So, i have been looking at this ColorSpace UDMA backup device, and i am thinking… I shoot on CF Cards. i carry 24Gb of them with me most of the time. I also sometimes carry my Laptop (MacBook Pro). But i like the look of this because of the ability to not only backup your CF Cards, but to back the internal drive itself up to somewhere else (other external USB Drive). This sounds very handy for long trips, large events, etc.

But, there is a question: Is it any good? Anyone play with one of these? Recommendations? Especially around using with Lightroom?

So, this is the big one! Where do i start. 37.5MP (yup… you ready that right!) available in October in the UK for, well, the price of a small car… £15,996… and thats the starting price. it goes to £19,092 for the camera with a sapphire glass monitor screen and Platinum service support… EEK… Ohhh, and Lenses from £3096 – £5160… you could get a very nice car for that price… Check more here and here from Engadget.

What can i say about this. Entry level camera, about $600 in late August, 10.2 MP and 18-55 Lens. Seems to shoot on SD only and supports both SDHC and eye-Fi cards…  Not a bad little camera for the price. [Update] Forgot the Link… From Engadget…]

First, The Nikon D300s for all you Nikonions out there…

Cost: $1799. will shoot 24FPS video at 720p resolution. 12.3mp sensor, 7 FPS burst shooting, Dual CF and SD Card shots (one of each) but by the sounds of things the sensor (DX) is not full frame… More info on Engadget and Digital Photography Review.

Available late August 2009.

So, at the moment (or when my Mac Pro was working i should say) this was my workflow (roughly):

• download photos to a particular directory using Downloader Pro (had some copyright settings in here as standard). the filename structure was <drive>:\Photos\<YYYYMMDD>\<YYMMDD>-<HHMMSS>-<ImportSerial> where ImportSerial was the number of the file (so, first file of the download was 1, and so on). the directory was on a RAID 1 array, and a copy process was set to copy to my Windows Home Server at the same time
• Open LightRoom and import the photos. I had one massive LightRoom Catalogue which was set to export metadata as it was written to XMP side cars. Keywords would usually get added on import… but sometimes they didn’t. i should do the keywords more often
• go through each photo and set ratings
• do some work on photos that needed work
• export the top photos
• backup job to the cloud (either Amazon S3 or RackSpace CloudFiles)

Now that i have to start from scratch, does anyone have any recommendations? how should i setup my LightRoom Catalogues? is Downloader Pro enough or should i have something else? is my naming structure for files and folders up to scratch? And while we are on the subject, anyone have recommendations for Mobile Workflows? If i take my laptop with me, copy photos to it and work on them, how should i get them on to the main machine? just copy the LightRoom Catalogue? Is there a better way? and when should i clean my cards? do i do it after import, after backup to the Home Server or after backup to the Cloud?

Leave comments below if you have ideas.

• Become a better programmer: been on my list for quite some time now, but still getting there…
• take more photos: now i got my 5D MK II, i need to use it properly…
• Read more: even if they are tech books, i should read more, since looking at a screen too long can make you distracted… you end up reading email, or surfing the web or… ohhh shiney…

Well, they are my real plans… i could have loose weight, eat right, etc, but, who in reality is going to belive them? not me, thats for sure!

have a good one, and hope to talk to you all next year!

After getting my 5D MK II and a new MacBook Pro, i am in need of changing my photography workflow. the reason is 2 fold: 

• i have a LOT more photos now, taking a lot more storage and needing to be orginized better
• i have 2 machines i do photography work on…

I currently use LightRoom on both my main workstation (Mac Pro running Windows 2008 Server) and my laptop (MacBook Pro, currently running OSX) and ideally i would like some way of keeping them in sync. At the moment i save all meta data as an XMP sidecar, and if i have made changes to photos on the laptop, i just copy the folder to the workstation and import. but what happens if i make changes on photos already on the workstation? if i rate photos on the laptop and add keywords on the PC, how do i sync them?

Next question is around the download workflow. i just use LightRoom to do the downloading, but should i move to something like Downloader Pro? hopefully someone here can help!

Thanks!

• Compaired to the 350D i shot on previously, this is a huge camera! with my 24-70 2.8 Sigma lens, its a very heavy camera (no weighing scales to check out heavy, but heavier than the 350).
• battery is a lot bigger than the one in the 350. and its not charged out of the box. i know it was a good while since i got my 350D, but i know it was about half charged when i got it cause i took a lot of photos with it before needing to fully charge the thing…
• i think i am going to have to get a UDMA compatible CF reader for the PC since the photos are weighing in at 5Mb a piece, and thats just JPG! havent had a chance to shoot RAW just yet, but expecting them to be quite big!

So, once the batter is fully charged, i will play around with this a lot more and get back to you with a review. keep watching this space!