QUESTION:
One of the most common issues among both hobbyist and new professional photographers is the lifespan and “safe retirement” of memory cards. When is a good time to retire a memory card, or relegate it to “secondary usage only”? Well, any number of things can start happening to a memory card, from images going corrupt on the card noticeably often, to weirder things such as in our case today, where a professional wedding photographer noticed that their 16 GB memory card briefly appeared to only be 8 GB in capacity for no apparent reason. Sound like a harmless glitch? Think again! Even this subtle “weirdness” can be an indicator for impending total failure and data loss.

ANSWER:

The very first thing that comes to my mind as an expert in this area is, …where did you buy the memory card in question, and what “class” / speed and brand is it, plus of course how has it been treated overall?

In my opinion, there is a good chance it is time to at least relegate such a memory card to secondary duty.

HOWEVER, this “wrong size” issue is a common telltale sign of faux Sandisk cards from Ebay / Amazon third-party sellers, in which case you are at HIGH RISK of losing either half the card, or the ENTIRE card at any time, without further warning. And often times in this particular case there is no chance of data recovery, compared to how easy it can be to run a 100% successful recovery on a “legit” professional-grade memory card.

I know this sounds terrible and maybe even a little bit paranoid / overreacting, however considering the cost of memory cards these days and considering that wedding photographers in particular are paid professionals who are capturing once-in-a-lifetime images, I see very little reason NOT to replace such a card immediately.

I honestly just buy entirely new complete sets of memory cards every few years, card wallet and all. (After a few years of heavy use, the Think Tank Pixel Pocket Rocket that I love so much can admittedly start holding CF and SD cards a little loosely, so that’s why I buy a new card wallet too. Plus I like to keep my old memory cards around, for emergency use and personal high-volume shooting.)

Of course I shoot every new memory card to 100% full a few times on non-essential casual work, (I shoot a lot of timelapses, which is a convenient hobby) …just to test out the card. Or you Nikon users can just set your cameras to TIF mode, and fill a card in just 100-200 shots! Yes, I have had to send back a few cards over the years but that has only been when I tested out low-budget cards. The pro-grade, name-brand memory cards, purchased through an authorized reputable dealer such as B&H Photo Video, have NEVER let me down.

Anyways my point is, the safest thing to do is to start fresh every few hundred thousand images. I now have three separate card wallets, and in a pinch if I have to shoot 5-6 days of weddings back to back I might start using the older cards to “mop up” dance floor reception shooting at the end of the night, while using the more reliable cards for shooting earlier in the day. Again keep in mind, when I say “more reliable” I’m not even referring to cards that have given me issues in the past, I’m just talking about replacing perfectly functional cards that are simply 2-3 years old. Personally, any card that gives me a serious error such as this, gets immediately taken off professional duty, and goes in the bin for “random timelapse footage” and quick around-the-house shooting only…

So, it doesn’t have to be that OCD / complicated. All I’m saying is, if this is your profession; be ready to invest in its upkeep / wear-and-tear!

Take care,
=Matt=

Question: On certain cameras, (in this case the Nikon D700) …images seem to look nice and bright on the back of the camera, but then when they are on a computer screen they look much darker and under-exposed. What’s up? This hasn’t been noticeable on previous cameras…

My Ramblings:

Yes, the Nikon D700 is just the same as any other camera, although it doesn’t have auto-brightness LCD options however I dislike those anyways. (Some Canon DSLRs have that option, and you can try it and see if you like it if you own a Canon, but I don’t recommend it)

I set the camera LCD brightness to be +1 or +2 in extremely bright sunlight, and -1 or -2 in extremely dark conditions.

However other than that, I simply rely FAR more heavily on my histogram and my “blinking highlight warning” than the LCD itself. Never trust the LCD, especially if you find yourself shooting in dark conditions often like I do. (Wedding receptions, milky way in the middle of nowhere, etc….) The bottom line is that your LCD lies to you. There is absolutely no correlation between LCD brightness and a proper exposure, within reason of course. What I mean is, I’ve seen images that look “good enough” on the camera but are actually 2-3 stops under-exposed when you check the histogram.

Unfortunately, calibrating your monitor will usually do very little other than correct the colors. Even a calibrated monitor can still “throw you off” if the brightness settings are wrong, actually.

However I don’t think this is the problem in most cases, because 99% of the time people have their computer screen too bright, not too dark, for accurate tonal adjustments. That, and you really really really ought to get an IPS display with a 178 degree VERTICAL (not just horizontal) viewing angle. This will make a world of difference when gauging your shadow detail brightness on your computer. You know how on your laptop usually, you bob your head up and down and the brightness of shadows changes dramatically? Yeah, that’s what you want to avoid like the plague.

Anyways, I think that’s the main problem here, the camera LCD brightness, NOT the display. So start using your histogram and highlight warnings more!

Of course if you have an un-calibrated monitor it is good to get it calibrated at least once, especially if it’s a PC display. If you don’t want to invest in a Spyder etc. device, you can usually rent them from a local shop for $5. Unless your display is on at full brightness ALL the time, you really only need to calibrate every few months or so. And honestly your monitor probably shouldn’t be at maximum brightness for proper color correction, anyways. But follow the instructions for monitor brightness and contrast for whatever calibration device you rent.

Last but not least, just know that your in-camera settings are never going to match what Adobe gives you. The bottom line is that Adobe’s default RAW processing is disgusting. It’s flat, dark, and un-exciting. However that is what presets and advanced RAW processing are for. It is unfortunate that our RAW images look bland compared to the vibrant beauty of the in-camera processing, but then again if our images were THAT perfect in-camera, we’d just shoot JPG anyways right? (And hey, some do!)

Every advanced photographer, professional and hobbyist alike, feels burned out at one point or another. But for a professional, it’s extra tough because your livelihood depends on your ability to perform, to “bring your A-game” to a wedding or portrait session. If you’re not careful, you can slip away from the passion and even the talent-infused results that are currently paying your bills. So, how do you advoid professional burn-out, as a wedding / portrait photographer? (Or any self-employed photographer really, but for the sake of this ramble, we’ll refer to weddings and portraits.

My Ramblings:

This happens to everybody, especially this time of year when the money might be coming in less but the back-end work is just increasing. That’s just the way this career goes. But as long as you can get safely through annual slog then you’ll feel great in a few months.

To be brutally honest however, if your goal is to continue truly LOVING photography as much as you once did, all-year-round, some very dramatic changes might be in order. At the very least, you need to try and minimize your weekday hourly slog. This career can downward spiral very, very fast if you get too buried. Trust me, I know. Out-sourcing your post-production is a huge thing, but not necessarily the only option. Many photographers simply adjust their workflow production time and get each wedding / session turned around in just a few hours, instead of weeks or months… I do highly recommend BOTH mastering post-production and figuring out a good out-source option. Both business models can work very well, you just need to figure out which is right for you. Sometimes it’s a little bit of both!

The bottom line is that you need to make more time for yourself. I don’t care how fun photography is as a career, if you’re working 80-100 hours a week, that’s not cool. You could work a white collar job for 40-50 hrs a week, make way more money, and be an ordinary human being on nights and weekends. Because I don’t care how “soul-sucking” a corporate / blue-collar 9-5 job is, if you make a good living and work only 40 hrs a week, it’s actually a pretty cushy life.

So, you need free time, plus a photographic hobby or you will go insane. I have lost count of how many people think that they’ve fallen in love with photography and that shooting weddings / portraits is their “calling in life” …yet for the past 1-2 years they haven’t touched a camera except to use it for paying their bills, or maybe to snap the obligatory cute kid / pet photo or two. (That wind up never getting edited and shared…)

I’d blow my brains out if that were me. In fact that was me for a year or two, and it was indeed pretty depressing. But I learned my lession: no matter how passionate you are about using your camera to make money, you still need to use your camera to feed and liberate your soul. Whether you want to goof around with camera-tossing (yes that is exactly what it sounds like) …or get serious about landscapes or architecture photography, you gotta find something.

And personally, I don’t even count portraiture as a “hobby”, since that’s part of what I do for a living. I like to do something completely opposite of what I shoot for work. I understand that some people’s “personal projects” might include themed portrait shoots, and I love doing those too, however I guess I just always categorized themed shoots with “work practice / expanding my style”, not my personal hobby…

So, that’s my advice. 1.) Find a way to ONLY work 40 hrs a week, (or so if you’re currently bogged down working 80-100, and 2.) Find something that you’re passionate about, and keep it entirely separate from whatever you do to pay your bills.

Of course it also goes without saying that you may or may not need to raise your prices, in order to afford this new-found free time. But everybody is currently charging something different and that’s tough to gauge except on an individual assessment.

Take care, and feel free to let me know if you have any other questions!
=Matt=

PS: Support my addiction to giving free advice – Donate via Paypal, or by shopping at B&H.

When do you delete your original RAW images? Should you keep your originals forever? Ah, the eternal question. Pun intended?

My latest Ramblings: (Don’t worry, this topic will be brought up many, many more times I’m sure! But feel free to comment if you have any other questions…

First and foremost, if you’re a hobbyist then you can do whatever you want. This post is mainly directed at professional wedding and portrait photographers, simply because they are the most likely to experience “hey can you look for more photos?” situations from their clients, even years down the road.

Yep, as a wedding photographer I keep all RAW “keepers” forever. RAW rejects get deleted after satisfactory delivery of any final product, such as a wedding album etc. If you’re truly OCD you can keep mid-rest JPGs of your reject files too, but I’m pretty liberal with what I keep so I feel this isn’t always necessary.

However anyways to be honest as a post-production specialist, I feel that if a professional photographer does not make enough money to afford the relatively low cost of a few TB worth of storage per year that it would take to store your keepers permanently, well, there’s something wrong with how much you’re charging compared to the sheer volume of work you’re doing. Or maybe you need to cut back on “spray and pray” with your 36 megapixel RAW files, or if it’s a Nikon you can turn down the RAW bit rate to 12, and the RAW compression to “lossy”.

In other words on the one hand f you don’t shoot very much, you should be able to fit 1-2 years worth of work onto a single 1 TB hard drive, which go for $70 or so these days. (Even in the small portable form!) Or on the other hand if you shoot an absolute ton of work and you just spray-and-pray like a maniac, you should at least be making enough money to afford the 2-3 3TB externals (usually around $100) that it would take to permanently archive your keepers. If you can’t afford that small expense, you shouldn’t be in business.

To be clear, I’m not accusing people of running their business wrong, I’m actually just trying to point out a major flaw in most people’s workflow solutions: They let stuff pile up. They assume that every last gig they’ve ever shot right needs to be at their fingertips on their computer or some massive high-tech external device. This is simply NOT a good idea.

Your workflow should consist of an “INBOX / OUTBOX” type workflow system, and dual external hard drives on a 1-2 year cycle archival solution. You simply cannot afford to let stuff accumulate on your computer, especially after you have fully edited and delivered it. Get it off your computer, onto (preferably two, and stored in separate locations) external hard drives.

Honestly, do you really need that wedding you shot three years ago, at your fingertips on your computer? Do you really need to have the last 5 years of work at your fingertips on some big-ass Drobo or something? No. In fact it takes me all of 30 seconds to reach over to my archival shelf / drawer, grab my 2005 external, and boot it up. And unlike a Drobo or other massive, high-TB solution, the backup copy of my data is not stored inside a redundant device that could easily be stolen or damaged in a fire etc. …it’s somewhere else entirely, safe and sound. That is why I don’t advise trusting singular devices for long-term archival, even if they brag about how they protect you against hard drive failure. In reality, hard drive failure doesn’t count for NEARLY as much data loss as theft, disaster, or sheer human stupidity.

Personally, I like to have a computer with a two-drive solution. Even many laptops nowadays can have dual 2.5″ hard drives, but let’s assume a desktop solution for most heavy-duty workflows. Anyways one hard drive, preferably an SSD, is for your operating system and programs only. A 128-256 GB SSD will do here. Then another hard drive, as big and fat as you need, is where all your data is stored. Internal RAID 1 is cool, but not absolutely necessary. You do want to back up all data on this second drive somehow, of course.

But I digress. Either way, your computer itself it should ONLY contain your current “INBOX” and “WIP” work, nothing else. Maybe if you have a huge hard drive you can also store an “all-time best portfolio” …but I have a simple external 2.5″ RAID 1 device for that. (G-RAID mini, or my preference- the CINERAID enclosure which is BUS-powered via USB 3.0!)

Anyways, just start storing most of your stuff elsewhere. It doesn’t belong on your computer, nor on one single external drive. For example as a 12-24 megapixel RAW shooting wedding photographer, with a hobby of landscape and timelapse RAW photograpy, I still only need to budget 1-2 TB per year, and I just go out and buy new externals each year on Black Friday. You can either buy the cheap USB 3 externals like WD Mybooks, or you can swap bare HDD’s in and out of a RAID 1 enclosure.

The bottom line is that you gotta stay on top of your workflow. Since I have been doing private and group workflow coaching for many years now, and have managed post-production for a studio team of 6+ photographers, this is the NUMBER ONE DOWNFALL. You gotta stay on top of your workflow.

Take care, and feel free to let me know if you have any other questions!
=Matt=

PS: Support my addiction to giving free advice – Donate via Paypal, or by shopping at B&H.