Digital Workflow?

I am in the process of converting from film to digital and am curious as to what people's digital workflow is like on a typical dive trip.

1. Do you go for filling up your memory card on each dive or shoot, review, delete/keep before moving on to the next shot?

2. Do you download your images between every dive in order to safeguard your images or wait until the end of the day (given that you would have a large enough card to do this)

3. for you other converts do find that you sill brackett your shots as much as you did with film? Or just reivew your shot and then make your setting adjusments?

4. Any other converts out there have any other experience on what works vs what does not work when making the switch from film to digital.

Thanks for any insights you might have,

Keith

Hi Keith,

Eric and I will be giving a workshop at Seaspace this year which will devote 1 hr to discussing Digital Workflow. As you can see, shooting digital, the BIGGEST thing to learn is "Now what do I do w/ these shots???"

1. Do you go for filling up your memory card on each dive or shoot, review, delete/keep before moving on to the next shot?

I shoot RAW and I get 72 shots on a 1 gig card. I don't usually shoot that many, but sometimes I do... If I'm on a good boat w/ a dry camera table, I'll open my housing and DL the photos to the laptop after every dive.

For dayboats where you go out and do 2 or 3 dives on a small wet boat, I don't open the housing.

2. Do you download your images between every dive in order to safeguard your images or wait until the end of the day (given that you would have a large enough card to do this)

See above. Not only do you safeguard your images, but you can do a quick review to see if you're getting good exposures, or say if one of your strobes isn't firing.

3. for you other converts do find that you sill brackett your shots as much as you did with film? Or just reivew your shot and then make your setting adjusments?

Sometimes I bracket shutterspeed on wideangle with those "one chance" encounters, such as manta ray passes, turtle passes, sharks, etc. Shooting RAW really helps, but it's still possible to blow out some highlights. Mostly though, it's shoot, review, reshoot if necessary.

4. Any other converts out there have any other experience on what works vs what does not work when making the switch from film to digital.

Everyone has a slightly different workflow so I'm sure you'll get some interesting answers here.

What we are talking about in this thread is not really workflow, as there is still a LOT that should happen after you download thoses shots from the card. It's a start - really the first step in digital workflow.

Cheers

James

As usual your insight is very informative, thanks James! You are very correct, the workflow I have asked questions about is just the beginning, unfortunately for me, the part I know least about. I have been shooting a borrowed Canon 10D for several months and have had a host of point and shoot digitals for a few years. The segment of workflow from the point after you download your images has been interesting to say the least for me, but I have continually tweaked my proceedures and now have a pretty good system. I wish I could go to Houston to attend Seaspace and see your presentation. Maybe it would make a good Wetpixel article? :wink:

Thanks again, Keith