Photo Credit - Flickr, Fanch The System

One of my friends recently sent me an email, “My hard drive crashed and I lost all my photos. Can you send me any pictures you have of the gang?”

A little while back, I described how to organize your digital photos. Organizing your photos is just as important as backing them up. You can’t effectively back up your photos if you don’t have them organized.

Backups Are More Feasible Than Ever

But why do so few people do it? Is it because we’re lazy? Yes. Stop being lazy. You’re not my teenage stepson, so you’ll actually listen when I say, “stop being lazy!” Does it take much effort to burn a CD or DVD once a month? How about a little drag and drop action between two Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder windows?

In the film-only era, organizing your photos meant putting them in photo albums and storing the negatives in a safe place. Did we ever do that? Based on how people are now, I doubt that many people’s photos were organized. I still have shoeboxes with envelopes in random nooks and crannies in my house! My digital photos have fared much better. In the digital world, organizing your photos is easier than ever. Having a backup copy is within the reach of our budgets, our technology, and the precious time we have.

Several of my older co-workers in the past were afraid of the computer and skeptical of the security of the data. The argument always was, “but what if something happens to the computer?”

My internal dialogue went like this, “Sure Louise. Your paper filing system is really secure. What if we had a fire? All the electronic files we have on the swappable backup drive is off-site. We’ll still have those files. Your paper files are toast! See what the boss will think if you spent the next 6 days doing nothing but photocopying every sheet of paper in our file cabinets. Then see what he thinks about leasing storage space across town to keep all this paper!”

Storing your data, or in this case, your photographs, in digital form is the easiest, most cost effective, time-efficient, and most secure option available to us.

Backup Methods

Backup strategies range from the simple to the elaborate. Your family photos are no less valuable, but you don’t need the same robust solutions that professional photographers use. The important thing is, you must do something.

CD-R and DVD-R

Once your photos are organized, it’s only a matter of dragging and dropping the folders into your CD/DVD burning software or your external hard drive. If your photos are organized on your “live” drive, then they will be organized on your backup media too.

External Hard Drives

I’ve seen many references to CD-Rs and DVD-Rs being an affordable method of storage. Byte for byte, even an external firewire drive (more expensive than USB drives) are cheaper than the equivalent storage in CD-Rs and DVD-Rs!

Hard drives are always getting cheaper and cheaper. This is the most convenient method of redundant storage. You can drag and drop folders from one window to another. Voila! Your photos are saved to more than one location. You win extra bonus points for stashing the external hard drive off-site, like in your desk drawer at work.

Memory Cards

Memory cards also continue to drop in price. For special events, consider buying memory cards just for the occasion and storing them somewhere secure. Of course, you’ll also have the images on your hard drive, your external drive, and a CD-R too.

Multiple Locations

The ultimate in security is to have your data in different locations. This protects your family memories from natural disasters.

Send a CD-R copy to your relatives. They would love to see the pictures, and storing your backups off-site is as secure as it gets. Likewise, you should offer to store their backups too.

Upgrade to a pro account on Flickr. For $25 a year, you get unlimited storage. You can even set up your computer to automatically upload your photos to your account. You will be uploading uncompressed full-resolution photos, but do not fear. They can be set for private viewing only. The added bonus here is, you can just flag the ones you want to share publicly with a few clicks.

There is some debate on the volatility of the media we use to back up. CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and hard drives each have their advantages and potential downfalls. Data can get corrupt on any storage medium. However, with redundancy, you are ensured that your family memories are secure. Storage media fails, but the chance of all of your redundant media failing is slim.

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Now that I’ve convinced you (and hopefully your wife) that you need a DSLR, it’s time to take your lighting to the next level. A well-lit 6 megapixel image will trump a poorly lit 12 megapixel image any day. The word photography literally means “writing with light.” You will still take the same crappy photos with a $2000 camera if you don’t increase your knowledge base.

Increase your knowledge base through one of my favorite blogs of all-time - Strobist.

The winky little flash on your digital camera is responsible for more red-eye than every instance of demonic possession ever documented by paranormal experts. Its location near the lens axis provides the most unflattering light ever known to mankind (think of your driver’s license or passport photo). When you have an external flash unit (or multiple flash units) positioned away from the camera, it makes your photographs come to life with a 3D-like quality. Strobist teaches you how to do it.

I debated whether or not to really pimp Strobist here on 21st Century Dad, but I have to admit it. I am a pathetic Strobist fanboy! David Hobby is the MacGuyver of lighting. I’m doing more with two small flashes, some free sample gels, and stuff lying around the house than I ever did with an entire professional studio strobe setup. The studio strobes are now sitting in someone else’s closet gathering dust. Now my wallet weighs more and my lighting bag weighs less.

I’m so grateful that I had the chance to learn how to use off-camera lighting. My daughter’s first year is being documented in a much more satisfying way. I’m getting professional results from a pretty minimal rig that’s easy to use. We’ll never have to drag her to JC Penney. With some more tools in my toolbox, I’m also able to get some the most elusive photos of all - photos of angst-ridden teenage boys.

Just as it was when you made the jump from point-and-shoot to DSLR, you can run on a sort of a semi-automatic mode until your comfort level and knowledge increase. The most basic Strobist techniques already improve your photos dramatically. As your ambition and budget grow, your creativity does too. It doesn’t have to cost much at all. For around $200, you can get a complete starter kit.

When you buy your Strobist kit, you might want to pick up a battery charger and some rechargeable AA’s too. I recommend the La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger and Sanyo Eneloop NiMH AA batteries. Standard NiMH batteries lose their charge over time, even when unused. The Eneloops don’t. Strobists are among the most demanding and critical users of AA batteries. You can get an 8-pack on Amazon for a little more than the 4-pack at your local discount store.

David started the blog in February of 2006 as a way to store his notes. It has since grown to get over 1 million page views a month. He took a leave of absence from his job in June of 2007 to focus on the blog full-time. David is an inspiration photographically, but he’s also one of the reasons I started blogging. He made the right decision for his family and for 200,000 daily readers. The blogger’s lifestyle allows David to spend more time with his favorite Hobbys - Susan, Emily, and Ben.

Buy your Strobist kit on Amazon

21st Century Dad has always been about being a dad and doing it the best you can. I’m a daddy blogger who happens to care about photography a little bit more than the average dad (I’m not saying every dad doesn’t want great pictures of his children). It would be unfair to keep my mouth shut about it. A blog’s value is in the writer’s personal stamp.

A few months ago, I made a pathetic plug for the Eye-Fi wireless SD memory card. That was hardly a worthwhile introduction to photography 21st Century Dad style.

I didn’t want my photography related writing to go over the heads of the point-and-shoot crowd. My original plan was to share more general photography tips that everyone can benefit from. DSLR users are notorious for spending more time online than shooting. There are plenty of camera aficionado sites out there for the technical information you crave (notice I didn’t call them photography sites). I’m here to talk about photographing your family. I know a better way, and I’m here to share.

What’s a DSLR and Why Do I Want One?

Oh wait a minute. I just got done saying I didn’t want to alienate the point-and-shoot crowd. What’s a DSLR? DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex. If you’re still scratching your head, it’s the camera that uses interchangeable lenses. You probably think of it as a “professional” camera.

DSLRs are now within reach of mere mortals’ credit limits. You can get an entire kit with a body, a great lens, and plenty of great features for under $500. So why would you want a DSLR?

Read the rest of this entry »

Why is it that battery operated baby toys take 3 batteries? These things are sold in multiples of 2, with a 4-pack being the most common. I don’t own enough clocks and keychain-sized flashlights to utilize all the leftover AA or AAA batteries. As for larger toys, I haven’t found a use for the orphaned single C or D cells.

As your baby grows, so will her toy collection. Some 3th grade math will tell you that buying 24 batteries will power 8 toys. You can keep these magic cylinders out of the battery orphanage.

Being Green Saves You Greenbacks

It doesn’t make sense to use alkalines. Nickel metal hydride (or NiMH) rechargeables are your best bet. You will recoup their premium over alkalines after two charges. They are good for many more charge/discharge cycles. This makes sense for your wallet and for the environment.

Sometimes you can score a deal and get a charger bundled with some batteries. You might even get lucky and get a 60, 30, or 15 minute rapid charger. Brute force charging will shorten the lifespan of these little metal cylinders. These little metal cylinders are an integral part of maintaining your child’s pleasant disposition. Your batteries deserve better.

A Better Battery Charger

The La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger is the best battery charger available today. You don’t give much thought to a battery charger. Pop the batteries in and wait for the red LED to turn green. Thoughtlessness will kill your batteries as fast as the child who just discovered how to make Dora say “¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?” enough times to make you think you live in Miami.

I shelled out full-pop before the price drop to $39.95. I didn’t buy an iPhone, but I paid the nerd tax on this one. It’s worth every penny, even at the original price of $79.95. Here’s why:

• Trickle charge or rapid-charge your AA’s and AAA’s. Trickle charging gives you more battery life per charge and many more charge/discharge cycles.
• It’s smart enough to keep batteries topped off after they’re fully charged. You’ll have full-capacity batteries ready to go. Typical NiMH’s lose charge while on sitting on your shelf or in your kitchen junk drawer.
• Can be set to fully discharge partially drained batteries before recharging them, further enhancing battery life.
• There’s a “Refresh” mode that reconditions poor performing batteries.
• Each charging slot is discrete and works independent of the others. Perfect for when you have to charge the 3 batteries from one of those pesky 4.5 volt devices.
• Works on archaic nickel cadmium rechargeables too. Battery type is automatically detected.
• It doesn’t get hot when plugged in and unused.
• The charger is bundled with 4 AA’s, 4 AAA’s, and 4 C and D cell adapters. Now you don’t have to try and find rechargeable C or D cells. The extra batteries and the C and D adapters are worth $30 alone!

The Savings Continue

Every time you charge a set of batteries, you save $5 or more. Between your child’s toy collection and your own gadgets, this charger will pay for itself quickly. I bought mine on Amazon a year and a half ago and the savings continue to rack up. I love the smell of nickel metal hydride in the morning.

Don’t be seduced by false economy and settle for “basura barata” when it comes to battery chargers. The BC-900 maintains healthy batteries long after a rapid charger has finished sucking the life out of these magic little cylinders. The refresh feature has saved a few batteries I thought were toast.

The manual is written in “Engrish,” but well worth your diligence to decipher. The demo video on the manufacturer’s site is of some help, but it’s more of a sales pitch than an informative video.

If I stopped you from buying a bunch of alkaline batteries, pass some of the savings along and make a donation.

Aren’t you glad that ugly theme is gone? Finally!

No self-respecting blogger would ever use the default themes included in your Wordpress installation! An exhaustive search led me to the Heckerped theme. It’s a great looking theme and the story behind it is even better. This theme was created for a client who burned the developer of it. He chose to do something positive about it by offering it to everyone for free. In his own words, “lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness.”

There are so many reasons I ditched the old theme. The main one that comes to mind is, “it was ugly as sin, and didn’t have widget support. This one solves those problems, and many more:

• The Categories and Archives are now drop-down menus. This alleviates some clutter and visual noise.
• I always seem to like blue things. Blue is good.
• With a little work, I can add a Google search box to replace the standard search. I find the Google search box is far more robust than the build-in search.
• The header now features a random image for every page impression. I replaced the defaults with photos of my own family.