Does anyone use digital media like film?

[dreed]

When shooting with digital cameras, I try to cycle through my CF cards so that the use is even and I'm not exposing myself to degraded storage through too many overwrites.  This maybe a little crazy as I'm not shooting 10s of 1000s of photos every month but being an IT person by trade, this kind of detail sticks in my head.

When recently shopping for CF cards, I noticed that the price had come down quite measurably, almost to the point of $10/GB - depending on the quality of the brand.

This is as cheap as or cheaper than film (the non-professional medium format kind, anyway.)

And when I arrived at this conclusion, I wondered, if I was prepared to spend money on film to take photos with lots of single use negatives, why shouldn't I do the same with digital media, especially as it becomes cheaper and cheaper?

Ultimately it isn't incredibly useful on the original digital media as I can't have 50 of them easily plugged in at the same time, vs having 500GB of disk online.

But still the question lingered, should I just use them once, copy photos off and leave the media in a cupboard, perhaps as the ultimate backup, in a different location to those DVDs?

[mahleu]

I think you have more chance of getting a dud card if you use a new one each time you shoot.

I have heard of someone who was fresh onto the digital camera thing and would place their full memory cards in a drawer and buy new ones...

[michael]

I suppose one could eat dinner on plates, then store instead of washing and reusing them, but then I would have to ask – why?

Cards are designed to be written to a read hundreds of thousands of times. Compared to hard disks they are quite expensive. For example, a good quality CF card costs about $25 /GB. (Currently $200 for an 8GB Sandisk III at B&H).

On the other hand a good quality  1 Terabyte (1,000 GB) drive now costs about $250, or 25 cents a Gigabyte.

So, let's see... store image at a cost of a quarter dollar per Gig or for $25 per gig, a difference of 2 whole orders of magnitude.

What was the question again?

Oh Yes. I think I'll wash my plates after each meal and reuse them.

Michael

[dalethorn]

Now that you can get any sound effect you want as a ringtone on your mobile, maybe someone should start selling sound effects for cameras - like a dishwasher sound when you format the card.  Don't laugh - if it can be done, there's real money in it.

[nemophoto]

Actually, I use my CF cards exactly like film on shoots, with the exception that I don't keep them for later.

I carry 38GB worth of CF cards in varying sizes and a few brands (mostly Sandisk, 512MB to 4GB). I treat each card like a roll of film because I found I tended to overshoot with larger cards, on some shots. Major shots, I'll start with a 2 or 4GB card, smaller, I'll start with a 512MB or 1GB.

The difference is that each shot (I shoot a lot of catalog) is offloaded to a digital wallet-type device in the field as soon as I'm done. The shot cards are seperated from the unshot cards. The end of the day, the digital wallet is offloaded, backedup and renamed to another external drive. That way, at any one time, I usually have two backups (cards and digital wallet  or digital wallet and additional pocket drive).

As one poster mentioned, if you continaully use new cards, you may get a dud sooner than later. On my most recent shoot, I had technical glitches galor. In one day, I had a 2GB ATP card go bad, followed up by a failed Hyperdrive. (Also, had a bad Delkin 2GB UDMA which was V-E-R-Y  S-L-O-O-O-O-W.) For the first time in years, I did loose some frames, because the ATP card was immediately unreadable after shooting and pulling out of the camera. By offloading immediately (or trying) my assistant was able to let me know immediately that we had problems. However, I had six more gigs on the shot, so really didn't need to shoot more. By and large, my redundancy has protected me from loses, especially by treating each card as a roll of film and not reformatting till the following day.

[mmurph]

treating each card as a roll of film and not reformatting till the following day

The only time I have lost images is by accidently reformatting a card that had not been off-loaded during a shoot.

I agree - have enough GB to get through a shoot without reusing cards. I have about 25 GB.  Other than that, per what Michael et. al. said.    

Best,
Michael M.

[Ken Bennett]

This depends on one's frame of reference. A roll of professional 35mm slide film, processed and paged, ran about $20 or so back in the day. Might be more now. For $20 I can buy a Sandisk Ultra II 2GB card at Costco, which will hold about 250 RAW files from my 1-D Mark II camera. That's the equivalent of seven rolls of film.

So, I could buy new cards for each job and file them with the job paperwork, just like film, and it would cost one-seventh of what film cost for the same number of images. Not that I'm advocating this, of course.

[DarkPenguin]

How non volatile are CF cards?

[Richowens]

How non volatile are CF cards?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=203860\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

 I know they will survive and retain information through a normal wash cycle and permanent press dry  

 Rich

[BernardLanguillier]

When recently shopping for CF cards, I noticed that the price had come down quite measurably, almost to the point of $10/GB - depending on the quality of the brand.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200398\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Actually with 32GB cards from Transcent you are now close to 6 US$/GB.

Regards,
Bernard

[Dan Wells]

B+H recently had 16 GB SanDisk Extreme IIIs for $24.99 (well under $2/GB) after rebate (out of stock, though), which really does make them film - at least for the duration of an extended shoot or trip. Once they're back home, wash and reuse, but no reason to carry a laptop or digital wallet except to provide an extra copy. Even a 40 MP back should get a couple hundred shots on 16 GB, and anything else will get a lot more. A few hundred bucks worth of those (assuming you can get the rebate on multiple cards - I don't know all the catches there) provides more shots than any amount of film you want to carry... 100 rolls of 120 Velvia are surprisingly heavy and more importantly unwieldy - I remember being surprised when I once bought that much at once (for a summer residency at the Maine Photo Workshops). 1200 shots, $700 before processing, about 12-13 lbs and absolutely no fun to pack in its 20 little green 5 roll boxes. Now, we have somewhere between 2 and 6 (depending on the camera) $25 cards that fit in pouches on a camera strap, don't have to be processed, don't weigh anything...

                                 -Dan