What is your System for managing/storing your files?

[Philip Eihuyar]

What happens when your house or office burns down? If these HDs are not in different locations, you're SOL. (Thanks for the ref to Total Commander).

Backblaze.com , or another similar cloud solution, should be part of the backup plan for any valuable information, including our pix.

While it is an excellent idea to keep copies offsite, cloud solutions are not the only option.

• If your work and home are in different locatiotly, I believed ns, you can store one copy at work, and one at home.
• If you have a safe deposit box for important papers and/or valuables, you can store one copy in the safe deposit box.

Until quite recently, I believed the safest form of storage for any and all items of value was a bank deposite box. Then the Pacific Palisades fire (where I lived as a child) burned down. REALLY burned down. -And the bank's safety deposit boxes turned as well into ash. I would image that quite a few residents of that community were trusting that at least their most valued possessions were safe.

LA Fire Victims Scared About Valuables in Safe Deposit Box After Banks Burn Down

Fire victims are desperate to learn about the status of their treasured belongings that they stored in their bank's safe deposit boxes.

www.insideedition.com

 

[Hans Z]

...

For a unique ID most people go with a time stamp of when the photo was taken: YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS(+optional description).

...

I find there is a very useful advantage of using a sequence number (YYYYMMDD-SEQN) rather than a timestamp in my filenames. When discussing images from a shoot with a client, we can refer to images by simply the sequence number. My client can tell me that they want prints from images -023, -049, and -050.

I find that being able to refer to images by a short simple number makes communication easier. Sure, we could use 6 digit time stamps, but I think it's easier to use smaller numbers.

Of course, this is simply my personal preference.

This sounds like an additional and -as you say- useful way to relate to a client from a photoshoot. It requires an agreement and understanding of that procedure in your images taken (before the photoshoot?). The question I have, is, is this common for professional photographers to do or do most clients just want images that they have in their mind catogorised differently? And is this sequence number an automatic feature in the EXIF data? Or where?

I use Photo Mechanic to ingest the images. For location shoots, it ingests from the card. For studio shoots, the camera sends every image to my computer via FTP, and Photo Mechanic ingests it from the FTP folder.

As part of the ingest, Photo Mechanic renames the images to YYYYMMDD-SEQN, and adds any metadata that is common to the whole shoot. Photo Mechanic keeps track of the next sequence number to be used. Photo Mechanic can also take a folder of existing images, sort them by capture time, and rename them to my standard.

Once I have the image, I can do a first pass through the images, and mark the ones the client shouldn't see (For instance shots of grey cards). Photo Mechanic then produces a website of watermarked images, which I upload for the client to peruse.

If I didn't want the client to know that some images had been removed. I can renumber the images I want to show the client.

For simple studio shoots (like a headshot), the client can immediately review the images with me using Photo Mechanic and choose the one they want.

I specifically use time instead of sequence because I'm often shooting with more than one camera and would like the images in chronological order regardless of which camera I took them with.

When I am shooting with multiple cameras I ingest all the files into Photo Mechanic, click on "sort by Capture time", and then rename them as YYYYMMDD-SEQN.

However, if your tools don't have that functionality, I can understand why you may prefer to name according to time rather than a sequence number.

.

I also take a photo of a clock with each camera. The clock needs to have a second hand. Often I use my smart watch or smart phone. Both of those are synced to atomic time, and will be correct. By comparing the capture time in the EXIF data to the time shown on the clock, I can tell how far off the camera's clock was.

I pull up all the images from each camera, and go to that camera's picture of the clock. If the capture time in the file doesn't match the time shown on the clock, I type in the time shown on the clock, and Photo Mechanic will compute the appropriate offset, and correct the capture time for those images.

If I do this for all the cameras, I know that the capture time in every file is within a second of matching my reference clock.

Once corrected, I have Photo Mechanic sort all of the images by capture time. I can be confident they are now in chronological order, even if the clocks in the various cameras were wildly wrong.

I am impressed with the discipline and time this requires. Do you do this with all your captures or were you pulling our legs ?

 

[Michael Fryd]

...

For a unique ID most people go with a time stamp of when the photo was taken: YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS(+optional description).

...

I find there is a very useful advantage of using a sequence number (YYYYMMDD-SEQN) rather than a timestamp in my filenames. When discussing images from a shoot with a client, we can refer to images by simply the sequence number. My client can tell me that they want prints from images -023, -049, and -050.

I find that being able to refer to images by a short simple number makes communication easier. Sure, we could use 6 digit time stamps, but I think it's easier to use smaller numbers.

Of course, this is simply my personal preference.

This sounds like an additional and -as you say- useful way to relate to a client from a photoshoot. It requires an agreement and understanding of that procedure in your images taken (before the photoshoot?). The question I have, is, is this common for professional photographers to do or do most clients just want images that they have in their mind catogorised differently? And is this sequence number an automatic feature in the EXIF data? Or where?

I use Photo Mechanic to ingest the images. For location shoots, it ingests from the card. For studio shoots, the camera sends every image to my computer via FTP, and Photo Mechanic ingests it from the FTP folder.

As part of the ingest, Photo Mechanic renames the images to YYYYMMDD-SEQN, and adds any metadata that is common to the whole shoot. Photo Mechanic keeps track of the next sequence number to be used. Photo Mechanic can also take a folder of existing images, sort them by capture time, and rename them to my standard.

Once I have the image, I can do a first pass through the images, and mark the ones the client shouldn't see (For instance shots of grey cards). Photo Mechanic then produces a website of watermarked images, which I upload for the client to peruse.

If I didn't want the client to know that some images had been removed. I can renumber the images I want to show the client.

For simple studio shoots (like a headshot), the client can immediately review the images with me using Photo Mechanic and choose the one they want.

I specifically use time instead of sequence because I'm often shooting with more than one camera and would like the images in chronological order regardless of which camera I took them with.

When I am shooting with multiple cameras I ingest all the files into Photo Mechanic, click on "sort by Capture time", and then rename them as YYYYMMDD-SEQN.

However, if your tools don't have that functionality, I can understand why you may prefer to name according to time rather than a sequence number.

.

I also take a photo of a clock with each camera. The clock needs to have a second hand. Often I use my smart watch or smart phone. Both of those are synced to atomic time, and will be correct. By comparing the capture time in the EXIF data to the time shown on the clock, I can tell how far off the camera's clock was.

I pull up all the images from each camera, and go to that camera's picture of the clock. If the capture time in the file doesn't match the time shown on the clock, I type in the time shown on the clock, and Photo Mechanic will compute the appropriate offset, and correct the capture time for those images.

If I do this for all the cameras, I know that the capture time in every file is within a second of matching my reference clock.

Once corrected, I have Photo Mechanic sort all of the images by capture time. I can be confident they are now in chronological order, even if the clocks in the various cameras were wildly wrong.

I am impressed with the discipline and time this requires. Do you do this with all your captures or were you pulling our legs ?

I actually do this. The trick is to use the right tools so that it requires very little time or discipline.

In the usual case where I only used one camera, and the camera clock was correct, renaming the files is handed automatically by Photo Mechanic, and takes me no additional time.

If multiple cameras were involved, and the clocks were correct, it takes me about 30 seconds to sort the images by capture date, and then rename them YYYYMMDD-SEQN

If multiple cameras were used, their clocks were all off, and each has a photo of my watch, it adds about a minute to correct the times in all the captures. Then another 30 seconds to rename them with sequence numbers.

When I shoot in the studio, the camera transfers each image to my computer in real time. I connect to a nearby wall jack with a 25ft thin ethernet cable for fast transfer of 50 megapixel RAW+JPEG. Photo Mechanic grabs each image as it comes in, renames it, adds metadata, makes a backup to an external drive, and has it ready for preview. At any time, I can walk over to my computer, and I can review full resolution images from the shoot. Real time review is helpful when shooting product images with clients. I can get instant approval of a shot, and confidently move on to the next product.

It all sounds complicated, but it really takes very little time and effort. The trick is having the right software. Photo Mechanic was designed to handle exactly these sorts of tasks. I've been very happy with it.

I don't know whether or not there are other software packages that does this sort of thing. As Photo Mechanic meets my needs, I have never felt a need to look for something else.

 

[Hans Z]

Interesting Michael, thanks for taking the time to explain.
A few decades ago I used iMatch that was (and surely still is) an excellent asset management program and used a system with hierarchical keywords to keep track of everything. Nowadays with my stay in the Apple world, I keep it simple in Apple Photos that handles both my photos and videos. I go through Lightroom/Photoshop before I enter my final storage. But for years I was fascinated and even did some image database work in my professional life. Nowadays video is more interesting for me and therefore does not create as many separate items, just eats disk, hehe. So far I have not been dependent on having exact time control, within a few minutes has been sufficient for my use cases.

 

[Michael Fryd]

Interesting Michael, thanks for taking the time to explain.
A few decades ago I used iMatch that was (and surely still is) an excellent asset management program and used a system with hierarchical keywords to keep track of everything. Nowadays with my stay in the Apple world, I keep it simple in Apple Photos that handles both my photos and videos. I go through Lightroom/Photoshop before I enter my final storage. But for years I was fascinated and even did some image database work in my professional life. Nowadays video is more interesting for me and therefore does not create as many separate items, just eats disk, hehe. So far I have not been dependent on having exact time control, within a few minutes has been sufficient for my use cases.

When shooting with multiple cameras it can be nice to see the images in chronological order. If you are quickly switching back and forth between two cameras, or have multiple people shooting, you need to synchronize the timestamps in order to get a correct order.

The key is to make sure the error in the timestamps is smaller than the time between shots.

.

I also like to geotag all my images. Photo Mechanic allows me to select a group of images, pick a point on a map, and assign those coordinates to the images. I can also carry a GPS logger. Photo Mechanic can take that GPS log, match timestamps, and assign GPS coordinates to each image.

Ideally, when shooting in nature, I prefer a camera that automatically geotags the images as they are taken. Unfortunately, not all of my cameras have that ability.

 

[Kelemvor]

Have the Green copy locally connected with a background process that periodically updates the backup to match the master.

Every so often, take the local backup and swap it with the offsite backup. Your background process should be smart enough to update the previously offsite backup to match the master.

This is basically what we decided to go with, but what is the "Background Process" you'd recommend to handle this sort of thing?

 

[Guy Parsons]

Have the Green copy locally connected with a background process that periodically updates the backup to match the master.

Every so often, take the local backup and swap it with the offsite backup. Your background process should be smart enough to update the previously offsite backup to match the master.

This is basically what we decided to go with, but what is the "Background Process" you'd recommend to handle this sort of thing?

I've long used SyncBack for this. Set to automatically update the connected backup and/or NAS every 30 minutes or so. Or on demand when I connect a drive. Or automatically update backup to the drive being detected as being attached.

The free version does all that I really need but I also have the paid SE version to get a couple of extra features like the auto run on connection.

SyncBack: The Complete Backup & Synchronization Software Suite

SyncBack is the ultimate backup and synchronization tool for Windows. Automate backups to any cloud, FTP server, or drive with our powerful Pro, SE, and Free versions. Find the right solution for your needs.

www.2brightsparks.com

 

[Bobapingu]

The SD card comes out of the camera and into a card reader plugged into the PC. With Lightroom Classic (LrC), the images on the SD are read and "imported" by LrC onto an internal drive that is independent of OneDrive. That's it. LrC has a powerful and virtually limitless data management system (DMS), the only thing is it's expensive.

 

[Michael Fryd]

Have the Green copy locally connected with a background process that periodically updates the backup to match the master.

Every so often, take the local backup and swap it with the offsite backup. Your background process should be smart enough to update the previously offsite backup to match the master.

This is basically what we decided to go with, but what is the "Background Process" you'd recommend to handle this sort of thing?

On a Mac, the built-in Time Machine backup system can easily handle this.

 

[J A C S]

Have the Green copy locally connected with a background process that periodically updates the backup to match the master.

Every so often, take the local backup and swap it with the offsite backup. Your background process should be smart enough to update the previously offsite backup to match the master.

This is basically what we decided to go with, but what is the "Background Process" you'd recommend to handle this sort of thing?

On a Mac, the built-in Time Machine backup system can easily handle this.

And OneDrive on Windows. My photo collection is automatically synchronized on 4-5 devices.

A manually supervised backup has its own merit as well. I get a list of the files to be erased and copied before I approve the backup, with SyncBack.