Workflow Advise Amateur

[bigshinybutton]

I am an amateur photog. with about 120,000 items in my catalogue.  Have read the Dam book and tried to apply it.  Looking for help with my workflow and haven't been able to find the definitive solution.

Workflow:
A) Shoot RAW/JPeg on various cards/cameras.
B) Ingest using PhotoMechanic Mac as LGK_YYYYMMDD_{seq #} into folders maxed at 4.2GB (for DVD backup) on multiple drives.
C) Catalogue and adjust in LR

My question/issue is: I sometimes find cards from a couple of months back or forget to erase the cards.  When I then go to ingest, I cannot tell if I have already loaded some, or all of the images.

Where is my workflow broken?

Any links/help or personal applications appreciated.

bigshinybutton

[BoglePhoto]

I cannot tell from your post if you are making backups of the card files on ingestion. Peter recommends (as  do I) to do your initial backups on ingestion. Image Ingester II is great for this. I have three different sources of the file once I download the card, one pure raw files with no conversions (the NEFS) as Back Up 1, one converted to DNG (my choice, as I see the benefit of DNG in size and flexibility) which is my working file, and a copy of that converted DNG as Back Up 2, all on separate hard drives. I also back up my working files nightly to an external hard drive, and make a weekly separate copy of that external that I take off site. Sounds complicated, but it is automated. When you do this you in essence have 4 or 5 copies of what is on the card, in different places. If one or two drives fail, I still have copies (and they probably have a lesser failure rate than operator error of deleting or refomatting a card). After I download, I visually check the files in bridge to see if they are all good, no corrupt images. Then I reformat the card, or leave it in my reformat pile. The ingested backups stay there (with the same file/folder structure as my working drive) as space permits, and my working files then migrate through to my archive in my workflow.

I have had much less duplicate files/folders than before, and less deleted files not downloaded, following this procedure. It took time for me to get ot this point of confidence, as I used to buy extra cards rather than reformat a shoot I especially liked. IIP also lets you tag the card you used for the shoot, so if one card starts to have issues, you can identify it and trash it.

Before reading the DAM book I had multiple copies everywhere, and never sure of what I had or the confidence to delete or refomat the card. Now the reformatting is part of my workflow and I have much less duplication of files or folders.

I also found that writing out a workflow helped.

Get the book and read it twice. It is worth its weight in gold.

Bill

[RobO]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the information on your workflow.  I was wondering, once you've got your file into the working file pipeline and it is backed up to both an external hard drive as well as to an offsite disk, what do you do with the files in Back Up 1 and Back Up 2?  Do you delete them as needed to make room for other ingested files or do you keep them as added insurance?

Many thanks for your help.

Best regards,

Rob

[BoglePhoto]

Rob

I keep them as long as I have space (the internal backups are 1TB each) and then take the oldest first once I make sure the archives and backups are visually checked and hashed verified. I can recommend to get extra drives to have as much space as possible. My desktop holds 4 drives just for photo work. One for the OS, one original, and the two back ups.

Bill Bogle Jr.

[RobO]

Hi Bill,

Ok, thanks for the info.

Best regards,

Rob