Digital Photo Storage Devices

Choosing Reliable Digital Photo Storage Devices is Important

Digital Photo Storage

Wouldn’t you like to know that your digital photo storage devices will take care of things for you? Regardless of whether you are an amateur or pro. You may spend hours, days or even weeks taking some great shots only to have your storage media give up on you.

Modern devices (even the aging iPod Touch 4G) have such incredible Retina display screen. They are easily good enough to show your portfolio to clients on! Also, be sure to check out our review of the cool Amazon Kindle Fire HD…nice!

You have spent good, hard-earned money on camera equipment only to skimp on the media. It is like spending millions building a grand museum, only to hold jumble sales in it! Well, maybe that is a bit harsh, but I have a point here. Did you ever do the shameful thing done by most of us at some point? Open the back of a camera only to realise it still has film in it!

Makes my stomach churn to think about it, thankfully it never happened during a wedding.

The nearest thing to this in digital photography, is to erase all your photos from the memory card accidentally. In my early days of digital photography, I had someone do that to my camera whilst they were "playing" with it. Luckily, I had recently read an article on how to retrieve deleted files from digital photo storage devices.

In fact, you may not know this, but you CAN actually retrieve ALL the photos you have ever taken on one card. No matter how many times you have formatted it! See the link above for details of this all important software. If you are seriously into digital photography, you need some backup should the worst happen!

How would spending more help me here?

Buying cheap storage media is similar to buying cheap cassette tapes way back when. They were the first to make that strange noise as your tape player methodically "chewed" up the music tape you had lovingly recorded just weeks earlier.

The better compact flash card manufacturers, like Lexar for example, give a lifetime guarantee on their professional range. Like anything, you get what you pay for. More gigabytes and faster speeds cost a bit more but are worth it.

So what digital photo storage devices would YOU recommend?

This depends entirely on your situation, camera type and amount of use it gets. Here are some examples;

  • Old 2-4 MP camera used occasionally at parties, events and family gatherings - Memory of 256MB or above with write speed of 12x or above. This will hold over 100 photos on the highest quality setting and allow your camera to reset quickly after each shot. When did you last take 3 spare rolls of film to a party? Don’t forget you can also delete the bad ones! You couldn’t do that with film!
  • 4-6MP camera (compact or SLR or even camera phones) used as a carry around, at a friend's wedding or holiday etc - Either one 2GB card with write speeds of 24x or above (SanDisk Ultra or Lexar Professional), or 2 x 1GB cards of similar size and speed. Why 2? If one does falter, you have a back-up and no panic.
  • 6-8 MP and up to 15mp (Digital SLR) Serious hobbyist, semi-pro or professional - 4 or more 4GB Cards (or bigger, up to 32 GB) with write speeds of 300x and above. This will give you the write speed you need to keep your camera firing, even with HD video, capacity for 000’s of photos and the back-up of a few cards.
  • 15-23 MP and up (semi/pro DSLR) Wealthy hobbyist, semi-pro or professional - The megapixels grow, so does the need to store it. For these cameras (such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Mark III or Mark IV), I personally have 2 x 16gb cards, 2 x 8gb cards, and 8 x 4gb cards as well as all the smaller cards I “used” to use! With the introduction of HD video to these cameras, the write speed is very important…the faster, the better so again, go for 300x (60MB/s) or more!

Alternatives

However, one alternative and in my opinion a BETTER alternative, is to have just 5 or 6 decent memory cards and a portable digital photo storage device and viewer. Once you have read up a bit on these, you will see that a good digital photo storage device will become an invaluable piece of kit in your bag.

When I first used my good old Smartdisk Flashtrax in around 2005, I was at a big, country wedding. During a lull, I had just downloaded all the pics so far onto the device, and was running through the photographs to check for focussing etc.

Well, within minutes, I had a group crowded around me oohing and ahhing at some of the pics, and I am sure that it had an affect on the numbers of orders I got. A week after the wedding, I put a selection of photos together on a slideshow, and put it to music. I then loaded it onto the Flashtrax and took it to the parent’s house. They ordered 4 DVD’s there and then!

Excuse the pun, but the more "exposure" you give your work, the better you will do. Good digital photo storage and viewer will help you on your way. You may also like: More digital storage devices

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