How do you store your pictures?

[DoctorMoth]

Hi, although I have lurked on this forum for several months, it wasn't until today that I registered (it's also the day I ordered my D-30 which will arrive this week hopefully). I've had a less than remarkable digital camera (a Kodak point and shoot about two years old that cost around 800 dollars new back then!) for a while and managed to save around two or three hundred pictures I thought were saving in that time. Before the digital age I used mostly Nikon 35 mm cameras for the last twenty or twenty five years. My question is I have noticed the huge sizes of these RAW files having read your posts over the last few months, how do you possible store all that info? On cd's or on zip drives or ....? Also, do you find that you delete most of your pictures and only keep the very best for permenent storage? And, do you save the RAW files or do you only save the manipulated images after you have tweaked them to perfection? Thanks for the info, this forum helped me decide on which camera to buy, and the discussions here are invaluable for a budding photographer.

[Eric F.]

doctormoth:
Congratulations on your D30 purchase. I will try to give you my answers to your questions.

#1 My question is I have noticed the huge sizes of these RAW files having read your posts over the last few months, how do you possible store all that info? On cd's or on zip drives or....?

I think I can speak for most of the people here on the forum, when I say that the CDR is the easiest most cost effective way to save your pictures. Put pictures in a file on your computer untill you get around 750mb then burn a cd. If you by in bulk that would be about 200 plus pictures for less than a dollar. :)

#2 Also, do you find that you delete most of your pictures and only keep the very best for permenent storage? And, do you save the RAW files or do you only save the manipulated images after you have tweaked them to perfection?

This question really has no consensis from users. My approach to this is actually 3 part.
#1 I usually go through my pictures and screen out the ones that I don't want. (the percentage depends on what the subject was, sometimes its 80% sometimes 1 %)
#2 If the pictures are of the snapshot variety, I save the edited version and delete the orginal.
#3 If the picture is one that really want to keep, is special, or one that I may want to enlarge. I save a RAW file and play around with the image for a print and sometimes save the edited as well. This way if I want I can go back and do it all over again.

As mentioned in the first answer I have set up files on my desktop labled, RAW pictures, Pictures to keep, when the files get to 700mb I burn a cd and do it again. :p

Hope this helps for you to organize your digital experience. You WILL have lots of good pics :) :)

[sasc]

I am using CDR. I keep maybe a half years worth on the computer as i have plenty of room so far. Then I make a thumbnail page for every days set of photos and store that in the folder containing that months photos. When i do write them to CD I put the thumbnails with them and also keep copy of all the thumbs on my computer so that I dont have to look through all the CDs to find them. Its not the most efficient way but it works for me.

[Dick]

I capture my FlashCard data in the field on a 10GB Digital Wallet. I then catalog the files on the Digital Wallet using IMatch. I then use IMatch to move the files to 2.6GB DVD/RAM disks. I never edit these files simply archive them for the future.

IMatch is super for cataloging your photo files because it keeps a thumbnail of each photo and then can tell you which disk needs to be mounted to find the file.

The advantage of DVD/RAM disks is that they store so many more photos than CDR's so you don't have so many disks to swap. I will probably upgrade to 5.2GB DVD/RAM's in the future.

[jpbeale]

It's an interesting question. I download a day's images into a folder labelled with the date and main subject. I immediately delete the obviously bad ones: I have no shortage of pictures and I don't ever want to waste time re-sorting through bad images. I save the remaining originals, and also fine-tune the best ones in Photoshop and save those finished images in a separate folder. The final destination is typically email, web page, or print and I make a folder in each case with images scaled to appropriate sizes (I find "ThumbsPlus" (www.cerious.com) useful for batch processing, though have just discovered BreezeBrowser.)

For archiving, although I have a DVD-R burner, I use CD-R. Right now, CD-R media is less than half the price of DVD-R in terms of $ per MByte, but more importantly many computers, including my office PC, do not have a DVD reader so it isn't as universal a format right now. Probably this will change and I'll go to DVD-R for the convenience of more pictures per disc.