SAVING DIGITAL PHOTO FILES
I have been asked how I save, label, and keep track of digital photo files. What works for me may not work for you, but this is what I do with a few recommendations.
The short answer is that I save all my digital camera files
chronologically in one folder (with subfolders) with the original names. I go through these files and rename the best photos and I resave these files in folders by
subject (with subfolders). When I get enough files in my folders, I burn them to disc and then erase the folders from my hard drive and start over.
I do keep some small jpegs of my favorite photos on my hard drive all the time.
Now for the details.
PROCEDURE
1. First of all, check your camera's numbering system. At one setting it will restart its numbering system every time you put in an emptyr memory card. With the other setting it just keeps numbering without starting over. It is best to choose the second setting so you don't have duplicate numbers and accidentally erase two different photos that have the same file number.
2. Save all of your original photo files to your hard drive (and eventually to CD-R) with the original camera designated numbering system. I have a folder on my hard drive (DIGITAL PHOTOS) where I dump all original digital files until I have enough to burn to a CD. Files in the DIGITAL PHOTOS folder are arranged in sub-folders chronologically (The first card download is in folder "A", second download is in "B" and so on). That way if you ever need to go to the original file, you have it. When my DIGITAL PHOTOS folder gets between 300-500 MB, I burn it to two identical CDs and then check to make sure the computer can read the CDs before I delete the folders inside DIGITAL FOLDERS and start over.
3. ASAP, I look through my original photos files and re-save the good photos as tif files with new names. Re-named files are saved into folders and subfolders by subject (Family, Landscape, Wildlife, Church, Misc) until there are enough files and folders to burn a CD. A CD will have two or more subject folders with subfolders. I make 2 or 3 identical CDs and check them before erasing the original folders from my hard drive.
CHECKING CDs
One more note about checking CDs before you delete the folders from the hard drive. I learned the hard way that just looking at the file names on a CD does
NOT mean those files are useable and readable. I will usually open several randomly selected files on at least one and preferably two computers before I delete the original folders from my hard drive. Of course I am obsessive about things like this.
FILE NAMES
You can stick with the file names your camera gives your files, or you can come up with your own. It can be a chronological system, topical or both. I use a chronological system with short subject descriptions.
Examples:
"03C13A05 Drew Jen"
"03C13B02 Market"
"03C13C06 Sunset"
The 8 digits are the date, "roll" and photo number, followed by a short description. It is nice that Windows allows long names.
The 8 digit code is as follows:
03 - year (2003)
C - month (March)
13 - date (13th)
A - roll (first subject of the day is A, second is B)
05 - picture number on that roll
Some computers have a problem with file names longer than 8 characters so I wanted each photo to have a name no longer then 8 characters in case I needed to leave off the short description.
Months are as follows:
A - Jan
B - Feb
C - Mar
D - Apr
E - May
F - June
G - July
H - Aug
J - Sep
K - Oct
L - Nov
M - Dec
I skipped "I" as a month because it looks too much like the number 1.
I thought about J - Jan, F - Feb, but substitute letters for months that begin with the same letters seemed more complicated than A through M.
The first roll or subject for the day is A, then B, and so on. The letter for the roll separates the date number from the photo number.
A day with not many photos would all be roll A. But if I was on a trip and shooting lots of photos, I could divide the day into locations or subjects and give each one its own letter.
If I took 8 photos of Drew, then 10 at the market, then 6 of the sunset, I could call the Drew pictures roll A, the market pictures roll B, and the sunset roll C. Of course with only 24 pictures, I could just call them all roll A.
When I was in Colorado, I shot 10 or more rolls of film per day. If I had done that digitally, I would need a system that would handle that number of photos. That is why I came up with "rolls" even though they might all come from the same flash card.
I give improved versions of the same photo a letter and number designation in between the 8 character code and the short description.
"03C13A05 t2 Drew Jen"
The “t2” means it is a tiff (.tif) file, second version. It probably means I corrected the exposure and color balance.
"03C13A05 p3 Drew Jen"
The “p3” means Photoshop (.psd) format, third version. Files with mutiple layers must be saved in the Photoshop format (extension .psd). This means I added some layers to the file.
Usually the highest number version is the best version.
FINDING PHOTOS
Once your files are all nicely labeled and saved, how do you find them later?
One way is too keep a chronological file list, like I have with my slides for years.
Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements both allow you to make a contact sheet of photos in a file folder (with sub-folders). I make a contact sheet of the photos on a disc and put this in a three ring binder. By looking through the binder I can find which disc has a particular photo.
This is not as elegant as using software.
Software:
ACDSee is one of the best programs under $50. There is also a free downloadable version you might want to try.
Now Adobe has just come out with Adobe Album. There is a good review at
DPReview.
Adobe Album captures your digital photos from your hard drive or CD-R and remembers where they came from. You can search by date, subject, place, or even color once you have the photos properly entered.
I don't think I would put everything into Album, just the good stuff I had renamed.
BACKUP
Since all hard drives crash, it is important to get everything important saved to CD-R (don't use CD-RW discs). Michael Reichman's 18 month old hard drive crashed recently. He has a nice
website.
It would have cost him about $3500 for one of the drive saver places to attempt to
recover his files.
Basically, he still has what he saved to CD-R.
EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE
Following a good recommendation from one of my sons, I got a
BUSlink external hard drive that connects to the USB port. I drag copies of important folders over to this external drive on a regular basis. If one of my internal hard drives crashes, or my computer just refuses to work, I can plug this external drive into the USB port of another computer and have access to all of my important data files. The BUSlink drive has more memory than my two internal hard drives put together. BUSlink also makes external hard drives that connect by Firewire.
Happy Photo Filing!
ZONE ALARM and ARIN
This is my second post on protecting your computer while you are on the internet. I will assume you have good virus protection software on your computer. If not, go ASAP to
Norton's Antivirus or
McAfee's, or PC-cillin from
Trend Micro and protect yourself.
I also assume you have a good firewall which will let you know if anything is trying to get into your computer,
or out. If not, get the free version of Zone Alarm from
Zone Labs. They have a paid version which you will probably not need.
So why do you want to know if something from your computer is trying to get out, to "reach and touch someone"? Your browser does that, so does your virus protection software when it gets updates, and so do other non-malicious programs.
But there might be monsters lurking in your computer that are reaching out to give someone private information about you. This includes spyware (see yesterday's post) and even worse programs that could be trying to send confidential information from your computer to folks who would like to steal your credit cared numbers, bank account information, or your identity.
With Zone Alarm running, you will know when programs are trying to get in or out. You can mark known and trusted programs (like Internet Explorer) so they can reach out without having to get your approval each time. My web publishing software is another program I have given "reach out" approval.
One day Zone Alarm told me an unknown program wanted to access the internet. It gave me the file name and the numerical address the program was trying to reach. I did not recognize the file name, and how do you look up an address like 6.0.9.184? ( This address happens to be the good folks at Zone Labs.)
That is where
ARIN comes in. You can do a "whois" search based on the numeric IP.
Using ARIN's search, I tracked down the site my computer was trying to contact. It was a company that collects information from your computer and sells it to advertisers. (I no longer recall whihc one.) Without Zone Alarm, I would not have even known my computer was trying to send out information. I told Zone Alarm to block this program from accessing the internet.
Later I found Ad-Aware which found this little bundle of Spyware code and deleted it from my computer.
Any time Zone Alarm give you the numeric IP address one of your programs is trying to reach, you can now use
ARIN to find out who it is. Usually it is some legitimate program doing its normal thing. But if it isn't, and it wants to go some place on the internet that you don't want your computer to go, tell Zone Alarm to "Just Say No," Then use Ad-Aware or Spybot (see yesterday's article) to get rid of the program.
Safe Computing!
SPYWARE
Spyware programs, also known as "scumware", are the parasites of the computer world. Spyware is undetected by most virus protection software. Spyware can end up on your computer simply by clicking on a link, opening an email, or you can get it from one of those annoying popup ads while you are browsing. A number of downloadable programs such as Comet Cursor come complete with spyware.
What does spyware do? It keeps track of the places you go on the internet and the online purchases you make. Then it sends this information out to advertisers and retailers who pay the spyware company for the information. What happens next? Lots of ads in your email box. It does all of this without you even knowing it is going on. Do you think this is an invasion of your privacy? I do!
So how do you get rid of these low life parasites? Software. The best, free software for a long time was
Ad-Aware from
Lavasoft. I have had it on my computer for some time now and I run it periodically to locate and exterminate these parasites.
There is now some new spyware detection software,
Spybot. A review at Cnet says Spybot is even bettert than Ad-Aware, and it is also free, although the author would like you to send a small donation if you so choose. I have tried it and I like it.
If you don't have a program to find and kill the parasites on your computer, I recommend you get
Spybot. Use it regularly.
There are more
computer links at my web site, including some more that will keep your computer safe and happy.
DIGITAL ADVANTAGE
I was taking pictures during church yesterday and I realized I should have been using a digital SLR camera (DSLR) instead of film.
Using flash during most religious ceremonies is distracting if not downright obtrusive. Fast film and/or fast lenses are the solution.
I had my usual kit for indoor church services: a 35 mm SLR (single lens reflex) camera body, three lenses, flash (for when it IS appropriate to use), and some rolls of Kodak E200 slide film.
When I use E200, I set the film speed on the camera body at ISO 640. When I have the film processed, I ask for “Push 2” processing. If you don’t understand push processing of slide film, read my
Color Film article at my web site (toward the end under "Slide Film Recommendations".
640 speed film allows me to have a decent shutter speed inside. I was using a 50 mm lens at f/2.0 with a shutter speed of 1/60 second. (For more on f-stops and shutter speeds, see my
Exposure article.) At one point, I needed a much closer view, so I switched to a 100-300 mm zoom lens with image stabilization. I was now at an aperture of f/4.0 and a shutter speed of 1/15 second. This would ordinarily be way too slow to handhold a lens this long but the image stabilization built into the lens makes this possible. I have some published photos shot at 300 mm in focal length with a shutter speed of 1/6 second. Without image stabilization I would ordinarily need a shutter speed of 1/250 second to get a good image.
So far so good. A little faster film speed would have been nice, but I had what I had. (I don’t like to push E200 beyond two stops.)
After church there was a surprise birthday party and I was asked to take photos. Then I wished I had slow speed fine grained film since I could use flash. Had I known in advance, I would have brought along a second camera body with slow speed film. I could have changed film mid-roll in the body I had with me (I have done that before) but I did not even bring slow speed film (shame on me). Besides, it was a surprise and I didn’t have much time to get ready to shoot.
Here is where a digital SLR would be a real advantage since you can change the “film speed” from photo to photo. No film switching mid roll or need to carry a second camera body (except as a back up).
With the new Canon 10D SLR, or any other similarly equipped DSLR, I could set the camera for a speed of 800, 1600, or 3200 for the low-light, hand held shots. The images would be a little grainier (actually “noisy” in digital terms) but useable without flash. Then for the birthday shots with flash I could quickly reset the camera to a speed of 100 for maximum quality. The digital advantage is that you can change the “film speed” with every single photograph as the situation requires.
To learn more about digital photography, both its advantages and its disadvantages, go to the
DIGITAL section of my main web site.
By the way, did I mention my new
grandson?
I have joined the world of blogging. Welcome to photography and more.
What do Kevin Costner, Bob Dole, George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, Bill Bradley, Pierce Brosnan, Ringo Starr, Jerry Seinfeld, Jill St. John, Melanie Griffith, Kermit the Frog, Lee Iacocca and Regis Philbin all have in common? They have all been in the Ultimate Taxi in Aspen, Colorado. Go to
The Ultimate Taxi.
Here are some links to
other Web Cams.
