even for the golds--just to make sure that they're still good.
Seriously, external hard drives are probably the best way to go. Be sure to back them up to redundant drives as well. It's still cheaper and easier than cds. DVDs are the next best as they'll hold a lot more than CDs.
I'm really thinking of the LONG term storage. Say, 100 years. I just don't see hard drives as an option because they are mechanical devices. At one point EVERY hard drive I've owned has eventually failed. I'm thinking of making two gold CDs and one high quality "regular" CD for storage. The thought of having to recheck them every ten years or so drives me crazy, because I know it will never happen. This is why I'm utimately thinking of making archive quality prints of everything I really want. I already make platinum prints from some of my 4x5 shots, mostly of family portraits, because of their proposed 500 year life. This has to be the single biggest problem with digital--totally uncertain archivability. The second hassle is the cost. From my calculations, there is absolutely NO savings with digital.
Kent in SD
On storage, I probably am doing "overkill," but I use an external HD and two DVDS (on "offsite"). To me, the most difficult part of process is -- as you comment -- doing it. It is tedious. You will, IMO, need some type of database/thumnails program to organize them. Otherwise you don't have a way to see what is on each CD without loading it and looking. I know you like the gold CDs. But you will find that they accumulate fast, with that size image. This will be especially apparent when you start shooting RAW images. I was amazed at how much more space there is on a DVD.
As far as JPG vs RAW, I would encourage you to shoot RAW from the beginning. I believe (although I haven't used Elements for years), there is a "plugin" from Adobe that allows you to open RAW files in Elements. I used to use the Nikon software to open them before I got PS. The advantage, as you know, to RAW, is that you have the original capture data. As you get more and more accomplished with PS, there will likely come a time when you will want to go back to an image you shot early on and try to do something with it and will be dissappointed that you didn't save it in RAW
have fun, and best regards,
Andy
I heard some people argue that they can no longer read 5.25" floppy drives and that in 10 years they won't be able to read CD's... well, duh! If you have vital information still stored on 5.25" floppies and didn't have the foresight to move it to another storage media about 10 years ago you really have nobody to blame but yourself.
Guy
I also keep the best online, as a third copy.
I was using the Imatch database to categorize. The discipline part seems to be the hardest part of storage for me. files, but I haven't been disciplined in keeping it current
It looks like archivability really is digital's Achilles Heel, and that's the most important factor for me. Starting about 1955, photographer O.Winston Link shot the Norfolk & Western Railroad, the last Class 1 still using steam, with his 8x10 LF cameras and b&w film. He created an outstanding archive of American railroading. In 1886, Solomon Butcher moved to central Nebraska and began a business as a traveling photographer, selling portraits to families but also took thousands of photos of everything he saw. He too created a unique archive of images from his time period. And then there is Matthew Brady and his plates of the Civil War. Really, this is what I'm after. It's why posting photos on internet forums really isn't what's driving my own photography. What I want are photos that show what life was like on the Northern Plains from roughly 1980--2020.
Another example. While cleaning out my grandmother's things in 1992, my mother found a shoebox. It was full of photos made with my grandmother's Brownie from about 1928 until the late 1940s. Not only did the shoebox have photos of relatives long departed, but in the background are the cars, livestock, homes, and so on that put my family history into perspective. My dad's mother had similar photos made during the early 20s until about 1944. These show the poverty and hardships of living on a semi-mechanized farm of that era. My dad, a toddler in the photos, is shown wearing simple dress-like clothing made from flour and seed sacks. Their toys were generally home made.
My thinking is, if my grandparents could create long lasting negatives and prints that could sit in a shoebox for 50 years using 1920s technology, why can't we do that today with our thousand dollar-plus cameras???? What good is a camera system that can only create images that have a life of five years or so? Is this really progress, or is it a symptom of modern society and its ephemeral orienation?
I still intend to shoot some silver b&w with the 4x5, and 4x5 in general. Not only do I like the quality and aesthetics, but also the somewhat more stable archivability. I'm thinking that ultimately my best option is to simply make quality prints of what I really want to save, and store duplicate copies. I really doubt that my kids will keep transferring digital files thrity, forty years from now. Even my 17 yr. old can't reliably remember to flush the potty.
Thanks for putting me on to the RAW/NEF advantages, the books, and so on! I've been able to clearly see that I have two issues. One is searchability and the other is archivability. Looks like prints are ultimately what I need to be looking at for my very best shots. Fortunately, those are far fewer.
http://www.nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/research/photos/highlite/butcher/index.htm
Kent in SD
As for the (very valid) shoebox analogy, that's water under the bridge not only for your digital files, but also for your color negs and slides. Silver negs may last 100 years in proper storage, but in our experience with older slides and color negatives, the shoebox is a pipedream for those as well. I recently contracted to scan and restore a bunch of slides from the 1964 Alaska earthquake- all shot on Kodak slide film and stored in archival sheets and cabinets in a museum. Controlled atmosphere no less. The color in every single one of them was faded and shifted. At the same time I reviewed color images taken right at the end of WWII, and their condition was shocking. In another ten years when film scanners are as scarce as B&W printing paper today, anyone who hasn't already scanned theirs to digital formats may well be in the same boat as owners of 5.25" floppies.
Bottom line, whatever medium you choose, you have to stay on top of change if you want your images to last. The shoebox will still work if your descendants care to open it in time to recover the images from obsolescence.
Windows has a simple tool called RoboCopy that, with the right options, will compare the drives and only update/copy the files that are changed/new. And it will remove files (if you choose) that you have removed from the master. It keeps the two drives perfectly in sync. I run it on-demand as I finish adding, editing, applying metadata, etc, to new images.
I agree that retrieving many GIGs of images from optical media is VERY slow. However, I write DVDs for additional redundnacy.
Last January I was copying one 500 GIG drive to an identical external drive. The copy stopped with an error message. My original drive was trashed (no recovery was possible) and less than 50 images had been copied to the new drive. It took the entire weekend to reload the images stored on DVD and I lost a lot of editing, but it was far better than not having those backup DVDs.