Digital photography savings…

Slightly off topic, but related……

Does anyone use any photo cataloging software? I was thinking of getting Adobe Photoshop Album v.2 (apparently v.1 was quite buggy but v.2 is better). Has anyone tried this or got any other recommendations?

Thanks.

Originally posted by Snapper
Can you print 40 6×4 prints for £7.99 at home? Do you need the hassle? Take a card into a lab like mine, or any Boots / Jessops that has a digital lab, and you’ll get prints that will (hopefully) beet home printed stuff on both price and quality.

At 7.99 for 20 sheets which will take three 6×4 on each its worth the hassle. Go for slightly thinner grade paper and you con get 25 sheets for the same price. I don’t know where she gets it from but my wife buys our photo paper at 6.99 for 20 sheets

Would anyone care to elaborate a little further on best printing methods and equipment used, also which labs are the best in your opinions ?

Cheers

OK Goat boy you sold the idea to me, been out and spent £1,200 on a 10D with grip, took your advice on Jessops, their advert says if you can get if cheaper locally then they’ll refund the difference, why would you want the hassle to go to Jessops just for them to refund the difference on a camera that you’ve bought cheaper somewhere else anyway. Saved £49 against their price and £24 on the price of the grip. I’m well happy, so much so I bought a 1GB card for the camera as well.

Never had these consistent focusing problems with my Nikon F4 or (company) F5, those I know who used the EOS1 swore by it – even with the cheaper ‘amateur’ EOS’s there were few complaints; my first A/F camera was a Pentax SFXn and yes, it was slow but it had a ‘snap’ in focus mode which didn’t allow it to fire unless the subject was sharp (and I would seriously think about hauling it out – if time wasn’t a factor).
If you fancy spending out £25,000-ish (I forget, it has been along time since I cared!) you could get yourself a ‘professional’ printing unit – price per print when I cared was 7p for a 7×5 not including chemistry, 18p for a 10×8. Personally I never printed every frame off a film; you should be able to see which image is worth the effort or not using the lightbox and magnifier – and digital should be the same, if not easier (you can tell I am not a happy holiday-snaps sort of person!).
Of course some will blame the high frames-per-second rate for their extravagant image count, but what with the cameras inability to be consistently in focus (even on static subjects) I have gotten into the habit of shooting three shots where I would previously shot one. Then it is a case of download to the hard drive and sort the rubbish from the, er, other rubbish before it gets burned to several CDs and some sort of archival system which the IT department probably know very little about. My personal work very rarely gets the honour of every image being burned – there is too much wastage and/or duplication.

What a depressing subject…

Flood.

Can you print 40 6×4 prints for £7.99 at home? Do you need the hassle? Take a card into a lab like mine, or any Boots / Jessops that has a digital lab, and you’ll get prints that will (hopefully) beet home printed stuff on both price and quality.

Prints need not be as expensive as Lab processing if you have a printer and shop around to get the best pprice for photo quality paper

To keep files as long as possible, it is probably a good idea to buy hard drives as you need them, then back the contents up to tape or other hard drives on a regular basis.

The best and safest way is to use 5 hard drives in a RAID 5 array (3 drives is the minimum for this configuration). This will ensure there are always two physical copies of any one file, and drives can be swapped out should one fail without any loss of data and in a suitably equipped file server, without even turning off the computer!

Even if other hardware fails, such as the disk controller hardware, nothing is lost. In more expensive systems, even disk controllers can have automatic fall back – probably a little beyond the budget of most, though.

If you’re files are being kept for professional purposes, then this really is cheap compared to the cost of storing the film and paper even when you throw in the cost of a database program to log, record and access them, when worked out on a per picture basis.

NetWare allows deleted files to be recovered some years later, if the drive has plenty of empty space. An adjustable percentage of the drive can be allocated to deleted file storage – which automatically purges if space becomes tight.

Such hardware is much much cheaper now, and well within the budget of any small business.

If anyone needs help in this area, then please don’t hesitate to contact me. Private Messaging is turned on!

Oooh, you wanna replace them Flood. Digital SLR’s have moved on a LONG way since the D1.

I think the magic number is supposedly 6mp for 35mm – however, my 6.3mp 10D I would judge to be around the equivalent to a 645 bit of film in terms of print quality. And the dust / processing concerns are no longer a factor.

Since getting my 10D I have only used film when stipulated for jobs done for others – 1 guy so it would match his Hasselblad in terms of colour balance on that particular job, the other because he doesn’t trust digital. Fair enough. For me? I just don’t feel the need tio use my 5 35mm bodies, or even bother with my 6×9. And I agree with the light meter comparisons – NO WAY!

Colour and contrast is far cleaner for printing, the whole image is just more accurate, and colour rendition is too. No more correction filters for Flourescent / tungsten / Sodium lighting etc.

Yes, I miss film but not enough to use it again! (With the exception of Technical Pan and Colour infrared).

Dunno about anyone else but I would – at times, usually of great stress – go back to film at the drop of a hat. D&P costs, fine. REPAIRS… Hmm. I have a Nikon D1, been back for a replacement shutter-gate 3 times in two years, burned out 4 batteries – 2 inside a month (at £90 each…), never looks sharp even after servicing (camera and 3 lenses – £1600!), hates highlights and shadow, is unpredictable against backlighting (thank goodness for the monitor), seems to have a different value for 1/125th at f5.6 (for example) compared to my light meter and F4, and catches dust on the chip face the moment you change the lens. In addition it was obviously not designed for constant use – all the doors and panel hatches are so flimsy it is unbelievable and all the finger pads and rests appear to have been stuck on with sticky tape.
Good points?
Mine doesn’t suffer from noise and/or banding; we seem to have solved the problem of cards deciding they don’t contain any images when you know they should be stuffed (I only went through 3, but a colleague went through 9 and lost nearly everything from a royal visit whilst on rota!), and it still fits all those super long telephoto and ultra wide angle lenses that only companies can afford (you try getting a decent price for a Canon 500mm f2.8 or 600mm f3.5!).
It is not mine to replace – it’s a company thing and that means accountants get involved. I did hope that the D2 would be better but since our cameras seem to be going back around three times a year each for repairs and necessary servicing we have been told there is no budget for upgrades in the foreseeable future…
The best thing about everybody going digital is that the best film cameras are now very cheap on the used market – a free-lance I know got a recently Nikon serviced F4 for £250 in A1+ condition and 1 years guarantee, someone else got an F5 and the early Nikon autofocus 300mm f2.8, again both serviced, both in A1 condition, for £1000 the lot.

Flood.

Good point about digital costs all being up front, but I stiil don’t think it’s possible to compare like for like. I’ve got a 3 megapixel 2.8 x zoom digital, which I do find useful.
But what would the equivalent of my Olympus OM-2N SLR cost in digital? If I don’t count the spare bodies, the camera and a couple of lenses new, second-hand motor drive, two dedicated flashes and five lenses stands me in just under 700 quid. Admittedly I bought carefully and not from dealers but I suspect the prices wouldn’t be close.
I know the latest Olympus digi 5 megapixel SLR was announced a couple of months ago in the States at $2200, body only. I understand, (from reading it somewhere, no experience or proof), that for film quality 11 megapixels is needed.

Snapper made a good point about re-archiving too. It’s been said recently that CD-R isn’t going to last indefinitely as we were told. I know I’ve scrapped a load in the last few years through leaving them where daylight could get at them and fade them. That’s my fault but it seems even if you put them away and keep them in the dark there’s no guarantee how long they’ll last.

Have now, hadn’t then. Problem was, I had to have the prints by the Friday, and this was, I think, the Tuesday night. I was in on the Thursday morning to reshoot. Oh for 10 minutes and a 30p disc!

OT – whats ‘currently’ the safest method of archiving digital media? I now have 4 copies of the TIFFs – 2 0n CD-R, 2 on DVD-R. Am now batch processing uncompressed Tiffs for two copies of one DVD holding all of them, plus however many CD’s, x2 again.

Then compressed down again onto 1 CD – 2 for me, and a few more to go out elsewhere.

That’ll give me plenty of copies, so should be ok on that – but surely there is a better and easier way?

“PS: Good point about backing up digital scans straight onto CD or DVD immediately.”

Lets just say that I pressed delete once, and scrolled to ‘All’ by accident. I then had to go back and re-do 150 school kids. I’d done some kids for work during the day, and a mutton-troll all tarted up in the evening. Now I back them up – or don’t touch the card until I do.

I went digital earlier this year but with a 2 megapixel Canon Powershot A-40, not a digital SLR which is *next* year’s purchase. I still use a 35mm SLR but only for wide-angle or moving shots which the digi can’t cope with. Has reduced my film processing by at least two thirds which realistically at £8 per film for both purchase and processing onto CD has saved some considerable money.

I do like your comment “I will typically take more than I would before – because I can, not because I need to” because I think digital allows you to experiment far more than film does. All the cost are up front – camera, 2 x 128 MB cards, batteries and charger – so anything I do from here is really paid for already; different angles, walk rounds, into light shots; all can be happily done and the results are immediately obvious.

On balance I think digital *is* cheaper in the long run however what I do love is the sheer flexibility that it gives me.

Michael Baldock

PS: Good point about backing up digital scans straight onto CD or DVD immediately.

Just be aware that there is an issue on DVD-R (or +r) as an archive medium. It is regarded in some areas as better to use DVD-RW. With video on -R/+R there are reports that after a number of plays (40?) the medium is breaking down.

Temperature seems to be a critical issue. |There again I have jet to have a issue – brand of burner/ disc may be important………….

Well I hate the labs

Having not gone digital yet I must say that I spend way too much money on photos that are thrown away. It’s a waste when they are printed. Not that too many of mine are bad (but some are).
And it’s not just in-flight turbulence or the dirty canopies that are to blame… 🙂