p.3 #1 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
You must have a bunch of big teles if they are more expensive than a populated NAS. It's like $12,000+ for a full 8-bay if you can even find the larger drives.
p.3 #2 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Or Leica. But they work for a storage company and must be getting some nice bonuses or stock options.
For me, storage has historically be a consumable commodity. Just add more a few times a year as needed. Now it's more wait and see. I just checked B&H and maybe flash storage (NVMe) has come down a little? But it's kind of ridiculous when a WD 4TB is on sale for half price and is still nearly $1000.
p.3 #3 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Haha, well stock runup or no, I'm still in the budget telephoto zoom range more than the 'the car I use to drive the lens is worth as much as the lens' territory.
But yes, I built the NAS setups before the full runup in HDD prices, but even still, I've been doing good with refurbished drives. I just use a lot of mirroring so that if a drive hits any issues, I can easily replace it without much pain.
Also, SSD's are used exclusive for system/game drives. The NAS setups are using HDD's, which aren't as brutal in price.
For camera stuff: I've been doing fine with existing memory cards. Here and there, I have been adding a CF Express, or a UHS-II SD Card, but only if I see a good deal. Like I mentioned, photography doesn't demand much memory capacity.
It's nowhere near the cost of the camera and lens. Saw the cost of the new Sony 100-400 4.5, and I cried myself to sleep.
p.3 #4 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
I stocked up 40TB of HDDs (for a NAS), 12TB of SSDs for a new computer build, lots of RAM for that computer, a half dozen CFExpress cards for my cameras, and 12TB of portable SSDs for workflow all before the RAMpocalyspe started to strike and am giddy that for once in my life I got the timing right, however inadvertently
Yes, it sucks if you're in the market now -- I was blown away the other day when I checked the price of CFExpress Type A cards out of curiosity and saw they'd more than doubled in price since I bought my stash. And those 4TB NVMe SSDs I bought for about $350 now cost over $1K
I'm now set for a year or two (barring any drive failures) and fully expect prices to have started moderating again starting next year as data center buildouts get completed (or are scrapped), new chips are designed specifically for data centers, and market forces start to correct things, ending blatant profiteering and boosting capacity. History tells us that busts always follow booms (and vice versa).
nineblade wrote:
It's nowhere near the cost of the camera and lens. Saw the cost of the new Sony 100-400 4.5, and I cried myself to sleep.
Yeah, the runup in prices of new lenses is a bit eye watering. Any new iteration of a lens always seems to be at least 50% more expensive and I feel like the middle, "prosumer" ground is disappearing so soon we'll just have the option of cheap'n'slow or super expensive versions of lenses. Thankfully the Sony ecosystem has the benefit of more reasonably-priced third party options, although their performance is still slightly crippled by Sony.
p.3 #5 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
That is a great question a lot of people don't consider, especially those of us who don't get paid to shoot 100's of images a day. Nonetheless, it adds up over time. I just went through my library and deleted 1000's of images that I left lingering on my storage drive and honestly, the vast majority of them were from Sony A1 bursts that netted few usable images (my lack of skill, not the camera). It was important lesson for me that was triggered by space warnings I started receiving.
So for me, it required a combination of a couple of behavior changes: Be more intentional and 47MP is enough. Spending a ton for storage I don't need to keep non-keepers isn't an option. I have my main 5TB HDD, and second 5TB drive that I copy the first to as a backup.
p.3 #7 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
nineblade wrote:
It's nowhere near the cost of the camera and lens. Saw the cost of the new Sony 100-400 4.5, and I cried myself to sleep.
Sure it is. The $250 4TB WD NVMes I bought were into the $1500 range this year, each, which can buy a decent lens. Or the three of them can buy the Sony 100-400. Though now it looks like WD has probably exited consumer flash memory. The $300 20TB drives I bought are now $1100 each. I normally go through at least a couple each year. That's a nice lens, too.
It's funny, when I saw the price of the Sony 100-400, I was surprised at how 'cheap' it was, considering I've been using a Canon 100-300/2.8 almost exclusively with the a 1.4x TC attached. The Sony at only 1/3 stop slower is 40% the price of the Canon... a bargain in comparison.
p.3 #8 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
Whenever I hear news of some heretofore-reasonably-priced-commodity reaching spiky new (speculative) highs, I close my eyes and reminisce of Covid toilet paper.
p.3 #9 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
TP was and is different. Anyone can make TP with time and money as the IP is not meaningful. Without much competition on HDD components and IP there is much incentive to maintain limited supply and high prices.
p.3 #10 · What’s the future of photography and videography when storage is getting insanely expensive?
I'll bet that some camera manufacturers might soon start exploring the idea of large internal storage on cameras they produce. These cameras would be geared towards the casual user and "prosumer" market. Maybe including a 1 TB internal storage on their lower end cameras?
p.3 #11 · 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 →
I went back to shooting film and that has really helped my digital still skills. I also more heavily cull the images. I know from experience that many images will never be viewed again, so why save them. Next, I only shoot for myself and I mostly shoot when I travel, so I put together a very high quality album for each trip. That process helps me to cull images. I rarely take video, but everyone else in my family shoots lots of 4K video on their iPhones and every night everyone’s images and videos get backed up to my NAS. This process takes place anywhere where their phones are connected to the Internet. Again, most video will never be viewed again, but I have all family video made available, worldwide, on Jellyfin. Family members can pull up videos going back to my daughter’s childbirth twenty-two years ago. Thousands of videos organized and viewable, as well as many 4K HDR Movies that moved from optical disk to NAS. Lastly, I’m about to vacation in South Korea with wife and one daughter. Every night I can upload everyone’s photos and videos to the NAS. From there, the NAS automatically backs up to a second NAS. This all takes many TB of storage. My two NAS were assembled with 200-250TB of 28TB IronWolf Pro drives. I don’t think that I would be able to do this at today’s prices, but I suspect that prices will reduce in the next couple of years. I’m a big fan of at home NAS.
