how do you manage images away from home

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Fordsabroad

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Name
Gordon
Edit My Images
Yes
I am not particularly good at organising my workflow in general and could do with some advice/guidance please. Everything I take is for pleasure so there is no financial penalty if I get things wrong (IE lose images.)
I use LR Classic, store all my images on an external hard drive and am bad at culling them but that is a different issue. Next month I am going to Alaska for 10 days to photograph eagles on the salmon run. I could well shoot up to 1000 image a day on a 1dx mk11 using both the 64GB Cfast card and a 64GB CF card. I am loathe to buy too many extra cards as they will not get used that often.
I will have a powerful small laptop with me (16GB Ram and 250GB SSD) which I will download the images to each night (an external drive would also be an option). As time permits I will work on these images, discarding many on the way. My real question is this. What is the best way of getting these selected images and all their edits from my laptop to the external drive when I get home. Is it easy just to merge the catalogues? or should I try to get my current external hard drive to read on all computers and take that with me. I am well known for cocking things up so a simple way is probably the best route for me. I am aware that I could just keep them on the cards and download them on my return but this would mean that selection and edits would need to be done all over again.
 
I have my entire LR catalog and images on an external drive, including when I'm at home. This means I can share my catalog between my laptop and desktop easily, and I backup to a second external drive every night (assuming there have been changes of course).

When I'm away I import all images from that day to LR and the external drive. I don't delete any images from the card in case the external drive dies. Then when I get home I backup the external, then I can format the cards.

There are a few options for backing up on the go:
1) get a 2nd external drive and backup to that
2) get more SD cards so you don't need to format them
3) get an SD card backup device (I think WD Passport does it?) so you can format your cards
4) have an online backup - this is WIFI speed dependent!

Whatever the situation, I'd have my images in at least 2 places before deleting them from anywhere :)
 
Gordon, I have the same gear as you do : 1DX-2 and a laptop (MacBook Pro 256GB SSD). But I also have a LaCie Rugged 4TB USB-3 portable HD.

I use CaptureOne, not Lightroom and do all my RAW conversions (I only shoot RAW) only after my culled images are copied onto my iMac mothership.

So, my workflow (which I am hoping will help you) is as follows :

1) - Transfer my images from camera to laptop where I have created a folder or folders (1 folder per day titled as I want).

2) - View and first stage cull the images on my laptop in FastRawViewer (FRV is available for both Mac and Windows).

3) - Copy the culled images (assuming you have time to cull) to my 4TB LaCie HD for copying to my iMac when I return home. This also provides a backup.

If your laptop has 2 USB ports you can copy your image files directly from camera to external portable HD while both camera and external HD are connected but having 2 backups is safer than just 1.

This workflow means that I don't have to buy lots of very expensive large capacity CF/CFast camera cards - In fact I don't even have to remove either card from my 1DX-2 body.

Shooting wildlife on a full dawn-to-dusk day can easily result in 1,500 images if you are in the right place at the right time and with Lady Luck by your side!

Does this help?
 
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I have all of my images in Lightroom on my iMac at home. However when I go travelling I take a laptop, which also has Lightroom (and all my presets etc) installed. My workflow is:

  1. Create a new catalog for the trip I am on. (Say “Alaska2018”)
  2. Each day I download my photos into Lightroom and do basic editing etc.
  3. After downloading images I back up my laptop to an external HDD. This drive is kept away from my laptop. It come out with me during the day and goes in checked luggage for flight home etc.
  4. Once images are in 2 places clear down cards if needed.
  5. When I get home I use the “import from another catalog” feature in Lightroom to import the photos, leaving them in their current location.
  6. I then move them to the correct folder on my iMac from within Lightroom (this is after experiencing problems letting Lightroom manage this in the past).
  7. Run backups on iMac.
  8. Clear files/catalog from laptop ready for my next trip.
 
Thanks for all your replies, they have helped enormously and clarified what I need to do. RedRobin, I have downloaded a trial copy of FRV and am working out how to use it best, the manual is huge so I think youtube is the way to go for basic instructions. I am sure that I will not need all of the functions it provides. From your experience is it really that much faster than culling in LR?
 
Fordsabroad said:
Thanks for all your replies, they have helped enormously and clarified what I need to do. RedRobin, I have downloaded a trial copy of FRV and am working out how to use it best, the manual is huge so I think youtube is the way to go for basic instructions. I am sure that I will not need all of the functions it provides. From your experience is it really that much faster than culling in LR?
Click to expand...

.... Hi Gordon, sorry I haven't replied sooner, I must have missed the Reply alert.

Yes, the manual is a nightmare and looks like it was written back in the days of clunky Windoze < Over complicated and doubtless written by the guy whose talent is in creating the software code rather than having an Applesque objective overview.

I don't use Lightroom but I think your question is more whether culling is faster in the post-processing editor or in FRV. I haven't done any stopwatch tests (and don't intend to!) but they seem to take a very similar time to write the thumbnails. The trick to speed it up is to load your original image files from your camera into different titled/dated folders - Obviously a folder containing a session of 300 images will load for viewing and culling much faster than a 1,500 images folder.

Whereas using FRV is an extra step in the workflow it is very convenient and efficient in allowing you to delete unwanted image files - RAW files are about 5x the size of JPEGS as you know.

I use Capture One but only on my desktop Mac when at home and not on my laptop (although the license allows). To save storage space I do all my first step culling with colour coding in FRV from either an external LaCie Rugged 4TB or on my 13" MacBook Pro laptop which has a large SSD fitted. I can then connect my LaCie to my desktop 27" Mac and view all the files in FRV again but RAW images look very dull in FRV as they are not converted yet. Consequently I find that some of the colour-coded culls get deleted as a second step when viewed much larger and more clearly.

HTH
 
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Hi Robin
Thanks for your reply, most helpful. I will be taking an external drive with me and will download to there and do an initial cull.
 
Another option for an additional backup these days is to use your phone.

When we updated our phones earlier this month we got 256GB models so we could do this in the field if needed, 512GB models are available too!
 
Unlocker said:
Another option for an additional backup these days is to use your phone.

When we updated our phones earlier this month we got 256GB models so we could do this in the field if needed, 512GB models are available too!
Click to expand...

.... That's a very good point and some cameras can be set up with a mobile phone (or even possibly iPad) to automatically back-up/copy images wirelessly via WiFi. The Canon app enables this for example. But personally I'm not inclined to rely on any WiFi connections being consistently stable.
 
I travel a bit and as memory is so cheap I just take extra cards with me. Saves taking laptops and hard drives
 
RedRobin said:
.... That's a very good point and some cameras can be set up with a mobile phone (or even possibly iPad) to automatically back-up/copy images wirelessly via WiFi. The Canon app enables this for example. But personally I'm not inclined to rely on any WiFi connections being consistently stable.
Click to expand...

I have a usb adapter for mine and use the cable that came with the camera to directly connect the 2 devices so I can copy straight from the card, I’m not inclined to rely on WiFi here either!

Only downside is that iPhones seem to be USB2 but my iPad Pro is USB3. The phone is always on me though.
 
Culling takes time, and external hard drives are still getting smaller outside and bigger inside, and cheaper, with every passing year. Costing my time, working out how much money it takes me to check and delete say 1GB of photographs, and then what 1GB of external hard drive space costs, I realised that I'd actually be saving a lot of money by not bothering to cull, just archiving everything.
 
wave01 said:
I travel a bit and as memory is so cheap I just take extra cards with me. Saves taking laptops and hard drives
Click to expand...

.... CFast and CF cards don't come cheap when you need a minimum of 68Mb each to record to! Such fast cards are needed when you sometimes fire bursts @14fps at wildlife in action.

Tough and fast writing SDXC UHS-II cards don't come cheap either.

Copying your day's recorded images to a laptop and also an external drive each evening when travelling gives you a double backup (and an opportunity to view your efforts at larger size before first stage culling).
 
TBH if you're shooting that many images a day, I'd be surprised if you have much time for processing after you've culled.

My approach would be to load all the files daily onto the laptop and copy across to an external drive. After that I would cull on the laptop (because 256GB is tiny) but leave ALL the images on the external drive 'just in case'. Working in LR, you can move sidecar files for any edits you do perform across to your desktop when uploading.

Normally I do this 'double-backup' just leaving the files on the camera cards & laptop drive, but I normally 'only' produce 1000-2000 images from a 2 week holiday.
 
ancient_mariner said:
TBH if you're shooting that many images a day, I'd be surprised if you have much time for processing after you've culled.

My approach would be to load all the files daily onto the laptop and copy across to an external drive. After that I would cull on the laptop (because 256GB is tiny) but leave ALL the images on the external drive 'just in case'. Working in LR, you can move sidecar files for any edits you do perform across to your desktop when uploading.

Normally I do this 'double-backup' just leaving the files on the camera cards & laptop drive, but I normally 'only' produce 1000-2000 images from a 2 week holiday.
Click to expand...

.... As said in my Reply #3, I don't do any RAW conversion and processing until I have returned home and on my 27" iMac so I can then really see what I have done.

On an average day out photographing wildlife (I rarely shoot anything else) I probably come home with about 300 images but on a good full dawn-til-dusk day I can shoot 1,500 and such days are often while I am away from home on a particular mission.

I format my cards soon after I know they have been successfully copied.

Although I have recently bought a Sony 'Tough' card for one of my camera bodies and they have 18X Durability Waterproof certification, I prefer not to be taking cards in and out of my camera while outdoors in the weather.

What you do, how often and how you do it tends to depend on what sort of photography you do.
 
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