Winged Power Photography

Ringing In The New Year... With New Gear

Slightly behind the curve, I have only just upgraded my digital camera from 6MP to 12MP, switching the label of branding from a Konica Minolta 7D to the Sony Alpha A700. There is something to be said for patience and waiting. It is easy enough to say, I was not disappointed by the camera, which Sony has produced. Save for a few details.

The first issue I have is the fact that RAW files are well... not really RAW, more like half-baked. The fact that noise reduction has been applied in-sensor and produces RAW files with a somewhat blotchy noise quality, which is harder for noise reduction prorgams, like Noise Ninja and NeatImage to remove. Fine sensor noise, the "natural" signal noise, is easier to remove, as they also make use of fewer pixels, by virtue of not being dink'd with.

The second issue I have with the A700, is that it did not come with an LCD protector. Why not? Those things are $12 a piece through the Sony store. A small thing to provide it, given the cost of the camera itself.

Having said that, I am quite happy with the speed, responsiveness, and power of the camera. I regret to say that the double cross hair and wide aperture AF enhancements only work on lenses that are f/2.8 and wider, excluding my beloved "beercan" 70-210mm f/4.0 lens.

What have I found, in the land of 12MP images taken at 5fps? You need bigger cards.

A Flash of Insight Into Storage Growth

I had two 4GB cards. One was an AData 4GB 133X CF card. The other, a SanDisk UltraII 4GB. Oddly enough, the Sandisk didn't read in the A700, the AData did. Needless to say, I quickly bought two more AData 4GB cards to round out my spare cards.

However, I have found that I very quickly fill out the cards.

I can get some 200 shots per card. Or some 20-40 bursts of 5fps. Since the camera can do 5fps for around 20 frames, I found that if I'm enjoying the fast and discreet sound of the shutter too much, I'll be running out of cards pretty quickly.

Thank Goodness! Jumbo Cards!

Thankfully, technology does not sit still. And as I'm contemplating my storage shortfall, I see that the memory chip makers have begun to up the ante in the flash storage arena. We are seeing the cost of fast 16GB chips drop, and companies are starting to introduce 24GB, 32GB, and 48GB flash chips in Compact Flash, SDHC (class 6), and Sony Memory Stick Pro/Duo formats.

Unfortunately, we are quickly reaching the point, where the size of the flash chip in my camera is nearing single digit fractions of the storage size of my laptop's internal hard drive. This starts to beg the question... is it better to just haul around more flash cards, or is it time to start investing in a portable storage device that you can offload your photos onto?

Not too far in the past, I used a Digital Wallet device that had a whopping 10GB of storage. Yeah, I know... I was using 16MB and 32MB smart media flash cards. Wow... 10GB meant something then.

Today, even a 40GB device has me thinking I'm better off just buying a few more chips. Why? Because I don't like the idea of thinking I've copied everything to the device, only to find that I didn't... after I've formatted my flash card and written new photos to it. That would suck.

Laptop and blank DVD(s) is the way to go. Just in case... but a 4GB card = 1 DVD (aproximately)... what happens when I hit 32GB cards?

Portable Storage... Portable Redundant Storage!

Let's face it... you need to think about backups. You've got your photographs on your flash card. You've copied them to your laptop. Before you wipe that card out... you better have another copy made. Time to make use of that portable external hard drive... that's powered by the bus, whether it be firewire or usb!

If you use applications like iPhoto, Lightroom or Aperture, there are built-in features to backup your existing library of images to an external device. If you're on a trip somewhere and you don't want to be burning DVD(s) until the trip is over... it might be time to invest in an external drive.

Better yet, if you've got the funds, get two. You've heard the horror stories of checked lugguge becoming lighter when you pick them up? Yeah, no sense in letting that happen.

Laptop+External Drive #1+External Drive #2 = 3 copies of your valuable vacation photographs, before you wipe your flash card. That's peace of mind!

For the paranoid, you can always keep one drive in the hotel safe/vault, just in case. When you're ready to fly back, Fedex, UPS, DHS, or USPS one of your drives back home! Hey, if anything should happen, it's unlikely you'll lose your laptop, your on-hand drive, and the one you mailed back. Those vacation/on-assignment photos are priceless!

Seriously though, with automated backup features in modern OS's, there is no reason not to invest in an external hard drive to ward off misfortune.

Personally looking at some trips in the near future, these very same topics have been on my mind. You can be sure I'll be shopping around for a portable hard drive in the near future. ;)

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