Lesson Learned...

[thewavebb]

Well today I had an amazing wedding. Probably the most fun I have ever had in the years past. But I learned a few lessons

1. Don't play capture the flag the night before with your church guy friends. Sprained ankles are likely to occur and it did to me. 12 hour shoot in terrible pain, but life goes on.

2. Make sure you bring your laptop battery charger. (somebody had the same computer as I did thank god)

3. THE BIGGEST LESSON goes with a story.... I brought the usual amount of cards to to cover the entire 12 hour shoot today and not have to reuse them...so I thought. Once I shoot a card full I give them to my wife to back up on my laptop and other portable drives. The card then goes into the little case with a piece of tape over it and then placed into a "used" pocket in the backpack. Well today I was a little trigger happy and needed more memory. So I grabbed two 2gb cards out of the pack to top the night off. Well about 2 hours ago I am reviewing all the photos on my laptop and Portable drives. I can't find the most requested shots that were all on one of the cards. I spent 15 minutes looking for them. I broke down in a state of fear...I really liked this couple and i'm sure I will get some other business from this wedding....

Well for some reason the card didn't get copied to the backup drives. . . BUT it was copied and burried deep into some wacky file on the laptop. My wife found them and we did a HUGE high five and hug followed by a pouring of two tall stiff drinks.

So the lesson learned.....Buy more memory and NEVER delete a card untill I get home and they are backed up 3 times.

Tomorrow i'm ordering 6 more 2bg cards. Memory is way cheaper then a refund or a lawsuit.

and i'll share some photos once I sort through them.

[csm328]

All's well that ends well. I like hearing these stories. It helps me to not make the same mistakes :) Why do you only use 2GB cards? I'm assuming you shoot in RAW so why ont go to the 4, 6 or 8GB? Remember when 512k used to be the standard and people were nervous to go to 1GB because of the potential loss? Well, 4GB is prett much as reliable as anything these days. There's been some great discussions in other areas of the furm about it. Personally, I have a 4, 6, 6 and an 8. Never had a glitch.

Looking forward to seeing your pics.

[thewavebb]

I use 2 gb so if I physically loose a card, I don't loose as much. I have 4gb for personal use, but for weddings 2gb's seem to work best for my system. Yeah I shoot Raw+small Jpeg, raw gives me a lot of fudging room if I should need it. What burns me is that I shoot with my wife as second shoot for most of the photos and the only card of photos that were almost lost were the ones that I was the only one shooting. What are the odds of that.

[Grace]

glad you found your images ;) cheers!

[howzitboy]

before i thought a 1 gig card was huge (compared to film) but now, its too small and i read they are going to stop making them. Now that I use 2 gigs, i thought they were huge (compared to the 1 gigs lol). Now they got 8? 16?

scary thought if one card breaks and u lose that many shots..

[LeesaB]

Whew...I was sweating it out for you as I read...

The night before the wedding, I am almost always so occupied with making sure this is charged, I have that, where is that? Omgosh, I need to run out to get more of this...It's crazy...

My daughter/backup....is like..why are you so anal about it all...

I told her the day she forgets something or misses something she will totally understand, until that day, let me be anal.

[tim]

Good to hear it worked out for you. I've just moved to 4GB cards, I got a couple of Sandisk Extreme III cards, which are twice as fast to download when you use the sandisk reader. I don't even take my 1GB cards any more, I take 2x4GB and 4x2GB and hope to use at most one of the 2GB. I'll get another 4GB some time.

When a card's finished I put it into my cardsafe (http://www.gepecardsafe.com/eng/index.asp?mainID=50), which stays securely in my pocket. I have my name and number written on the cardsafe just in case.

[jamiewexler]

I take it a step further than that. When I pack my bags into the car at the end of the night I make sure all of the cards are in my pocket. Even the last two from the cameras. That way if I get into a fiery car crash on the way home - if I make it out, the cards make it out. If I'm a crispy critter, then so are the cards...

I told this to a client once, who suggested that maybe I should buy a small fire safe for my car...you know, so the cards would survive the fiery crash even if I didn't. Priorities.

Ben - glad you learned the lesson so cheaply! I never re-use cards at a wedding. But that wasn't always the case. These days cards are cheap enough to buy enough to cover a whole wedding.

[PIXI_666]

You are lucky!!! haha I always used to download as i went, I never had a problem though?

4GB's SUCK! Unless of course they are a lot better now? I bought one a year ago, accidentally dropped it after a shoot, lost ALL images? It was an expensive card too! It's just TOO much to lose in one card that's all!

Del