Image Security and Processing

Hello,

Digital photography is new to me, but I'm pretty comfortable with my recently purchased Canon T2i and Ikelite housing. However, I would like some advice on image security and processing before taking my son on a 2 week trip to Port Sudan (he'll be using my old Nikonos gear).

Could I just take along a few memory cards for the camera, and rely on that to secure images until I get home? How well do those things survive airport security? How well does film stand up against the hazards of beefed-up airport security? Are there any extra precautions I should take while travelling with film or cards?

Through reading Martin Edge's book on underwater photography, I understand that it's best to shoot in RAW, and process with a program like "Lightroom". What benefit would there be in buying a fancy program like that, over simply using "iPhoto", which is already installed in my computer. How difficult is it to get the hang of "Lightroom" or "Aperture" if that is required to achieve better images? Which fancy program would you recommend for use with a Mac computer, if ease of use is a high priority?

John McCracken, Canada

Hello,

 

Digital photography is new to me, but I'm pretty comfortable with my recently purchased Canon T2i and Ikelite housing. However, I would like some advice on image security and processing before taking my son on a 2 week trip to Port Sudan (he'll be using my old Nikonos gear).

 

Could I just take along a few memory cards for the camera, and rely on that to secure images until I get home? How well do those things survive airport security? How well does film stand up against the hazards of beefed-up airport security? Are there any extra precautions I should take while travelling with film or cards?

 

Through reading Martin Edge's book on underwater photography, I understand that it's best to shoot in RAW, and process with a program like "Lightroom". What benefit would there be in buying a fancy program like that, over simply using "iPhoto", which is already installed in my computer. How difficult is it to get the hang of "Lightroom" or "Aperture" if that is required to achieve better images? Which fancy program would you recommend for use with a Mac computer, if ease of use is a high priority?

 

John McCracken, Canada

I think that if you have enough cards, then you should be fine. I have put several of my cards through the washing machine with no ill effects and mine have been screened/x-rayed countless times. Film less than ISO 800 should be fine as well.

As for aperture/lightroom, they are far different than i-photo. My advice is to download the trial versions and play with them for 30 days for free and buy the one you like (if either) when you get back. Raw is clearly the best way to shoot; you can do so much more with the files than you can with jpegs in either LR or Aperture.

Enjoy and show us some pics.

Bill

Taking multiple cards will be fine but how will you know you'll have enough? With my D300 I take between 1 and 3GB per dive. On a one week dive trip I can do perhaps 20 dives. You'll be there for 2 weeks. Even if you assume 20 dives at 1GB per dive you'll need 20GB for the trip.

The big problem you will have with just taking cards is not really being able to view your images properly and analyse them. How will you know if you perhaps you have some settings wrong? How can you improve your images without looking at them?

If it is at all possible, it would be good to take a laptop or even a netbook. I bought a netbook for less than $300 and it only weighs around 1kg. You could transfer your images to the netbook and review them each day.

Shooting raw is almost always a good idea. Raw images store the image as shot regardless of many camera settings (such as white balance) which gives you more options for image manipulation and correction after the fact. Many programs, including Lightroom, allow you to manipulate raw images.

Lightroom is a pretty good program for doing basic image manipulation - white balance and other overall adjustments, cloning, cropping, etc. More than that, Lightroom is great for cataloging and keywording - makes it much easy to find an image that you took 3 years ago. If you are going to use something like Lightroom, the sooner you start, the better as you get all your images into the catalog before you have too many.

As Bill suggests, download one of the free trials and play.

Thanks Bill,

Nice pictures. You sure got around last year. I hope to have some post-worthy photos by December. Thanks also for the reassurance on film and card stability - didn't know memory cards were so durable.

John

Thanks Andrew,

After clicking your "My Dives" link, I see you have created a really nice record by linking your photos to details of the dive itself. I would love to be able to do that, and maybe someday I will. Then, when I'm just a bit older, too rickety and poor to go diving again, I could better recall the good times. I'll take advice from you and Bill and take a whirl at using "Lightroom". Is that program easier to use with a Mac than "Aperture"?

I'll probably have to get by without buying a laptop though. I've already gone way over budget for this trip, and the money comes out of a joint account I share with my wife. She isn't in on this trip, although she dove there with me 30 years ago.

John

John,

After clicking your "My Dives" link, I see you have created a really nice record by linking your photos to details of the dive itself.

The automation possible in Lightroom goes a long way to helping me associate the photographs with the dives. In fact, I see that as one of the strengths of Lightroom. You can automate so many things.

I'll take advice from you and Bill and take a whirl at using "Lightroom". Is that program easier to use with a Mac than "Aperture"?

I have never used Aperture so I can't compare. I have heard they are similar. If I remember back to when I started using Lightoom (Feb 2008), I did find it a bit daunting, but I fairly quickly got the hang of it. Now I hardly have to think twice. It is just so easy to use.

Here's a write up I did over 3 years ago: Lightroom That was with 1.x and many of the "bugs" have been fixed. Some new ones have been introduced, but overall, it just keeps getting better, especially the introduction of Camera Profiles.

Hi there

I am newbie here.Thanks for your sharing and suggestion.i have encountered some problem about image processing.I usually process my image using the image program before.But it can not work anymore after my updating to windows 8.

I dont' know why,I want to know whether there is a powerful program supports to work with windows8 offline?

Thanks for any suggestion.

Hi there

I am newbie here.Thanks for your sharing and suggestion.i have encountered some problem about image processing.I usually process my image using the image program before.But it can not work anymore after my updating to windows 8.

I dont' know why,I want to know whether there is a powerful program supports to work with windows8 offline?

Thanks for any suggestion.

Which program are you using? Suggestion is Lightroom. It is powerful and you can happily work offline with it.

Which program are you using? Suggestion is Lightroom. It is powerful and you can happily work offline with it.

Hi there

My image program is Rasteredge.Thanks for your recommendation.I'd like to have a try

i am working with Lightroom from version 1.0 when it was just some kind of a image collection program.
Now Lightroom is a very powerful tool for handling huge collections of photos (and videos) and it has powerful

image editing tools built in. Now i rarely use Photoshop to edit my photos, most of editing i do in Lightroom itself.

Lightroom is a excellent value for the $$$ and it extremly useful for big to huge collections of digital images,

especially RAW files.

I prefer to carry a laptop to staore and especially view and edit daily the pictures i shot and it would make me nervous to

view them after the holiday as viewing them on the cameras monitor or on a 15''+ monitor can make a huge difference.

Also, in Sudan you most probably will shoot a lot of pictures and need a lot of storage space to save them and carrying

a small laptop with you give you space to store your photos/videos and the possibility to view them.

If you should opt for a laptop, please get also a external USB3 or Thunderbolt hard disk to backup all your work!

The coolest ultralight laptop currently is the ASUS Zenbook, good looking, fast and reasonable priced for it's class

and very similar to a MacBook Air (who is the coolest for Apple persons).

Chris

I guess this topic got a little confused because it was surfaced after 2 years of inactivity...

Anyway, a good alternative, if you plan to travel light and do the pp only when you get back home is to use an iPad, the little connecting dongle to read sd cards, and then use the little nice -and free - app called Snapseed. Apart from exposure, you can fix most of the parameters in order to judge what you're doing right or wrong and do any required adjustments before you get back home with a lot of sd cards full of junk. Starting with a blank iPad, you can have up to 128GB of storage, which for me is plenty, even for a two-week trip (if you're not doing videos, of course).

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Starting with a blank iPad, you can have up to 128GB of storage, which for me is plenty, even for a two-week trip (if you're not doing videos, of course).

 

 

I don't know, Walmyr...

… I might have been snap-shooting wildly, and I didn't delete any RAW files, but I had over 200Gb of data from the Lembeh Workshop.

I put the images onto two USB hard-drives (one a back-up), using a MacBook.

I've kept about 800 dng files, but, with the D800, that's still over 30Gb of data.

Tim, you're right when talking from the D800 perspective... I'm shooting µ4/3 and my RAW files are typically 16MB (OM-D EM5) each, that's why I mentioned "for me is plenty". Anyway, I learned about Snapseed from a buddy diver in the Philippines almost a year ago, Ron Lucas, who at that time was shooting a D90 and only carried his iPad and a separate hard-drive with SD slot. He only did a first evaluation in the pictures at the end of the day. Later on he sent me samples of his pictures after he post-processed them back in the Bermudas, where he lives.

I carry both, iPad and Macbook, and external drives for backup. You know, only Jesus saves; everyone else should backup. Old joke... ;-)