As a photographer, you will need to store your photographs.
In the world of digital photography, we have many new technologies that
can help us store and also search for certain photographs. Before, you
either had to go through each file and look manually through hundreds
or even thousands of negatives (and prints) or have an extensive catalogue
system—that could be very time consuming and wasteful—all
to find a single photo!
Filing
Films
Photographers traditionally
stored their negatives (and transparencies) so that work could be used
later. My own collection of several thousand negatives is housed in around
fifteen large files, occupying around five feet of shelf space.
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Storage
Conditions
Storage conditions
for the negatives should be housed in archival filing sheets that are
not open to various harmful vapors and changes in temperature and humidity.
If not stored correctly, negatives will show their signs of age. With
a single point of storage, they are also open to disasters such as fire,
although flood damage is less likely since I'm a floor above ground level.
That is why I suggest digitizing
your images and saving on different types of media.
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Digital
Differences
Digital files offer
some advantages and some disadvantages over film in terms of storage.
The important thing is to plan for it, and then make sure you put those
plans into practice. The key files to store are the raw files direct from
camera - the digital equivalent of your negatives. It may also be convenient
to store the processed TIFF or JPEG files, but these could always be recreated
from the originals.
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Raw
Problems
Raw files are proprietary
formats, and often full documentation is not available. To read them in
the future, you will need software that understands them. However for
formats used by major manufacturers it seems likely that such software
will remain available and be transferred to new operating systems as these
appear for the foreseeable future. Adobe® recently announced 'The
Digital Negative' (DNG) format, if adopted by manufacturers, may make
this more universal, although Adobe® suggest you should also archive
files in the manufacturer's native raw format.
While analogue storage
tends to slowly deteriorate, digital files are more likely to either be
perfect or totally unreadable. It is impossible to accurately predict
the future, but we can take some precautions to maximize the lifetime
of our material. The key ideas are redundancy and active storage.
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Key
Points
Keep at least
two copies of each file:
- on different storage
media;
- stored in different
secure places.
Use common storage media in
high volume use, not niche technologies, be sure to use
high-quality dependable storage media; verify
that all the information is correct (and readable) on all copies at the
time of writing.
Create a monthly routine making
sure that your media is still readable; replace your storage media (physical
CD-R/-RW or DVD±R/±RW/-ROM) at least every 24 months; and
rewrite the data to a "new-standard" technology when current
storage technology is becoming obsolete.
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Digital
Pessimists
Doomsayers can point
to various computer and other storage formats that are no longer readable,
but these are all systems that were in fairly used. Widely adopted and
used systems are likely to continue to be supported for the foreseeable
future. Three that seem to offer the most potential for storing photographs
are hard disks, CD-R and DVD-±R/±RW/-ROM.
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Hard
Disks
These are easy to
use, fast to access, and relatively low cost (the 120GB disk I bought
recently cost around $100.) Hard disks also form the basis of network
and Internet based storage systems, which are likely to become increasingly
important.
Single hard disks
are subject to often-dramatic death, with average times before failure
of only 3-5 years, although it can happen at any time. After failure,
it may be possible (but sometimes very expensive) to retrieve data, but
this is best avoided.
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Mirrored
Disk Systems
Mirrored disk systems
give protection against hard disk failure, allowing a failed disk to be
replaced without data loss, but the pair of disks only has the same capacity
as a single disk, thus doubling storage costs. Since both disks usually
run from a single controller, a failure at this point can cause all data
to be lost. RAID 5 systems, requiring a minimum of 3 disks can give similar
protection but with greater efficiency with the capacity of just a single
disk being lost from any RAID 5 array.
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Interfaces
Hard disks require
an interface. Many current disks use a parallel IDE interface, but newer
motherboards come only with serial IDE (SATA) interfaces. Other interfaces
used for hard disks are SCSI, USB and FireWire. Hard-disk based systems
will need to be upgraded at intervals to keep up with changes in technology.
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Redundancy
The most cost-effective
and reliable hard-disk based system is to store all data on two entirely
separate hard-disk systems, preferably on external interfaces that allow
them to be transferred from system to system. If a single hard disk system
is used, it should be supplemented with another media-based backup, such
as DVD±Rs.
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Network
Attached Storage
A recent development
has been the availability of independent network devices for storage.
These consist of a network interface and an embedded computer (often a
Linux system, although generally hidden from casual view) and one or more
hard disks that simply sits on your network and provides external storage
for all users. What simple administration that is needed is often provided
by a web-based interface. Other more or less plug and play storage solutions
include USB hard disks.
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CD-R
CD has been such a
widely used medium for so long that it seems likely that devices will
still be available to read it for the foreseeable future under all future
operating systems. The manufacturers lifetimes for many CD-Rs are
in excess of 100 years, although these figures are possibly optimistic.
Thought the first-thought lifetime of CD-Rs are a lot shorter than one
thought. Due to newly found bacteria that eats the reflective surface
on the CD, many now believe that CDs will only last around five to ten
years.
When recording CD-R,
you should always set the software to use a common format such as ISO
9660, and verify that all the information is written (correctly), although
this almost doubles the time to write a disk. Be sure to finalize your
CD, the reasons why I say this is because there is a possibility for writing/reading
errors.
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DVD±R/±RW/-ROM
DVDs has all the advantages
of CDs with the addition of greater storage capacity—around six
times as much as using a CD-R. The typical size of DVD-Rs are around 4.2GB
while its counterpart [CD-R] holds between 750MB to 800MB. The only problem
with DVDs are that there are several different standards, with some being
incompatible with other DVD reading devices. Again estimates of data lifetime
vary widely. (I will go into more depth about the differences of DVD-R/-RWs,
DVD+R/+RWs, Duel-format DVDs (DVD±R/±RW), & DVD-ROMs
at a later time —TPNet)
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Improving
Reliability
Some suggest that
the very high write rates of some systems can lead to data that is less
reliable, but there seems to be little or no evidence to support this.
However, you should avoid using adhesive labels, solvent pens or those
not designed for CD use—I have found that Sharpe® pens are safe
to use, though.
Disk storage conditions
are also important. I suggest using cases made for DJs with large CD collections,
like a CD-binder. These can hold several hundred disks, and suspend each
in darkness in a suitable plastic filing sheet. This protects the disks
from bending and other damage. And if there is a fire, you can escape
with several years work in one hand!
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Finding
your Files
One vital problem
to consider is how you will find files. Almost certainly this will mean
using some kind of digital system for locating files. Although various
software programs (at different levels of sophistication and cost) can
help with this, the most important thing is to make the right decisions
about basic storage, directories and file names.
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Image
Management Software
Early photographic
databases written by other people were programmers who were amateur photographers
with little idea of what would really be needed for large image collections.
Some use Microsoft® Access to write simple queries on an extremely
large database.
Though now things
are different and there are a number of packages that are used by professionals
for managing images. For some (and for most amateurs) the more limited
(but still powerful) database facilities built into image viewing software
such as ACDSee or Thumbs Plus will probably be all you need.
If you are using images
professionally, or working on a very large scale as a serious amateur,
you would be advised to look at purpose written image management software,
such as iMatch or Extensis Portfolio.
Another suggestion (if you are a simple railfan or amateur) just use
the programs that are provided by your operating system—such as
using your Windows Explorer in Windows 95 to today's Windows XP.
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Organization
Whichever software
you choose, you need to decide how to organize your work using it. The
starting point should be how you work and how you and potential are going
to want to access the pictures you have. If you are photographing
different railroads or locations you might want to have your organization
by location or by road.
File names and Directories
File names and directories are a vital part of the storage system (it
may also be possible to automatically add names and directory names as
keywords.) I store my digital files by in directories based on Year, Month
and Day, /../2004/12/04/.
NOTE:
Be sure to use 0's when you have single-digit numbers and/or dates due
to our older computer systems (such as Win98SE) made '10' before '2'.
File names need to
be unique on your system. Although most cameras will sequentially
name the images we take, these names are not of much use—I've already
taken three (or four) pictures named photo254.tif. It is hard to
understand why camera manufactures didn't add another digit and perhaps
allow a choice of prefixes.
However, using a Nikon-brand
camera, there is software that can automatically rename these while transferring
from card to computer. I use the following format: yymmdd_cxxx.yyy,
[where y,m,d are the 2 digit year, month and numeric day, c
is a camera designations (a-z) and xxx is number, starting
at 000 and going theoretically to 999, yyy is used as normal for
the file type, *.nef, *.jpg or *.tif.]
Some software
packages mentioned here are only available for Windows PC.
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The
Basic System
I make no claims for
perfection, but this is a reasonable and pragmatic solution, if one that
is still developing. In the first months of working with digital I did
loose some work through a hard disk failure, so I've been very careful
since then.
- Files from the
camera are written to hard disk (sometimes to a mirrored array for extra
security, but not all my computers have this.)
- Original files
are backed up to CD-R, giving a second copy, before the camera's memory
sticks (or cards) are formatted. The CDs are filed in my large CD-binder.
- On a monthly basis,
all original files are written to DVD-R disks, giving a second offline
copy. I sometimes include some of the processed files for convenience
at this stage. These copies should be stored away from the first set.
- I currently have
enough hard-disk space to keep several year's work available on hard
disk on my home network (saves me having to find stuff from the DVDs.)
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Maintenance
At times when I'm
not otherwise busy, I go through all CD-Rs that more than 2 years old,
writing them to hard disk. The files on them need a bit of reorganization;
after that I will write them out to DVD±R for a second copy for
storage, enabling one here as well as the off site copy. As storage on
hard disks becomes cheaper, I will probably move more to this method,
but keeping the off site copies on DVD±R or other removable media.
Another possibility is online storage, but this will only become attractive
when affordable broadband speeds can match those of a 100Mbps network.
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Digitizing
Film
When you are just getting into digital photography, you will have many
shoe boxes of film and photos. If this is leather case, take a look at
my article on Digitizing Film
& Prints.
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