In September, I'll be heading back to Africa. The last time was 12 years ago and naturally things have changed when it comes to photo management. What hasn't changed is any high-speed internet for cloud backup so I'm viewing all my back up actions as local.
Now I have a few questions as I'm still getting my workflow with the Z8 sorted, but in the context of both a commercial shooter and a safari vacation:
1) Shooting Raw+Raw. I love redundancy and this makes obvious sense to me. However, the large speed discrepancies between the Type B and SD cards has me second guessing myself if this is really the way to go. Will the SD speed dictate the overall buffer in this instance?
2) Following up with the above if I was going to shoot RAW+RAW, does it make the most sense that the capacities match (I was thinking 512 GB)?
3) Daily backup for safari/vacation. I'm thinking of bringing a laptop and storing on there + an external drive. But I'm also hesitant to think that everyone going on safari these days (as photographers) are bringing a laptops/drives and this is ridiculous overkill.
4) I'm not quite in the HE* camp yet and will likely stick to lossless RAW for awhile. So with that, are there charts available that roughly indicate how many images I could expect in that format in various sized cards such as 256, 512, 1TB, etc? I'm not expecting to take much, if any, video.
On my trip, my second slot is used for overflow.
I bring my laptop with external solid state HD with me.
I use Asus Zenbook S 13 which is small enough and is only 1 kg.
I can even use photoshop for some quick editing but onboard GPU
can't support many AI features in PS/LR however.
I just back up every night. I also bring enough cards so that by the end
of each day, I will have a copy on my card and a copy on my HD.
If you use Z8, SD card definitely will reduce your buffer significantly so I would avoid
RAW+RAW. I think XQD/CFexpress is pretty robust and since I started using them in D500,
I have not yet lose any picture from card error (knock on wood ).
The last time I went on safari in Africa was 2024, but have done 20-something similar trips altogether. I used a 1.0kg/2.2 lbs. laptop with 16TB (2x8TB) internal SSDs, 2x8TB external SSDs, and a Nexto with 4TB SATA SSD as an independent storage device (and a few other spare SSDs), but only for emergencies and did not use it. I have similar cameras to yours (Canons) with the CFe B and SDxC slots, but only use the CFe. SDxC is just too slow to maintain a good buffer depth at high FPS. I backup to the laptop every chance I get, making three simultaneous copies (2 internal 1 external) with Breeze Downloader.
I have plenty of CFe B SSDs to shoot about 5000GB, but that's not necessary. You just need about 2-days worth for each camera body you will be using per day. I do bring some SDxC UHS-II fastest half-duplex cards in case a camera body has an issue with CFe B.
Do what you must to get over your concerns about HE*, at least in regards to the safari shooting. There is literally no reason not to use it and will make these kinds of trips much easier from a data perspective. It will also significantly improve how many photos you can fit in the buffer when using mixed media.
Personally I’d accept nothing less than Raw with backup meaning that anything less than a Z9 is insufficient for the job. It’s barely larger than the Z8, has 3x the battery life, and has a bottomless buffer at 20fps. At least rent one and use the Z8 as your backup.
- I shoot RAW only (Z8 & Z9)
- My sequence on memory cards is set to overflow
- I make daily backups and goes like this:
* Copy the files from the memory card to the laptop.
* Copy from the laptop to two (2) external SSD drives
* Reinsert my memory card(s) in the cameras and perform a quick format
* Ready for the next day :-)
See the manual of the Z8 that states on page 922 the following:
I've used an iPad and a USB hub that connects to the iPad's USB-C port. The hub then has ports for a USB-C power supply, additional USB-Cs for data transfer, and USB-A ports for other accessories. I'd use the iPad's USB-C charger to power everything through the hub, and then connected my card reader and an external hard drive to the hub. I then used the Files app to copy files from the card reader to the hard drive.
I have an older Anker hub but the Anker A8340 hub (only seeing it on Amazon, not the Anker website) or a similar Belkin hub look like they have plenty of fast USB-C ports and USB-C PD input to power everything.
m.sommers00 wrote:
In September, I'll be heading back to Africa. The last time was 12 years ago and naturally things have changed when it comes to photo management. What hasn't changed is any high-speed internet for cloud backup so I'm viewing all my back up actions as local.
Now I have a few questions as I'm still getting my workflow with the Z8 sorted, but in the context of both a commercial shooter and a safari vacation:
1) Shooting Raw+Raw. I love redundancy and this makes obvious sense to me. However, the large speed discrepancies between the Type B and SD cards has me second guessing myself if this is really the way to go. Will the SD speed dictate the overall buffer in this instance?
2) Following up with the above if I was going to shoot RAW+RAW, does it make the most sense that the capacities match (I was thinking 512 GB)?
3) Daily backup for safari/vacation. I'm thinking of bringing a laptop and storing on there + an external drive. But I'm also hesitant to think that everyone going on safari these days (as photographers) are bringing a laptops/drives and this is ridiculous overkill.
4) I'm not quite in the HE* camp yet and will likely stick to lossless RAW for awhile. So with that, are there charts available that roughly indicate how many images I could expect in that format in various sized cards such as 256, 512, 1TB, etc? I'm not expecting to take much, if any, video.
I can't tell you specifically on that gear, but I was trying to figure out how many on a card this afternoon. The estimate on the camera body was pretty good on mine, if you have for instance 64gb just check that and multiply. Or fill up even a smaller card to try to get an idea
Canon raw on an older body, so compressed, but if non compressed file size doesn't vary, should be even easier as raw can vary a lot, as far as file size
I bought a 500gb 2.5" years ago and an enclosure thinking I might use it on the road, lately the name brand slower 256gb sd or similar so cheap, lighter, better impact and moisture resistance. So I might just use that although I'm not sure how much data you're generating and if fast enough. Even the inexpensive cards are much faster than they used to be though,
). 