I think you are misunderstanding the basics, and maybe others are too.
I used to spend �450 a year just on insuring printing files. I have just spent �250 on a a new 250Gb HD which will store dozens of times that amount of information. That insured information is now covered by just 43 CDs. I can fit a whole book on just two or three CDs. My savings on shipping and insuring imposed printing film at �100+ a time is considerable. The cost of CDs is immaterial and I will still use them when I can.
However I also shoot on extended travel trips where I envisage digital capture creating prodigious amounts of material. A laptop, which is considered essential for downloading files, is an obvious theft target. Unlike exposed film for instance. Doing some kind of backup which is easily created and shipped back to base is an important consideration. I'm not sure how you spend your days after shooting before dawn and after sunset several days in a row but I get exhausted and would probably not be up to making meticulous copies onto CD. Dumping whole folders onto HD strikes me as being much easier. Because of the space and time savings I see it as an alternative to CDs under certain conditions.
I know one French photographer who spends his lunch hours on location with his laptop plugged in to a socket near his table editing and archiving his pictures while he eats. I know another UK who shot over 800 1ds files in three days in pouring rain and a muddy field.
Film was easy. We just put it in a polythene bag and sorted it later in a warm office over a lightbox. Digital capture requires something different and I was just asking for other's ideas.
Yours
Bob
On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 07:57 pm, Bill Martin wrote:
Just out of curiousity:
Is this some kind of RACE??
Mailing a CD or even many CD's is still cheaper and SAFER for the digital information than sending a 3-5 pound HD.
HD's are still much more prone to "Murphy's Law" events than a CD. IF the CD is lost, destroyed, damaged, you are out of pocket pennies, not $$$$ or ����'s for a HD.
I don't know what you guys are doing, but I use Fujifilm high-end CD's, have been using them for more than 3 years, have not had one of them EVER not verify, have never lost data and I DON'T burn "slowly and safely" taking 17 minutes for a burn. I burn at 12X speed and NEVER had a problem in thousands of CD's burned. As a Sys Admin of a 25 member staff, with several other members of the staff burning in exactly the same way, the Department has never had a CD Read/Write failure.
Purchased in bundles of 200 CD's, the price drops to about 19 cents apiece.
What little extra time it takes to actually "burn" the CD's is time to take a "get up and stretch" break, anyway.
Or maybe I just don't understand the true problem under discussion here.
Bill
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