19 Jul The Hidden Costs of a Photography Obsession
Last Friday we returned home from a four-week caravan holiday, having stayed at eight coastal locations in northern NSW and southern QLD, driven 3300 kilometers and taken approximately 2000 photos.
We travelled with a small group of friends for part of this Holiday. One of our travelling companions, Norm, noticed that I take a lot of photos and asked, “What is your hit rate?”. The relevant response was the percentage I normally want to show or publish. I suggested it could be as low as 1 in 50 (2%). So, what will be the hit rate for this trip?
No Ordinary Sand Castle – Noosa Beach QLD
I had hoped to post a photo blog for each destination, after reaching the next one, but soon discovered the hard drive on my laptop was full. So there was no easy way to process RAW photos (48 meg each) and upload them for blogs.
A rash purchase of another external hard drive was dismissed. I already had six individual, external hard drives full of my old photos at home; which makes finding, viewing, editing, culling and retrieval difficult and tedious. So as a temporary measure a few unwanted files were deleted from my laptop to make space for a small number of holiday photos.
View from Burleigh Heads, with the more glitzy parts of Qld’s Gold Caost in the background
Of course I always knew the time would come to deal with the storage issues, but why did it come at such an inconvenient time? In the past, available finance had been one impediment to solving the problem; unsatisfactory previous choices already mentioned had been a further discouragement. It was now time to purchase a large capacity, secure, “all-in-one” solution. But which product would do the job efficiently within my budget?
The Hillbilly Hilton on Noosa River QLD – Far too exclusive for us
On Saturday I ordered a LaCie 12TB 2big (dual 6TB), Thunderbolt 2, Raid capable, desktop storage system. Up to four more of these can be “daisy chained” as required for future expansion. Not exactly a cheap option. I hope I’ve made a suitable decision this time.
The new storage should arrive in about a week, then the transfer and processing of files will begin, plus some ruthless culling of old and new shots.
Reflections – Noosa Everglades QLD
I look forward to showing you a more extensive selection of holiday photos soon, spread over several “episodes”.
Until then, have fun and take Care.
John Weedon
Posted at 08:46h, 20 JulyHello Al,
Glad you’re home safe but you missed the stopover at Stockton. Maybe another time.
I enjoyed your blog and particularly the photos. Glad you practices at my sixtieth.
Here’s a challenge – why did you buy external drives? A cheaper option and faster would be to buy a desktop unit with several bays for internal 2 to 4TB drives all hooked to SATA 2 or 3 protocols. The desktop then becomes your main faster processing unit while the laptop is simply holiday storage and file editing on the fly.
Another challenge is your ‘need’ for storage. You and I do NOT have many more birthdays ahead and your kids are not going to go through terra bytes of old photos after your funneral. I have four big crates (650 x 450 x 500) of slides and when I’ve reached my use-by date my kids are not going to keep any but a few. So cull your treasured possessions down to a few that the kids might keep involving their memories and delete the rest.
As always our challenging friendship continues.
John (Weedon – just in case you had forgotten my surname 😉
K & B Gallagher
Posted at 09:49h, 20 JulyAlister and Maggie, I love all the material you have “mailed” to Bev and me, but have had the additional pleasure of self selectivity. You will realise therefore that I can not offer any advice to assist in your quest for cost efficency. My only assurance arises from the bliss and wonder which swamps my soul when I view the 3cm by3 cm photos I took with my Kodak Brownie of my young growing family in the 1950/60 ‘s. Be confident, Alister, your current and future portfolio will repay abundantly in years to come. Kevin.
lamela11
Posted at 19:34h, 10 AugustAl, Giles here under Luca’s log in. Take your time travel back to the year 1997 and check out the cost of an external 50pin Centronics SCSI drive. $100 a GB.
We were buying the 40GB. $4000!!
I can probably dig up a second hand one but I’d probably want $2000 for it as its antique value :0)
Great to see you the other night. Giles
alistairstravel
Posted at 20:11h, 10 AugustI wasn’t across external storage prices in 1997, but in year 2000 or there abouts, I remember 1 gb ATA flash card was $1000.
BTW I’ll pass on the second hand SCSI drive. SCSI to thunderbolt 2 adaptors are a little difficult to come by.
Kristy the annoying and young(er)
Posted at 22:00h, 18 AugustAl, go for the cloud.