Backing up pics during wedding? When? Rethinking my backup strategy--proactive

I use a 12gb in my 1DMKIIN and an 8gb in my 40D. I've got 4 2gb's and almost never use them. I feel safer not changing out cards ever. I figure if/when it happens, since I don't ever delete images on site, I can rely on recovery software later.

bnlearle wrote in post #4091140
I use a 12gb in my 1DMKIIN and an 8gb in my 40D. I've got 4 2gb's and almost never use them. I feel safer not changing out cards ever. I figure if/when it happens, since I don't ever delete images on site, I can rely on recovery software later.

One of my two CF failures could not even read the card at all. No computer would even recognize that it was there. It was like plugging in a piece of solid plastic. The camera wouldn't even identify it was there either.

I am surprised by the cavalier attitude towards card failure. Wedding photos are not something to fool around with.

That like never changing the oil in your car... and saying, "when the engine blows up, I'll rely on my mechanic to rebuild the entire engine." Well, some engines are NOT salvageable, much like CF cards. You really wanna lose 8 GB of photos?

One of the BEST photographers in the interior BC area used an 8GB card. After it failed, $5000 and many totally unrecoverable files later, he vowed never to use a card that big again. I'm just surprised that many are just waiting for it to blow up in your face before doing something to prevent it.
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I have 2 8GB cards, 1 4GB card, and 4 2GB cards. I started off with the 8GB cards and I've been slowly working my way down to smaller size cards. The reality is that no matter what brand you purchase they all have the same chance to fail. My favorite brand is Ridata.

I have a friend shooting with a 5D and various Lexar cards 8GB, 4GB, and 2GB, he's never had an issue. Lloyd you can probably ask for smaller cards when you have them replaced by Sandisk.

picturecrazy wrote in post #4091249
One of my two CF failures could not even read the card at all. No computer would even recognize that it was there. It was like plugging in a piece of solid plastic. The camera wouldn't even identify it was there either.

I am surprised by the cavalier attitude towards card failure. Wedding photos are not something to fool around with.

That like never changing the oil in your car... and saying, "when the engine blows up, I'll rely on my mechanic to rebuild the entire engine." Well, some engines are NOT salvageable, much like CF cards. You really wanna lose 8 GB of photos?

One of the BEST photographers in the interior BC area used an 8GB card. After it failed, $5000 and many totally unrecoverable files later, he vowed never to use a card that big again. I'm just surprised that many are just waiting for it to blow up in your face before doing something to prevent it.
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You say that Lloyd but you also dont say that you backup cards before leaving the venue so I am guessing you dont ?. I think anyone who doesnt backup before leaving the venue is being cavailier and I dont understand why more people dont do it, if the first thing you do when you get home is backup your cards then you may as well just stay at the venue another half hour and do it there surely.

We all stand a lot more chance of being able to recover from a card failure situation if we know we have an issue before we leave the venue and personally I would feel very nervous leaving a wedding with only one copy of the images, having dupes on 2 different media before leaving a venue feels much more secure. Surely being able to do this is one of the advantages of digital that we should all be exploiting rather than carrying on as if we were still shooting film and waiting to see if what we shot was ok ?

Regards your car servicing comparison, your car needs servicing every 2000 miles and stops if it goes past 2000 so you have a smallish window when it must be serviced, mine needs servicing every 4000 miles and I get it serviced around 2000 when its most convinient and secure for me to do so.

Touch wood I havent had a card failure at a wedding yet but ive had some on P&S cameras before I started doing weddings and I hear yah on the lump of plastic because I have had that one myself also, nothing would recover them and that was also a decent branded card. I have had failures where I have been able to recover the files also.

Regards everyone else I think it really helps if you have a good system for your cards so each one of ours is numbered so any sign of an issue we can identify the card straight away and pull it out of use, we always format every card in camera before each wedding and we never delete images as we shoot... thats definitely a bad idea imo and likely to cause you problems.

I use a p3000 to backup all images on the day, also I leave them on the card too just in case.

Banbert wrote in post #4092317
You say that Lloyd but you also dont say that you backup cards before leaving the venue so I am guessing you dont ?. I think anyone who doesnt backup before leaving the venue is being cavailier and I dont understand why more people dont do it, if the first thing you do when you get home is backup your cards then you may as well just stay at the venue another half hour and do it there surely.

We all stand a lot more chance of being able to recover from a card failure situation if we know we have an issue before we leave the venue and personally I would feel very nervous leaving a wedding with only one copy of the images, having dupes on 2 different media before leaving a venue feels much more secure. Surely being able to do this is one of the advantages of digital that we should all be exploiting rather than carrying on as if we were still shooting film and waiting to see if what we shot was ok ?

There's being careful and then there's paranoia, and I would disagree with your opinion re backing up on site. In my opinion it's not necessary, as CF is way more robust than HDD. Staying at the venue won't help if a card failed, the chance of reshooting at that point of a reception is minimal. I take all reasonable precautions but this isn't one I agree with.

Remember film? There was only one negative. Sometimes film was loaded incorrectly, or the lab messed it up or lost it.

As an aside i've read about a wedding photographer who has two cars in case his primary one had a problem, but that seems way over the top. Personally i'd just take a taxi or rent for the day.

tim wrote in post #4092371
There's being careful and then there's paranoia, and I would disagree with your opinion re backing up on site. In my opinion it's not necessary, as CF is way more robust than HDD. Staying at the venue won't help if a card failed, the chance of reshooting at that point of a reception is minimal. I take all reasonable precautions but this isn't one I agree with.

Remember film? There was only one negative. Sometimes film was loaded incorrectly, or the lab messed it up or lost it.

As an aside i've read about a wedding photographer who has two cars in case his primary one had a problem, but that seems way over the top. Personally i'd just take a taxi or rent for the day.

Obviously solid state is more robust than something thats got moving parts like a HDD but you cant possibly argue that having them in 2 places before you leave doesnt give you even more protection plus its not just a backup its a verification that you have the images.

Even if its just a minimal chance of reshooting when you discover a card failure its still a better chance than what you would hve if you were at home when you discovered it.

I dont see anything unreasonable about having the images on my laptop before I leave the venue and it fits in very nicely with the other things we do on the day anyway so its no hassle to me and its definitely one of the benefits of digital to be exploited imo.

Each to their own though of course, I am sure some peeps will be sat there reading this thinking were all crazy for shooting weddings without 1D's that write to multiple cards, whats reasonable to one person isnt reasonable to another.

There's no harm backing up on site, little risk, and some possible benefits, if it makes you feel safer then definitely do it

I'm with Nick (Banbert) here and everything he says - we backup onsite as we go at convenient moments - first opportunity is usually during wedding breakfast when people are eating and we copy cards to laptop ready to sort out slideshow for the evening. We always have 2 copies of everything when we leave, all original cards plus backups on laptop or Jobo GigaOne.

But Ann and I also try to cover ourselves more by both shooting key things which are tricky to recreate. Take the ceremony, unless 4 cameras/cards failed at once, worst case is we'd lose one angle.

We also have 2 cars, for the same reason - backup - trying to get a taxi in a hurry can be a pain in the UK (outside of London) never mind trying to rent a vehicle in a rush.

Up to you whether you call it paranoia or being prepared!

Rob

I am one of those people who understand the need for being prepared. In school if I did anything (which I did) I always got caught. Now if something bad can happen I want to be prepared for it. I am hesitant in using large cards---because if something goes wrong---my who day of shooting could be shot. If I have nothing to show the customer---it will me some VERY long days ahead "trying" to recover.

I do think that I am a time that I need to take a 10K foot perspective from above look at what I do and evaluate if I can do things better in this portion of my business. I think there is a lot of room for improvement.

Customers are hard enough to book. I want to make sure that some dumb card problem doesn't kill it. Loosing the card is an option---probably for me the odds are in favor of this one. So in order to take the card and make a quick copy what is my best option???? (take into consideration that in most cases I do not want to do this through my laptop)

Mario. wrote in post #4089074
They already exist. Put the CF card in, push the copy button, and let it go.

Can someone point me to the external hard drive that has this?? I can't seem to find it.

The capacity of cards is going to grow......I think we can all agree on this. Eventually we will not be able to buy 2gig cards anymore (I remeber the day when I bought a super fast computer with 150megs of ram!---woohoo) so eventually the cards will be huge. For me the best solution might be to get the larger card but copy it---back it up---throughout the day in the external drive.

stathunter wrote in post #4092966
Can someone point me to the external hard drive that has this?? I can't seem to find it.

There are several - Jobo GIGAone that we have is one of them.
http://www.jobo.com …al/giga_one/gb/​index.html

Rob

Thanks Rob!

This gets discussed fairly often here. My philosophy on this is the less you fiddle with changing cards and lenses the better-that's when problems start (or have done for me.) I had a card fail (but retrieved all photos later) and I'm almost sure it was due to my fiddling/impatience/ru​shing with all the changing lenses and cards etc. Downloading photos durig a wedding to me would be only adding to the clutter and linited headspace I have for anything else other than the event - I would freak-out to find that a card had failed half-way through. Would you tell the B&G? and then try to re-shoot whatever you missed? This could really upset them.To carry on shooting without knowing what caused would be a extremely difficult. I'd much rather find out after all had been done. I have confidence in genuine sandisk cards and also have confidence in good data recovery companies. This is my take - we all have our systems I suppose.

regards

Damian

stathunter wrote in post #4092966
Can someone point me to the external hard drive that has this?? I can't seem to find it.

SEE POST 2.