RAW or JPEG for longer travel, storage options?

[Suraj28]

Hi all,

I know I’m repeating a common RAW vs JPEG debate, but my concern here is long term travel storage and if it’s worth the extra benefits of shooting RAW. I have an a6000 which I’ll be backpacking with for about 2 months.

So far I do some small edits to JPEGs in Lightroom to learn the program, though it seems agreed RAWs give more freedom & flexibility. On a recent holiday I averaged 700-800 photos over 3 days. If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

Have people taken longer trips and managed storing RAWs easily? Or should I just accept ‘good enough’ JPEGs? Also I’m still a beginner so wouldn't really consider large prints and at most social media uploads, but I'm interested in the quality benefit & process.

 

[KCook]

You could always mix this up. Switch to RAW+JPG for those special shots. Leave it in JPG only for the breezy shots.

Kelly

 

[PJPfeiffer]

Hi all,

I know I’m repeating a common RAW vs JPEG debate, but my concern here is long term travel storage and if it’s worth the extra benefits of shooting RAW. I have an a6000 which I’ll be backpacking with for about 2 months.

So far I do some small edits to JPEGs in Lightroom to learn the program, though it seems agreed RAWs give more freedom & flexibility. On a recent holiday I averaged 700-800 photos over 3 days. If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

30+ days should fit on 1 Sandisk 64 GB

Will you shoot 700+ EVERY DAY?

 

[PJPfeiffer]

Duplicate SD cards

 

[LordKOTL]

Hi all,

I know I’m repeating a common RAW vs JPEG debate, but my concern here is long term travel storage and if it’s worth the extra benefits of shooting RAW. I have an a6000 which I’ll be backpacking with for about 2 months.

So far I do some small edits to JPEGs in Lightroom to learn the program, though it seems agreed RAWs give more freedom & flexibility. On a recent holiday I averaged 700-800 photos over 3 days. If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

Have people taken longer trips and managed storing RAWs easily? Or should I just accept ‘good enough’ JPEGs? Also I’m still a beginner so wouldn't really consider large prints and at most social media uploads, but I'm interested in the quality benefit & process.

I think it depends on a lot of factors, including what you're willing to carry with you, as well as the transfer medium (i.e. USB, Wifi, Cell Data).

Both of the other posters have great suggestions that IMHO shouldn't be dismissed. Personally, I think the Duplicator might be the way to go.

Here are a couple methods I've used in the past-which might not be worth the effort:

1. Get a USB OTG adapter, a small USB hub, a USB SD reader, and a small portable HDD. Plug the HDD as well as the SD card+reader into the hub, the hub into the OTG adapter, and the adapter into a phone/tablet (Android and Windows work--i can't speak for Apple products). Copy the files using the tablet/phone interface since the SD card and the HDD should show up as separate drives. The cons for this is (a) Drains the battery of the phone/tablet unless you get a powered hub and (b) carrying around everything you need. Using an OTG adapter means you can't change at the same time unless you have multiple USB ports on the phone/Tablet.
2. Same setup, except no hub or HDD--use the phone/tablet to upload the files to a cloud service of your choice. Cons are needing a good robust Data plan or good robust Wifi (or paying for it), and again, can't charge your phone while using an OTG adapter. Transfer rates, especially for hundreds of photos, might last all night if not longer.

I hope this helps somewhat. Happy shooting and good luck on your backpacking trip!

 

[Michael Fryd]

Do you expect every photo to be a work of art, or are some of them just snapshots of your vacation?

For snapshots, JPEG is probably good enough. Truthfully, JPEG will probably be good enough for social media.

For other photos, RAW files will allow you greater latitude in fixing difficult exposure, or making artistic adjustments.

The good news is that you can switch back and forth. JPEG for snapshots, RAW for something you hope will be good enough to hang on your wall.

Another option is to shoot JPEG, and then look at the image on the LCD screen. If the JPEG looks good, you're done. If not, you can reshoot RAW.

Obviously, the trick is finding the right compromise for you. If you absolutely want to maximize quality, buy a handful of 128GB SD cards, and shoot everything RAW.

I am going to mention something, which some people find appalling. I know professional photographers that only shoot JPEG. They get the exposure right in the camera. Adjust lighting so they don't need to worry about shadows, and do minimal post processing. They shoot products, model portfolios, etc. While other workflows may result in "better" quality, their clients are thrilled with the results.

Obviously, a lot depends on what you're shooting. If you can get it right in the camera, you won't see as much of a difference by shooting RAW. If it's a challenging situation (high dynamic range), it may be difficult to get a good looking in-camera JPEG, and having a RAW file will make a noticeable difference.

You may want to geotag you photos. If you have a GPS that can create a log file, you can geotag the photos after the fact. There are a number of programs that will geotag your images based on the GPS log. Just make sure you have your camera set for the correct time.

 

[Bradrobb]

Hi

I have the A6000 and I never shoot raw. My wife went to Europe with the RX100 and shoot jpeg and came home with great pictures.

If you do not want to carry a laptop you should look at this hard drive to back up your pictures on your trip.

WiFi Passport Hard Drive

Brad

 

[Tom_N]

If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

You can get portable photo backup devices that have built-in hard drives or SSDs, card slots, and the ability to copy photos to and from cards. They weigh less than a laptop, and are smaller than one, but are not cheap.

A small tablet and an external USB hard drive or two might be another possibility. The iPad has a very nice screen, but does not provide direct access to the filesystem or the ability to act as an arbitrary USB host. At 7.5 GB/day (250 photos * 30 MB/photo), you would exhaust the internal Flash storage of an iPad long before two months were up. But an Android tablet plus external hard drives might be a possibility.

7.5 GB/day * 60 days = 450 GB of data. So two or three 1 TB hard drives ought to do it; one to store the originals; the others to store backups. (You don't want to get back and find that the hard drive with the only copies of your photos has suffered a head crash!)

(There are a few 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB USB flash drives, but the flash drives that are for real are expensive, e.g., $260 for a name-brand 512 GB USB 3.0 flash drive.)

 

[Michael Fryd]

...

You can get portable photo backup devices that have built-in hard drives or SSDs, card slots, and the ability to copy photos to and from cards. They weigh less than a laptop, and are smaller than one, but are not cheap.

A small tablet and an external USB hard drive or two might be another possibility. The iPad has a very nice screen, but does not provide direct access to the filesystem or the ability to act as an arbitrary USB host. At 7.5 GB/day (250 photos * 30 MB/photo), you would exhaust the internal Flash storage of an iPad long before two months were up. But an Android tablet plus external hard drives might be a possibility.

7.5 GB/day * 60 days = 450 GB of data. So two or three 1 TB hard drives ought to do it; one to store the originals; the others to store backups. (You don't want to get back and find that the hard drive with the only copies of your photos has suffered a head crash!)

(There are a few 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB USB flash drives, but the flash drives that are for real are expensive, e.g., $260 for a name-brand 512 GB USB 3.0 flash drive.)

A medium performance Sandisk 128GB SD Card is about $46 from Amazon. That's $184 for 512GB worth of SD cards. This might be enough to store all your images.

Four SD cards are small and lightweight. Much smaller and lighter than a hard drive. If you are backpacking, weight and size might be significant issues.

You can reuse the SD cards on later trips, or sell them on eBay after your trip.

 

[Mystery member]

I know I’m repeating a common RAW vs JPEG debate, but my concern here is long term travel storage and if it’s worth the extra benefits of shooting RAW. I have an a6000 which I’ll be backpacking with for about 2 months.

So far I do some small edits to JPEGs in Lightroom to learn the program, though it seems agreed RAWs give more freedom & flexibility. On a recent holiday I averaged 700-800 photos over 3 days. If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

Have people taken longer trips and managed storing RAWs easily? Or should I just accept ‘good enough’ JPEGs? Also I’m still a beginner so wouldn't really consider large prints and at most social media uploads, but I'm interested in the quality benefit & process.

The a6000 has 3 user memory settings, and the obvious solution is to have one memory dedicated to JPEG+RAW, while the other memories can be for everyday shooting.

When I have been traveling, I never saw the need to shoot RAW, and I have now completely abandoned the practice. Particularly with the a6000, exposure etc. is never a problem.

I also carry a 10" computer (sometimes called a 'NetBook') that only weighs 1Kg and has 300Gb storage. My usual procedure is to download the daily shots and preview them as I relax after a long day.

 

[Dareshooter]

Hi all,

I know I’m repeating a common RAW vs JPEG debate, but my concern here is long term travel storage and if it’s worth the extra benefits of shooting RAW. I have an a6000 which I’ll be backpacking with for about 2 months.

So far I do some small edits to JPEGs in Lightroom to learn the program, though it seems agreed RAWs give more freedom & flexibility. On a recent holiday I averaged 700-800 photos over 3 days. If I shot RAW each would be 25-30mb, needing a lot of SD cards for 2 months and I don’t really want to bring a laptop too.. though I guess I’d need a hard drive to transfer at hotels/cafes.

30+ days should fit on 1 Sandisk 64 GB

Will you shoot 700+ EVERY DAY?

If shooting raw or raw + jpeg 1 64 GB card may not be enough but for jpeg that should be fine. I would suggest though that the OP slow down and take less pictures per day going for quality over quantity thereby reducing the need for both storage and post processing.Just my honest opinion but I rarely shoot more than a hundred per day on vacation, other people's mileage may vary.

 

[Flac_Vest]

1) That's a lot of shots per day. Is this total, including burst? Or the actual number of individual, unique shots? I shoot at a low burst rate (3.5 FPS) and shoot 2-3 shots per exposure, regardless of a static subject. Then when I get back, I save the best one out of the 2/3. My heaviest day was at a Zoo in which I shot 1k pictures; 2/3'rds of them were from burst and ended the day at around 300 RAW.

2) Regardless, I'd just shoot RAW and buy more memory cards. Right now I just use a single 64 gig card that can hold ~3k RAW from my 16MP OLY EM-10. If I were going on a big trip like that, I'd just buy 3-4 of those cards, label them with tape, and shoot to my heart's content. Save the cards in my wallet and hope to not lose the wallet.

3) Don't do network backups; that's expensive and slow. I'd also stay away from HDDs, as they can fail, especially when put in a backpack and lugged around for months at a time. SSDs are better, but more costly, and you'll need a laptop to connect and move things around. It's just another thing to break or lost/stolen.

4) When I travel to some place that's not an enclosed park or something, I like to carry my camera with lens, 1 extra lens max, if any, and everything else is either pocketable or disposable. If you're coming back to a hotel and can leave gear in a safe place you'll want to travel light; SD cards wedged in your wallet with a couple of spare batteries in a pocket is perfect.