Canon Ambassador Richard Walch knows all about the importance of capturing the moment. He specialises in extreme sports photography, typically shooting fast-moving action in the most demanding conditions in the snow or on the water. He also knows that after getting the shot, the most important thing is bringing it back. For him, photo storage is a critical part of the photo shoot. That's why he is also a member of the SanDisk Extreme Team, a group of photographers recognised by the storage manufacturer for pushing the limits in their genres.
Whether he's shooting snowboarding or sailing, Richard takes image storage very seriously. "It's the backbone of my work," he explains. "If you shoot in a studio and lose the data, it would be dramatic but you could reshoot. The work I do is something you cannot repeat. If I'm out on location and lose the data, how do I say to riders who might have risked their lives, 'Sorry, guys, maybe we can go back tomorrow'?"
Many photographers need to bring back shots of unrepeatable moments, even in less dramatic genres such as wedding, wildlife or documentary photography. So we spoke to Richard and industry experts from Canon and SanDisk to get their best advice on image storage, image transfer and, should you ever need it, photo recovery.
ARTICLE
Bringing the prize back home: pro solutions for image storage, transfer and recovery on the go
Image storage solutions on the move
- Micro SD, SD, Compact Flash cards
- CFast 2.0, CFexpress cards
- Portable Solid State Drives (SSDs) and cloud storage
While some photographers carry multiple cards with smaller capacities and swap them when necessary, Richard's approach is more direct. "If I'm sitting in a helicopter and need to change the card, the chances of losing it are quite high!" he points out. "In the beginning, I used to use several 8GB cards over a shoot. Today, I use the biggest cards I can get. I might load two 512GB SanDisk Extreme PRO? CFexpress? cards in the morning and not touch them for the rest of the day. I can't lose the cards because I don't have to touch them."
The SD (Secure Digital) card is the industry staple, according to Ruben Dennenwaldt, senior product marketing manager at SanDisk. "We produce Ultra cards, which are for everyday usage, but if you use mirrorless or DSLR cameras, you'd go for our Extreme or Extreme PRO cards," he says. "These are higher-performance cards that allow burst-mode photography, high resolutions and uncompressed video recording. We also have different cards for the UHS-I and UHS-II standard used by the Canon Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥ System cameras, for example. So we cover pretty much everything up to a 1TB capacity on SD card."
Compact Flash cards have been used in professional cameras for more than 20 years, but Ruben points out that their speed tops out at about 165MBps, which is relatively slow by today's standards. "There are new formats in a similar form," he says, "such as the Extreme PRO CFast 2.0 memory cards, and we introduced the first CFexpress card together with Canon. This is the latest format and allows write speeds of up to 1,400MBps, which means you can record 4K video uncompressed in RAW format, or even 8K depending on the camera." CFexpress cards can be used with the Canon Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥5 and EOS-1D X Mark III as well as the EOS C500 Mark II and EOS C300 Mark III cine cameras.
Beyond image storage in-camera, there's often a need for on-site image backup and transportation. Dust-proof and drop-resistant portable Solid State Drives (SSDs) are a more rugged option than flash drives, and provide up to around 2TB of safe and portable storage.
Do you own Canon kit?
But some photographers go further, seeing cloud services such as image.canon as a modern solution for image storage, transfer and backup. "Now is the moment," says Mike Burnhill, Canon Europe Professional Imaging Product Specialist. "With 5G networks, connecting your phone and transmitting images has never been easier, because you've got the data speed. It's been discussed for decades but the speed was never really there, so it took ages to send images. Now with the wide adoption of 5G phone networks globally, storing images in the cloud direct from the camera can be a reality."
Transfer images securely, wherever you are
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
- Canon Wireless File Transmitters
- Cloud services including image.canon
"File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is one of the oldest mechanisms for transmitting images and is still the backbone of many large agencies, allowing large files to be sent easily to a controlled server," says Mike. "It's super robust, super slick and works globally. At major sporting events, the photographers will be using FTP to transmit their images."
Unsurprisingly, Canon's professional range of cameras, including the EOS-1D X Mark III, Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥, Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥5 and Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥6, offer this functionality in conjunction with Wi-Fi capability. It means photographers on location can connect their cameras to a venue's Wi-Fi network or to their mobile phones and transmit images using the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.
For sports photographers operating in busy stadiums, accessories such as the Canon Wireless File Transmitters WFT-E9B (compatible with the EOS-1D X Mark III) and WFT-R10B (compatible with the Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥5) provide expanded transmission speed and range. In addition, a firmware update across Canon's professional lineup has also added enhanced FTP functionality to both the Çò̽ÌåÓý±È·Ö_Å·ÖÞ±×ãÇòÍøÀÖ£¤ÔÚÏßÖ±²¥5 and EOS-1D X Mark III.
"The firmware update improves the cameras' FTP operation with a status display indicating how long it will take to send the images," Mike explains. "This allows photographers to make informed decisions. If it's going to take too long, they can do it later. If it's going to take 30 seconds, they can do it now."
Wakesurfing with flares: testing the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III
Richard agrees: "If my signal isn't strong enough, I drive to somewhere with a better connection, and then it's uploaded in 20 minutes and I've just saved myself one and a half hours."
With a Wi-Fi-capable Canon camera, you can take advantage of the media transfer and storage options offered by Canon's cloud service, image.canon. When the camera is connected to the internet via Wi-Fi, it can transfer your images seamlessly and automatically to the cloud, where it will store all your media, including CR3 raw images and 4K movies, for 30 days, giving you plenty of time to download to your computer back in the studio or transfer to your favourite services. Social media sized images are created for you and stored in your personal library, and you can move your most important media into long-term storage with 10GB of space available.
Excitingly, image.canon can automatically forward your media to computers, mobile devices and third-party cloud services or applications such as Google Photos, Adobe? Creative Cloud*, Flickr and YouTube, depending on your accounts and settings. In this way the service ensures that both image transfer and storage happen securely and effortlessly, wherever a shoot takes place.
"Image.canon is not intended as a cloud storage solution itself but rather as a gateway that provides a service to automatically route your images into your preferred cloud storage systems," Mike explains. "It's an invisible back-end solution to make your workflow seamless from camera to cloud storage to desktop."
Photo recovery for when disaster strikes
- Prevent disaster using Solid State Drives
- Data recovery packages
Ruben notes, however, that recorded media, including storage cards, rarely fail, and suggests that misplaced media and accidental deletion are more commonplace. He points out that prevention is better than cure. "Pay attention to backups," he advises. "SSDs are perfect for offloading content when coming off a shoot, ideally twice so you have two backups."
Even if the unthinkable should happen, all may not be lost. There are several software packages available to help with photo recovery, such as RescuePRO? Deluxe, provided with SanDisk Extreme PRO cards. "It's data recovery software that gives you a fair chance of recovering lost files," says Ruben. "If you deleted images or videos by mistake using your camera or a card reader, the chances are pretty high of recovering them." That's because data is not erased as soon as you delete it; as long as you don't panic and don't save anything new to the card, which could overwrite the data you want, there's a chance it can be recovered, although of course there's no guarantee that any or all of the lost data will be retrieved.
Richard agrees. "Working mainly on location, I'm more afraid of losing cards than cards becoming corrupted," he says. His advice is to think through your workflow and devote time to safeguarding your images and backing up media. A sound image storage routine can avoid any need for photo recovery later.
"Take it seriously," Richard concludes. "Invest time in your own workflow and make use of up-to-date technologies. Then, the chances of something going wrong are reduced to almost zero."
*Adobe and Creative Cloud are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries.
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