fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

Amazon, Google, SmugMug, Apple: what’s the best home for your photos?

When last we met, I pointed out the perils of using Apple’s iCloud Photos for photo backup for one simple reason: if you delete an image off your iPhone, Apple will in turn also delete it from iCloud*.

This time I’d like to go over the best alternative photo backup options for you in more detail, because like it or not, in today’s world, just like paying for food, shelter and taxes, if you snap photos on your smartphone or camera, you will be paying for online storage. And paying more in the coming years as well, as you snap more images.

There’s no such thing as free backup anymore.

[Read More…]

Don’t use iCloud to backup your photos

by 18 Comments

My friend Bill just returned from a family vacation in Costa Rica and shot lots of photos and video on his iPhone, including some killer shots of breakfasts with local monkeys.

No surprise that once he got home, he checked his iPhone storage and found that it was 98% full. Just a few more snaps, and he’d be totally out of room.

His solution? “I’ll just put them all on iCloud, and then delete them off my iPhone,” he told me.

[Read More…]

How to back up your photos and video on location the easy way with a smartphone and an SSD

by 2 Comments

I’ve been through various iterations of location backup workflows over the years. When I started out with DSLRs back in 2002 I was using the Super DigiBin, which allowed me to pull files off my huge 128MB CompactFlash cards and back them up onto a (for the time) ridiculously huge 20GB hard drive.

Things have come a long way in the last couple of decades since I relied on that Super DigiBin. These days, I back up my memory cards to SSDs quickly and easily on location using my smartphone. OWC recently sent over their Envoy Pro Elektron SSD and 5-port USB hub for us to try, so I thought this would be a good time to show you my current location backup workflow and offer up some of my thoughts on the OWC gear.

[Read More…]

PSA: Google’s free cloud photo storage ends in 2 weeks – Here are eight alternatives

by 2 Comments

Last November, Google announced that its free unlimited photo backup was going to end and it would all fall under the free shared 15GB get you with Google’s other services, like Gmail and Google Drive. Now, it’s almost upon us, with the service set to shut down on June 1st. You can, of course, upgrade to Google One (although there’s no “Unlimited” package), but what are your alternatives?

Well, none of the alternatives are really free, either. Not for unlimited storage, anyway. But with Google shifting over to a paid-only option with minimal free storage, the advantage they once had is now gone. Here we take a look at a few of the competing services for you to check out and see which best fits your needs.

[Read More…]

PSA: Amazon Photos auto-save might not be auto-saving all of your raw files

by 1 Comment

The whole cloud backup thing has been a hot topic for a while now as various services have been simultaneously killing off unlimited storage while others have been bringing it back and trying to outdo each other to win over your business. Amazon Photos is one such service that offers unlimited space as long as you have a prime account – including your raw photos. But it seems it’s not backing up everything – even if you think that it is.

Reddit user /u/somebodytoshove posted to /r/photography noting that the auto-save feature of the Amazon Photos iOS app has not been uploading the .raf files from his Fuji mirrorless camera. It thinks it has, and it looks like it has, but when you look at the uploaded files, they actually contain only the jpg preview.

[Read More…]

Fujifilm breaks backup storage records with a tape that can hold 580 Terabytes

by 4 Comments

Fujifilm has shattered backup storage records with a new magnetic tape backup solution that offers around 50x the capacity of current commercially available LTO-8 tapes – which hold around 12TB of uncompressed data. Fuji’s new format stands at a whopping 580TB of data storage, thanks to the development of a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe).

The new system was developed in conjunction with IBM Research and provides a single tape with enough space to store the equivalent of 120,000 DVDs. They say that the newly developed magnetic material allows for finer particles and denser storage while still offering a high level of performance.

[Read More…]

5 alternatives to Google Photos cloud storage for backing up your work

by 4 Comments

Google Photos has been one of the best photo hosting cloud services out there, offering storage for an unlimited number of your photos absolutely free – as long as you didn’t mind a slight hit in image quality. But that is coming to an end and Google is abandoning its free tier. You still get your free 15GB (shared across all Google services, like Gmail, etc), but if you want any more than that, you’ll have to pay now.

It was a sweet ride while it lasted, and there aren’t really any great free alternatives out there now. But now that you do have to pay, what are the other top paid alternatives out there? Let’s take a look at five of them.

[Read More…]

Google is killing unlimited storage for non enterprise users – don’t move away from G Suite

by 6 Comments

If you have been using the unlimited storage feature of G Suite to back up your photos and videos, wait before moving into Google Workplace. Google Workspace only has unlimited storage on enterprise plans.

Google made some big noise about replacing the G Suite with an even better Google Workspace. Among the many changes that may or may not be incredible for you, one change is clearly not in favor of high storage users.

If you or your team were using G Suite Business, you would get unlimited storage for $12/user. If I recall correctly, you needed at least four users to enroll in that level of service.  Now Google Workspace will only give you 2 TB of storage for your $12, 5TB for $18, and according to Android Police, you can move to an Enterprise account for $20 ($30 for enterprise+) and get the same unlimited storage. However, it will be at least 50% significantly more expensive.

[Read More…]

How I store and backup my photography

 

Storing and backing up efficiently and securely more than ten years of photography is a complicate technical task.

At the center of my setup I use a Synology DS1515+ NAS, with 8 disks configured in Raid 6 for a total of 14.54TB of available storage.

I wrote about this set up a year ago, but I recently updated it to be more streamlined and secure.

[Read More…]

Recent Posts