p.1 #1 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Lately I’ve been wondering where this hobby/profession is headed. Cameras keep getting better every year, higher resolution photos, 6K/8K video, RAW video, higher bitrates etc. But the cost of actually storing all this data seems to be exploding.
A few years ago a couple of hard drives felt like plenty. Now a serious photo library plus video projects can easily become tens of terabytes and that’s before backups. Add memory cards, external SSDs and replacement drives every few years and the storage side can start costing almost as much as camera gear.
For those of you who shoot a lot, especially video -
Have you changed how much you shoot because of storage costs? I am asking you Nikon ZR shooters!
Are you culling more aggressively than before? I am asking stacked sensor shooters!
Do you still keep all your RAW files or only selects?
Has anyone moved away from video because of the data burden?
Do you think future cameras will rely more on compression?
Could photography remain relatively affordable while videography becomes a much more expensive hobby?
I’m particularly curious about hobbyists, not just full-time professionals. It feels like we’re reaching a point where capture technology is advancing faster than affordable long-term storage.
Interested to hear how everyone is dealing with this and whether you think storage costs will eventually become one of the biggest factors shaping the future of photography and videography.
I was lucky to buy some V60 512GB SD cards and 1TB CFE-B cards before the price hikes, what about you?
p.1 #2 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Personally, I’m not worried.
I don’t see a need to buy cameras with resolution higher than what I use now, especially since I’m picky in when I use my high-res cameras. When I still shot a ton of images during my bird photography years, I could in principle easily delete the thousands of burst shots that weren’t the perfect ones.
I’m not big on video.
Storage is expensive now because the planned AI data centers are buying up most of the supply, driving up prices. Yet, the storage manufacturers aren’t increasing their production capacity to cater to the increased demand, because they’re not sure these AI companies are still going to need that demand five years from now. The manufacturers will either decide that the capacity will be needed long term and increase production, leading to lower prices, or they will be right and many data centers will never actually be built, thus lowering demand and driving prices down.
p.1 #3 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Yup, we're all in a big waiting game. Everybody is content selling their capacity at max profit levels. Nobody knows if current demand will continue and until there are definite signs of change the pricing level won't move.
p.1 #4 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Outstanding wrote:
Lately I’ve been wondering where this hobby/profession is headed. Cameras keep getting better every year, higher resolution photos, 6K/8K video, RAW video, higher bitrates etc. But the cost of actually storing all this data seems to be exploding.
A few years ago a couple of hard drives felt like plenty. Now a serious photo library plus video projects can easily become tens of terabytes and that’s before backups. Add memory cards, external SSDs and replacement drives every few years and the storage side can start costing almost as much as camera gear.
For those of you who shoot a lot, especially video -
Have you changed how much you shoot because of storage costs? I am asking you Nikon ZR shooters!
Are you culling more aggressively than before? I am asking stacked sensor shooters!
Do you still keep all your RAW files or only selects?
Has anyone moved away from video because of the data burden?
Do you think future cameras will rely more on compression?
Could photography remain relatively affordable while videography becomes a much more expensive hobby?
I’m particularly curious about hobbyists, not just full-time professionals. It feels like we’re reaching a point where capture technology is advancing faster than affordable long-term storage.
Interested to hear how everyone is dealing with this and whether you think storage costs will eventually become one of the biggest factors shaping the future of photography and videography.
I was lucky to buy some V60 512GB SD cards and 1TB CFE-B cards before the price hikes, what about you?...Show more →
So long as you have enough cards for capture, then you would move that to fast SSD storage in the computer to work on it. I'm not sure how large your projects are, but ~30.72-61.44 TB of internal SSDs hold all my work in progress. Then the finished work goes to hundreds of TB of data on disc and with backups/replicates per 3-2-1 rule 1-2 PB of HDD storage is not all that unusual.
I am usually a bit ahead on storage, so in better shape than some people, but will be editing projects down to the final output and deleting WIP more frequently to save space. Obviously you have to decide on budgets for cards/working storage/final storage, just like equipment purchase, rentals, travel, etc. If you are doing commercially then it's part of your business model. If personally then you may have to change some plans. Overall costs are way up for everything anyway and storage is not nearly the largest percentage of expenses.
p.1 #7 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Outstanding wrote:
Lately I’ve been wondering where this hobby/profession is headed. Cameras keep getting better every year, higher resolution photos, 6K/8K video, RAW video, higher bitrates etc. But the cost of actually storing all this data seems to be exploding.
A few years ago a couple of hard drives felt like plenty. Now a serious photo library plus video projects can easily become tens of terabytes and that’s before backups. Add memory cards, external SSDs and replacement drives every few years and the storage side can start costing almost as much as camera gear.
For those of you who shoot a lot, especially video -
Have you changed how much you shoot because of storage costs? I am asking you Nikon ZR shooters!
Are you culling more aggressively than before? I am asking stacked sensor shooters!
Do you still keep all your RAW files or only selects?
Has anyone moved away from video because of the data burden?
Do you think future cameras will rely more on compression?
Could photography remain relatively affordable while videography becomes a much more expensive hobby?
I’m particularly curious about hobbyists, not just full-time professionals. It feels like we’re reaching a point where capture technology is advancing faster than affordable long-term storage.
Interested to hear how everyone is dealing with this and whether you think storage costs will eventually become one of the biggest factors shaping the future of photography and videography.
I was lucky to buy some V60 512GB SD cards and 1TB CFE-B cards before the price hikes, what about you?...Show more →
Compared to the film days, today’s cost and management of images is pretty cheap.
p.1 #8 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
I found the opposite. Digital was many tens of thousands, maybe 100K or more costly than film ever was. It's probably 5x as much. Obviously starting now it would be different.
p.1 #9 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
EB-1 wrote:
I found the opposite. Digital was many tens of thousands, maybe 100K or more costly than film ever was. It's probably 5x as much. Obviously starting now it would be different.
EBH
Where did you spend your money. I have around 100,000 images in my library…that would be over $75,000 for film and developing. I don’t have anywhere near that cost for my entire digital cameras, lenses, storage, printers etc…
p.1 #10 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
I was describing the overall costs, not per image. Of course we did not shoot 30+FPS back in the day.
I never left a country with more than 175 rolls of 135 (~6K images) as that was all I could safely carry. Now one can capture that many images in an hour or so on one little card.
Buying six 1D series bodies was part of the problem. But lots of lenses and computer gear was also a huge part. In 1998 I spent $6K for a computer, scanners, CD burner, etc. and less than a year later it was worth like 1/4 of the price. That repeated for many years, not to mention all the storage, though not all for photos.
p.1 #11 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
In my opinion, as far as physical storage, that will probably adjust down in TB/$ over time - especially Hard Disk Drives. For Cloud storage, it will still be competitive and cost per TB "may" not go up appreciably.
I store files solely on physical drives in my home (HDD and SSD) but I am not a high volume user nor do I do much video. I regularly cull out digital photos I don't think I will ever use - which is why I still shoot a lot with film, negatives don't take up much space plus I still have all the shots I took.
p.1 #12 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Storage capacity tech will continue to increase data density and manufacturing cost per GB will also decrease. End user prices may take many years if ever to reach the cost/GB curves we have known historically. If you search for trend charts created before 2025 it's almost humorous to see the projected costs for 2027 and beyond.
p.1 #14 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Outstanding wrote:
Lately I’ve been wondering where this hobby/profession is headed. Cameras keep getting better every year, higher resolution photos, 6K/8K video, RAW video, higher bitrates etc. But the cost of actually storing all this data seems to be exploding.
A few years ago a couple of hard drives felt like plenty. Now a serious photo library plus video projects can easily become tens of terabytes and that’s before backups. Add memory cards, external SSDs and replacement drives every few years and the storage side can start costing almost as much as camera gear.
For those of you who shoot a lot, especially video -
Have you changed how much you shoot because of storage costs? I am asking you Nikon ZR shooters!
Are you culling more aggressively than before? I am asking stacked sensor shooters!
Do you still keep all your RAW files or only selects?
Has anyone moved away from video because of the data burden?
Do you think future cameras will rely more on compression?
Could photography remain relatively affordable while videography becomes a much more expensive hobby?
I’m particularly curious about hobbyists, not just full-time professionals. It feels like we’re reaching a point where capture technology is advancing faster than affordable long-term storage.
Interested to hear how everyone is dealing with this and whether you think storage costs will eventually become one of the biggest factors shaping the future of photography and videography.
I was lucky to buy some V60 512GB SD cards and 1TB CFE-B cards before the price hikes, what about you?...Show more →
Moore's Law has bumped up against physical limitations recently. But data storage costs are still exponentially cheaper today than 10 or 20 years back. It also depends on what you're calling "storage". Shooting media is very different from archiving. High speed, high density solid state memory is really expensive right now. But how many people really need 1TB memory cards for shooting stills? Slower, lower capacity cards likely are enough for most people.
CFExpress is as much as $1.00/GB. But 1TB V30 SD can be $0.15/GB. 128GB V60 SD is $0.10/GB. Unless you're shooting 12K video, why do you need 2TB in-camera storage? Even then, there are cheaper tethered solutions that make far more sense.
Long term archiving is a totally different thing. Local NAS storage on spinning RAID disks can be $0.04/GB. But you can get under $0.01/GB/month for AWS Glacier. That cost has been continuously going down.
p.1 #18 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
gdanmitchell wrote:
I’m kind of doubtful. Drive costs per capacity volume went down a lot over that period until the recent uptick, but I don’tthink that the uptick was that large. Examples?
= = =
Before I start clicking on random, undentifiable links… any hints about what it is or why it is there?
Good point..
A link to the book, “The Decisive Moment”.
I’m not much into video, although I probably have a few terabytes of video from when my kids were young.
p.1 #20 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
gdanmitchell wrote:
I’m kind of doubtful. Drive costs per capacity volume went down a lot over that period until the recent uptick, but I don’tthink that the uptick was that large. Examples?
For example an 8TB NAS drive was $325 ten years ago but is now around $350.
Nine years ago an enterprise/high-grade 7200 RPM 10TB drive was about $420 and is over $450 now.
I have dozens of 7-10 YO 8TB He drives that were planned to be trashed, but now it seems like too much value.
I also have a goodly amount of 10TB He drives 6-9 YO.
But lots of lenses and computer gear was also a huge part. In 1998 I spent $6K for a computer, scanners, CD burner, etc. and less than a year later it was worth like 1/4 of the price. That repeated for many years, not to mention all the storage, though not all for photos.