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Seagate Wireless Plus – A Review For Travel Photographers

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After first trying out the WD My Passport Wireless Pro as a solution to backup photos and video while traveling (click here for the full review of the My Passport), I thought I would try the competition – the Seagate Wireless Plus.

The main issue that I had with the WD My Passport is that it could not effectively synchronize files with cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive) without the need for a laptop computer.

The Seagate Wireless Plus seems to have this issue solved with built-in synchronization apps for both Dropbox and Google Drive, but as you will see, it has its own issues…

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Field Backups With the My Passport Wireless Pro – A Review for Travel Photography

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If you’re a travel photographer or just someone who wants to keep your photographs safe and secure while you’re in the field, one of your biggest challenges is copying and backing up your travel photographs and travel video as it’s captured.

My top three travel photography backup challenges are:

  1. Copying camera photo and video files to a portable hard drive – preferably without the necessity of a laptop computer.
  2. Copying photos and video to a cloud-based storage solution – again preferably an automated process and without a laptop computer.
  3. Securing my data while travelling in case my backup hard drive is lost or stolen.

To simplify this task, I decided to try out a 3TB WD My Passport Wireless Pro (more info here). In theory, the WD My Passport Wireless Pro, with a built-in USB port and SD card reader is perfectly suited for this task. However, in practice, it doesn’t quite manage to live up to it’s potential.

In this article, I will take you through my setup of the WD My Passport Wireless Pro for travel photography and travel video and my recommendations on the suitability of using this drive for backups while on the road.

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3-2-1 backup system will help you keep your digital images forever

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No matter if you are a professional photographer or a hobbyist, I’m sure your photos are important to you. Therefore, it’s essential to have a good backup system so you can avoid any situation that may result in losing them all. David Bergman suggests an effective 3-2-1 backup system. It will protect your images from any situation that may hinder them, and save you from losing years of work.

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Dropbox Just Deleted 2000 Files Because of My Samsung Phone

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I have been using Dropbox for years now and I have never once had a problem with it…until a week ago when over 2000 files mysteriously vanished from my Dropbox account.

For the record, I love Dropbox – to the point where Dropbox is now integral to running my business – here are two examples:

Dropbox Lightroom Catalog Sync – How To Set It Up
5 Tips to Use Dropbox for Small Business

However, when 2000 files go missing (many critical) I have been forced to decide if I need to cancel my Dropbox account and look for a safer and more reliable cloud file storage solution.

In this article, I will explain how my files were deleted and what you can do to make sure that yours are safe – if you use a Samsung phone and Dropbox – make sure you read this!!![Read More…]

Finally there’s a small affordable backup solution for use in the field

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I say “finally”, there used to be a number of them. Back when I shot a pair of D100 bodies back in 2002, I used a 20GB Super Digibin 2 to backup my massive 128MB CompactFlash cards while still out shooting. It was slow and the battery didn’t last very long, but it was reliable and it worked. It allowed me to backup or unload my cards before I got anywhere close to home.

In recent years, such inexpensive and readily available backup solutions seem to have disappeared. There are a few out there, but many are either way out of most budgets, offer very little in the way of user experience, or just aren’t very good. New startup DFi Gear is looking to change that with the Flash Porter. It’s basically a hard drive (or SSD) in a small case with CF, SD and microSD card readers and a great big LCD screen to back up while you’re out and about.

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Amazon’s Unlimited Cloud Storage is now available in the UK for only £55 a year

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It’s no secret to most people who know me that I’m not a huge fan of online cloud backup services. But I know many of my fellow UK photographers are. Amazon’s unlimited cloud storage launched in the USA in the middle of 2015. Now, Amazon have introduced the service to the UK, with prices starting at only £55/yr (£4.50/mo).

Even as somebody who doesn’t like cloud storage, that’s a hell of a deal. £55/yr to store everything. DropBox and Google Drive cost £6/mo for a mere 1TB of space. Dropbox does offer a small discount if you pay a year up front, though.

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SmugMug rescues nearly 200 million photographs from closed cloud service Picturelife

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My biggest problem with “the cloud” has always been that many cloud services seem to pop up overnight from nowhere. This means that they can also disappear just as quickly. This was the case with Picturelife, an image hosting service which was bought out by Streamnation last year.

After 18 months of new ownership, Picturelife has shut its doors. Normally, this means that those hosted files would disappear forever. At least for those who hadn’t downloaded their images first. This time, however, SmugMug have stepped in to keep those images available.

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Quick Tip: How to not lose all your photos if your phone dies

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Raise your hand if you ever lost/bricked/killed an iPhone or an Android*. Raise your other hand if that phone has lots of photos that you will never see again. That could be quite sad, and I have a friend who lost their iPhone today, so instead of going all “I told you so” on him, I am writing this post.

I mean, most of the apps, you will be able to download again, the lost of hardware is a good reason for an upgrade**, but the photos you had on the phone are now forever lost.

That is, unless you did this simple thing.

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The Business Cost of Data Storage for Creative Professionals

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In my recent article “Delete Your Sh!t: Why You Should Trash Most of Your Photos” I made a case to encourage photographers to permanently delete a large majority of their image files in order to minimize their data storage requirements (among the other benefits of a smaller catalog).

However, there seems to be an ongoing myth that data storage is inexpensive – so actively culling the data you choose to store is not necessary.

In this article, I though I would look at the actual business cost of data storage for creative professionals – because it adds up to a lot more than you may think.

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Television series ‘The Middle’ shows why making prints of your photographs is important

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Two years ago, we asked whether or not you keep printed photographs anymore. Surprisingly, a great deal of you did, with 64% of readers responding that they do indeed print out and keep physical copies of their photographs on hand.

While it’s becoming ever-cheaper to purchase extra hard drives and cloud storage, many people feel as though the safest way to preserve their work is to get it physically printed out.

This is something the fictional Heck family of the television series The Middle learned all too unfortunately when their sister Sue attempted to upload photos from her camera to the computer and somehow managed to erase every image ever saved on their computer.[Read More…]

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