Backup Strategy for Remote Shoots

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

I asked a similar question on DP Review and this post has something of promise. I posted about it here and can’t find that thread right now. It’s a CFe to M.2 adapter.

Re: Z8/9 - travel light - anyone using a small hub that supports data and charging: Nikon Z Mirrorless Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

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Adapter on eBay

CF Express TYPE-B To M.2 NVMe Extension Cable for M2 SSD Memory Card Adapter | eBay

Wire length refers to the visible wire, excluding PCB and connectors.

www.ebay.com

 

[John Navitsky]

Adapter on eBay

CF Express TYPE-B To M.2 NVMe Extension Cable for M2 SSD Memory Card Adapter | eBay

Wire length refers to the visible wire, excluding PCB and connectors.

www.ebay.com

i _have_ this adapter. it seems to mostly work, but i'm not sure i'd trust it for production use. the card portion of the adapter can pop out easily and i'm not sure i'd consider this reliable enough to trust as my backup

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

i _have_ this adapter. it seems to mostly work, but i'm not sure i'd trust it for production use. the card portion of the adapter can pop out easily and i'm not sure i'd consider this reliable enough to trust as my backup

Thanks was looking for feedback on that. Since you have done various experimenting what do you recommend if you don’t have a computer with you.

 

[John Navitsky]

Thanks was looking for feedback on that. Since you have done various experimenting what do you recommend if you don’t have a computer with you.

so if you don't have a computer, and you do have a z9, i'd probably just get enough delkin power g4 cards to make backups using the copy function of the camera.

 

[John Navitsky]

alternately, if you have a device phone/tablet that can support copying files, the powered usb hub + card reader + m2 based ssd hard drive can work, but is more bulky and more fiddly

 

[nautiboy]

Of course it's valid to think about. But I don't believe it's a universally-applicable philosophy. I've had SO many photo opportunities where I picked out what I thought were the best shots and ignored others at a cursory glance because the ones around them didn't seem interesting, but later I found that the animal had a particular expression or stance or something about one of the images I probably wouldn't have taken had I gone by that philosophy made that image special. It's better to take 1000 images and throw away 999 than to skip the 1000 and miss the one, IMHO.

I'm firmly in the "don't delete until I get home and can review" camp, and even after I get home I honestly don't do much actual deleting. What I do is anything that I would have deleted gets exported to different catalogs on big RAID arrays. There have just been too many times when I've found that photos which weren't necessarily "good" photos ended up being very useful. I've had times when I thought I was shooting a fairly normal bird, only to find out later it was a rarity, and I needed some of the shots I would've thrown away for the experts to confirm the ID of the bird. Recently, I was had a peer-reviewed scientific article published on Gray Whale feeding behavior based on piles of photos I had taken, not even realizing I was capturing extraordinary feeding behavior. The scientists were able to use photos I normally would have deleted to confirm the behavior and get lots of great statistics and information supporting all of the science that went into the paper. In my underwater photography I've done "range extensions" on species from would've-been-deleted photos, and even ID'd a brand new species. One of my dive buddies was ruthless with the delete key, usually in-camera. Multiple times he later learned that something he had photographed and deleted ended up being unusual and/or could've helped confirm the ID of a critter.

Those are the big storylines, but there are so many smaller story lines where I've found that being able to go back and view adjacent photos, which weren't "keepers" was remarkably helpful. Or times when, after looking at the adjacent photos, I decide I really like one of the other compositions better. As a result, I rarely delete any photos. Of course there's a cost to doing it that way. I have over 50TB of images on various drives, and that's just for the last few years. There's even more on "ice" in AWS storage.

That being said, I know I'm pretty far from the norm, and I'm not sure I'd necessarily recommend anyone follow my lead. Just pointing out that there are arguments to be made for not deleting photos you don't immediately flag as a keeper.

Just my $0.02.

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

alternately, if you have a device phone/tablet that can support copying files, the powered usb hub + card reader + m2 based ssd hard drive can work, but is more bulky and more fiddly

In my attempts with a 2021 M1 iPad Pro, it was miserably slow with Samsung T7’s. Bringing an M2 based drive makes the carry on package larger for sure. The copying to card routine isn’t easy either as you can’t really do incremental backups unless you remember to make new folders each day. I will surely forget at times.

When you say powered USB hub, does one that delivers PD power count if it powers the other ports. One of them I tried did that. I did try with an OWC TB hub that has a massive power brick and that was good speed but not practical to bring.

 

[John Navitsky]

When you say powered USB hub, does one that delivers PD power count if it powers the other ports. One of them I tried did that. I did try with an OWC TB hub that has a massive power brick and that was good speed but not practical to bring.

i've had luck with a "normal" usb hub, but then plug IT into a usb power bank

all this stuff is fiddly and non optimal sadly

 

[John Navitsky]

In my attempts with a 2021 M1 iPad Pro, it was miserably slow with Samsung T7’s. Bringing an M2 based drive makes the carry on package larger for sure. The copying to card routine isn’t easy either as you can’t really do incremental backups unless you remember to make new folders each day. I will surely forget at times.

with luck we’ll see this mess improve with coming generations of cameras or even fw. this would be so much easier if the camera supported mounting a hard drive via usb and had a sync function

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

with luck we’ll see this mess improve with coming generations of cameras or even fw. this would be so much easier if the camera supported mounting a hard drive via usb and had a sync function

I mean if Nikon had an incremental copy choice that would make it much easier. I would adopt your suggestion above using CFe cards. Way easier and smaller. Maybe I need to develop the discipline for creating new folders. I guess I could create them in advance. Hmmm.

 

[StarTracker50]

I ordered a 4TB T9 yesterday

I love mine! Bought it because we're planning a driving vacation across the US. Figured even three 500+ GB cards would not be enough.

 

[CJC2]

I don't know what you have available, but if you have a laptop available for your next trip, take it. I prefer Macs! OWC has several options that allow you to attach SSDs. I have one with room for 4 SSDs and I have 2 4TB SSDs in it. I bought the SSds on sale from B&H for $ 205 each, Micron brand. Best of luck. (Contact me if you want more details!)

 

[Ken Miracle]

Thanks David. I've done this now. Just got a 4TB Samsung T9 from Fedex. This should help.

Random USB comments:

1) Shoot for having all devices (computer, reader, external drive(s)) to have 10Gb/s USB (USB 3.2 Gen2 aka 3.1 Gen2). Basically look for the 10Gb/s annotation in the specs. This is the fastest speed that is ubiquitous. This works out to be about 1000MB/s transfer rate in practice. This is "fast enough" to easily copy cards to drives. Trying to eek out more performance with things like 20Gb/s USB makes your life complicated, the options few and the returns diminishing.

2) USB4 is a really good thing, but it is not commonly available, and not really necessary for this use case. It's certainly a good thing to look for when purchasing new equipment like laptops, hard drives. That said, I wouldn't bother from a card reader perspective.

USB4 drives are emerging and I'm keen on making sure all new drives I get have it. Here's an example:

OWC Express 1M2

Ultra-fast, compatible, and reliable portable USB4 NVMe SSD with speeds up to 3151MB/s. Build your own or choose ready-to-run solutions for your Mac or PC.

eshop.macsales.com

I have two of these OWC 4TB at home and 3 OWC envoys. Yes 4 backups rotate one in and out of my safety deposit box monthly. All exact copies via carbon copy cloner. They contain all my images (I cull pretty hard) and my sole light room classic catalog and presets.

On the road Samsung T7 and T9.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

SSD. The speed is much higher than the spinning discs. Plus, they're more robust, which is a pretty significant advantage on the road / remote. I know about both because I used to do spinning discs, but now have portable SSD solutions.

People saying "just cull first" are perhaps not realizing that you would now have a) cull time, taking more of your valuable vacation minutes/hours, b) on top of backup time, which could still be significant—it's not like culling first completely nulls the time doing a backup to a slow spinning disc.

SSD, cull when you get home. Steve has videos supporting both of those notions, and I believe also has said to not be shy about shooting, so putting in too much effort to shoot less could mean loss of keepers.

Chris

 

[AlainCh2]

I'm plugging both cameras on a 220V laptop.
Cameras are turned ON for pics transfer and when finished, turned OFF, they will charge. ( Zf + Z30 )

I've just bought this All in One.
>> It host 1x 2028 NVMe up to 4Tb
+ 2x USB C 10Gb
+ 2x USB A 10Gb
+ 1X USB A 5Gb
+ Hdmi +Rj45 +(1x Sd 1xTf readers )

+PD IN 100W >> I'll use a powerbank


( it will arrive on the 11th - I'll report back )

Goal:
Use an Android file transfer and/or Dropbox App to do the transfer >> as it is done right now using the laptop

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[O]

Its up to you,
I have the camera set at 5 or sometimes 10 FPS, with one button assigned to 20fps, this allows me to not take so many images, i find 90% of what i end up with is 5-10 fps and 10% for those critical moments are 20 fps.

I can down load 6 gig in no time at all with the right USB 3 cable that comes with the camera, my download goes to a Mac tower, i find a powered external hard drive ssd works much faster than a normal set up mostly limited by the lap top.

It never takes 3 hours even on my M1 13 inch.

Only an opinion

 

[Erasmus667]

Thanks for an interesting thread. I'm going to be in a similar situation later on in the year. Like many have suggested I'm going to use a couple of SSD drives. I've asked Nikon Support if it's possible to transfer the files directly from my D500 and Z7ii onto the SSD drive as I won't have the baggage allowance to take the laptop. I'll post on here what they say in case it's of use to anyone.

 

[AlainCh2]

Thanks for an interesting thread. I'm going to be in a similar situation later on in the year. Like many have suggested I'm going to use a couple of SSD drives. I've asked Nikon Support if it's possible to transfer the files directly from my D500 and Z7ii onto the SSD drive as I won't have the baggage allowance to take the laptop. I'll post on here what they say in case it's of use to anyone.

Check my post up 3 to yours.

It's a HUB/NVMe that can be used with a phone to do the transfer.

 

[wotan1]

I recently converted to the MAC system and will soon be taking some trips and will want to solve this situation.

At home I have a Mac Studio M2 which is plenty effective and I have. a lot of external file storage.

I also have an iPad Pro M2 that I want to use in the field. It only has a 256gb hard drive so not much room for storage.

I have a T9 SSD which should be plenty fast enough for copying images. I would think its 4 TB capacity will be enough for my field trips which tend to be no more than about 4-5 days at a time.

The iPad Pro is going to need a hub to make the transfers. IF SOMEONE CAN RECOMMEND A HUB IT WILL BE APPRECIATED.

I have Lightroom for iPad. I know it lacks the features of LR classic but it will be sufficient for basic viewing and culling on a road trip.

Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[JAJohnson]

For me it has nothing to do with being a professional. It has to do with not needing 100 photos of the same bird standing, sitting , etc. Of a bird is about to fly, I will use pre-capture and/or take way too many shots when he continues to sit there.

BUT - it is valid to think about when, where and how much one is shooting as it relates to how many images are actually worth keeping.

I’m working on shooting less and learning when a decisive moment may happen before shooting a burst. Better habits in this regard mean much less time culling photos.

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

I recently converted to the MAC system and will soon be taking some trips and will want to solve this situation.

At home I have a Mac Studio M2 which is plenty effective and I have. a lot of external file storage.

I also have an iPad Pro M2 that I want to use in the field. It only has a 256gb hard drive so not much room for storage.

I have a T9 SSD which should be plenty fast enough for copying images. I would think its 4 TB capacity will be enough for my field trips which tend to be no more than about 4-5 days at a time.

The iPad Pro is going to need a hub to make the transfers. IF SOMEONE CAN RECOMMEND A HUB IT WILL BE APPRECIATED.

I have Lightroom for iPad. I know it lacks the features of LR classic but it will be sufficient for basic viewing and culling on a road trip.

Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.

I have yet to find a hub that is sufficiently fast with my iPad M1 and also small enough.
You can read a thread at DP Review.
In this post someone found something they liked.
Some others have said the Anker 555 works.
It needs to be PD.
Try it before you go.
I just got back from a three week trip and we had an old iPad Air 2018 Intel based. It worked better for me with T7's than the iPad and hub.
We are going to upgrade it to a new MBA and take that in the future. Not much different in size than the iPad Pros with a keyboard. Hope this helps.

 

[O]

I’m working on shooting less and learning when a decisive moment may happen before shooting a burst. Better habits in this regard mean much less time culling photos.

Absolutely on the money, my mate and I do surfing competitions and sports events form time to time, in 95% of cases we click usually only 3-4 shots and get the money shot as we know the sport also in other subjects well, if its on going dramatic action we cover it hammer down but we still back off till the decisive moments are preempted, its called experience, other wise like many others i know you may as well video and take the money shot from the file in comfort on your computer. It seems to be the future direction of where things are heading. I find 10 to 12 fps is more than enough for 98% of things i do.

Only an opinion