RAW or not?

The memory cards aren't a problem, I shall be taking a number of 16, 32 and 64 with me.

It's the backing up that may be. I do use JPEG e.g. if my wife wants to quickly put some on Facebook etc. but otherwise I always process RAW files unless I'm using the compact.

So to speed up the backing up and to save on storage I could just shoot in RAW really.

When I was in Thailand on my honeymoon, I shot raw + medium or large jpeg. I copied the jpeg files to a device I purchased and uploaded them to dropbox using hotel wifi. I was staying in quite nice hotels with fast wifi though. So if I lost my cards I would at least have a copy, and medium res is ok.

In my early years of digital shooting, I used cameras that were jpeg only, a combination of P&S and "compact" cameras,and was "stuck" with basic jpeg software for whatever work I needed to do on the images.

But that did have frustrations, in that I could see the limits of the processing that could be done to jpegs, especially any attempts to fine-tune aspects such as color and tonal qualities, including highlights and shadows.

Although I did aspire to "get it right in-camera, sure, and even to this day, I can work with jpegs and even have nice prints from over the years...

Then, as I moved along, the subject of RAW files and processing came to my attention, addressing the problems I had experienced with processing those jpegs, and that did indeed get my attention, and I initially had not taken the "leap" into having a DSLR that did offer Raw files, and also at the time I hadn't made the "leap" in my processing software. I was aware of apps such as Photoshop, but I initially went with Photoshop Elements, which gave me "tools", but were at the time not set up for a Raw workflow.

But then, once I got to where I was decided on making the move to a DSLR for all that that entails, and I did make the switch to the Raw format, which initially was handled by PS Elements, and I eventually did upgrade to Photoshop "standard", which had theimplementation of Adobe Camera Raw that helped things along!

Anyway, for me then Raw became the default! It was a very good hands-on way of collecting and processing my photos/files, and as such became kind of a "no-brainer" operation!

Then, the question of how we photographers might "manage" our images and our photographic workflow became a major issue/topic of discussion, and it was in this time that Adobe launched on the development of Lightroom, and Apple with Aperture...

At the time, Raw became recognized as the "best" format for "serious" photographers, so that a workflow for processing their photos in the "digital darkroom" became increasingly evident as a "Raw workflow"...

And, as such, Lightroom when it came out was a Raw-Only app, and it, together with the Photoshop Camera Raw app/plug-in could take in images that were shot with a recognized Raw format. At the time, sure, you had a limited amount of "work" you could do with your jpeg shots and such, but the Raw processing that you could do was so much better than working with jpegs!

We kept dealing with this over time, until Adobe opened up Lightroom and Camera Raw with photoshop to take in and handle other image types, such as jpegs and tiffs and such, and gave the same tools to edit and manage that whole variety!

As one who had adopted Raw as the one default image format, it was interesting to see that you could, in fact, shoot /work with jpegs, although the benefits of the Raw format were still solidly in place!

***My Raw + Jpeg "TRIAL" ***

I did once, while doing some active "sports/event" shooting decide to try doing some "RAW + JPEG shooting, sure, I had a camera that took a second card, and I made that setup, Raw in my "normal" working card and Jpegs in my second card, which was a smaller SD card, so I gave it a try!

It was interesting! For one thing, since I did set out to "get it right in-camera, It was kind of funny, since for an active day I ended up with about 1,000 shots, and, since I had a "portable setup with a laptop with Lightroom, and so I ended up with all those photos in both Raw and Jpegs, I say "funny" because I sat there looking at duplicates of all those photos, going through 1,000 Raws and also 1,000 jpegs, side-by-side in my software, and I ended up just throwing up my handsand I deleted all those dang jpegs, I mean, why the heck would I want to have to keep/deal with all those duplicate photos/files?

now sure, I could "use" those jpegs, as a quick "look", and since I had set out to get optimum exposures, fitting White Balance and such!

But, I was still faced with the advantages of "tweaking"/ fine tuning those images where Raw still stood its place!

Today, I actually ended up picking up a little "compact camera for a "real deal", for $5.00 I walked out the door with one! So sure, today I can set off with a little pocket camera and come back with a bunch of jpegs, but I'd still be faced with the same fundamental difference/advantage of Raw!

Lightroom is still my "workflow app", whether for jpegs or Raw, I just still stick with my Raw workflow for the advantages in processing the dang things!

Well, that "settled" that, I never switched back to the Raw+Jpeg setup. It was too much of a hassle for me!

So much for me and my story!

Sorry for the delay in coming back, thanks for the continued comments and views. Been busy with final preparations.

Meant to do it last weekend but ran out of time, but this morning I did further testing with transferring from the camera to the tablet using a card reader and it was a disaster!

Initially things went OK as it showed all the photos (JPEG & RAW) but when trying to move them to OneDrive nothing seemed to be happening and there is no indication of whether there is or not. It worked OK with just a few files but not the much larger amount i.e. hundreds being used for the test which will be more like a days shooting.

Worse was to come though, because when I returned the card to the camera it wasn't recognised and I had to reformat it in camera - the upshot being I would have lost the photos.

Tablets are great for what they do but for me they are hopeless for my intended use of backing up photos. As well as the aforementioned it's just so difficult moving large numbers of files around compared with on a PC etc.

So with a mixture of frustration and panic, I thought that's it I'm getting a laptop! So straight round to PC World and bought a nice little 13.3" Dell jobbie. Blimey this trip's getting expensive what we having to buy another camera, the G1X and now a laptop!

But I'm happy now. I can now transfer from camera to laptop using the lead and as I can see and control exactly what is going on I'm as confident as with using the PC.

It's also got the added bonus of more internal storage and 2TB of KnowHow Cloud storage, so I shall keep one set of files on the laptop and a copy in the Cloud as well as leaving the files on the SD cards. So it's definitely RAW as well as JPEG.

So lesson learned, but the tablet is nice and good for other things - my wife has already taken it over!

Yes, it will be a trip of a lifetime. We've travelled before, but not for so long and I risked just using SD cards, but not this time!

Chris

Look on the bright side at least you get the opportunity to back up your images. Tuesday would have been (actually will be since I'm not actually divorced yet) my 30th wedding anniversary. We went to Tunisia for our honeymoon and shot lots of Kodachrome 25, plus some K64 and Ektachrome 200. Oh and a couple of rolls of the then revolutionary Scotch/3M 1000 ASA slide film. The moving pictures were taken care of with Kodachrome 40 Super 8 cine film. No backup possible, and you didn't even know if you had got the shot for about two weeks after you got back, since it took Kodak nearly that long to turn round the Kodachrome slides. At least the other film was E6 process, so I could do that myself at home, but it still needed you to be home to see the results.

Still generally all the images came out OK, even the stuff shot in dark entertainment venues using the 1000 ASA slide film. Considering that other than that one film the fastest colour film available at the time was 400 ASA it was quite a good jump in film speed, without the need to push the exposure rating, something I didn't really like to do with colour film.

Good luck with the wedding and enjoy your honeymoon in Thailand.

Alan

I could be mistaken, but I thought the OP was taking a "once in a lifetime" trip to New Zealand, not a honeymoon in Tahiti.
???

medd63 wrote in post #18305416
I could be mistaken, but I thought the OP was taking a "once in a lifetime" trip to New Zealand, not a honeymoon in Tahiti.
???

Sorry I must have got confused with another thread that I recently read. When you have a health condition that affects your short term memory it becomes quite easy to mix up threads on here. Especially when the software brings you direct to the latest post, on a multi page thread. I had been following the thread from the start, so wouldn't normally go back and reread all of it before posting.

As someone who struggles to even get out of the house on many days POTN is great, I get to converse with a large number of people, and the textual nature is good as it limits the speed of thought required. It does though mean that one has to try to keep multiple diverse, but at times very similar conversations separate in ones head. I'm actually more surprised that I don't make these sort of embarrassing errors more often.

Alan

Not a problem, Al. I thought for a minute I may have missed something. The only reason I remembered it was New Zealand is that I have always wanted to go there since the LOTR movies cames out.

Actually, I have pretty good short term memory, and I still made a mistake in saying Tahiti instead of Thailand when quoting your post. LOL

Alan, no problem - I think I'm a bit past honeymoons now as we are coming up to our 37th wedding anniversary!

You are dead right about the backing up and photo production etc. I started off with slide and negative film and you forget how lucky we are now with being able to take as many photos as we like and easily (well fairly easily!) processing them to achieve what we want.

There is a wedding theme to the trip though. We were going to go to NZ a couple of years ago after going to Hong Kong but then learned of our nieces wedding so put NZ off. We, our sons and various family members are all doing our own thing - other countries and touring NZ and then meeting up for the wedding near Queenstown and stopping for a few days.

We have always wanted to go to NZ so being able to do this and the wedding will be fantastic. Can't wait to capture some of the awesome landscapes.

Chris

I carry two 350 GB USB drives with me when I travel. I use a Mac Air laptop, and at the end of the day, I dump all my cards from camera to laptop, then back up to one or the other (or both, depending) hard drives.

I haven't lost a picture since I started doing it this way.

For those that want a portable device (like the old Epson P-xxxx series), you can get this:

https://www.bhphotovid​eo.com …051678762%2C&Q=​&A=details

and add a $100 2TB 2.5" Sata drive to it. So for $350, you could have a portable travel-friendly way to back up your cards.

If you like techie projects, you can get into a raspberry pi solution.
https://petapixel.com …auto-photo-backup-device/

I must admit that I do something similar, but go totally "over the top".

When travelling, I take two 2TB USB drives along with me, together with a fully configured and expanded 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display. As I take all my photos in raw format, every night I download all the day's photos onto Capture One Pro on the MacBook, process them and then back them up to the two USB drives.

Taking two 2TB drives along with me also enables me to take my entire digital photo collection along with me as a backup in case something disastrous happens at home (House burns down and I have forgotten to update my off-site storage, or something like that).

Processing all the photos taken each day that evening, saves me from the hangover of having to process and edit all the photos when I get home. - Now that is a thankless job!

Since adopting that procedure, I have also lost no photos. Not even when the very helpful people at OR Tambo Airport in South Africa helped themselves to my GPS and one of my cameras. - I had downloaded, processed and backed up all the remaining photos the previous night.

You PROCESS all of your daily images every night? For hundreds of Photos?

Well sad to say that in light of the bans on electronic items in hand luggage firstly in the US and now the UK and my fear that these may escalate to other countries and airports (I'm leaving the day after next) I've decided that it's no laptop or DSLR.

Just the compact and maybe the G16 and SD cards. Very disappointed.

I've explained my decision in Photography Talk/Carry on to US.

Laptops aren't banned on US flights. Lots of people have them on during the flight even.