It’s a New Year, and that means a New Term. One new student to join the group, two others on the register that didnt turn up. Maybe they didnt know the class started this week – never mind, we will continue without them.
I did an introductory session this evening, that goes over the basics of Digital Cameras, and gives us an opportunity to discuss the latest equipment, cameras and such.
The thing we concentrated on tonight, was preserving our photographs, making sure they are backed up properly, using the best means possible.
We discussed floppy disks, and how they are obsolete they are, because they are too small in terms of their capacity. We then talked about CDs and DVDs and how they can hold quite a lot of images. A CD will hold upto 800mb and a DVD will hold 4300mb or 4.3GB. I made the class aware of the new technology of blu-ray which is gradually becoming accepted. Although expensive, about £70 for a drive, compared to £25ish for a DVD drive, the Blu-ray drive can hold a whopping 23Gb per disk, that’s 23,000mb!
USB external harddrives are by far the best way to backup your computer. They are about the size of a pack of cards, and have very large capacities. For about £40 you can easily get a 500GB external drive, which you simply plug in to a spare USB port, and are powered by the computer, instead of a mains cable.
Pictured above is a Seagate FreeAgent GO, the picture on the left, sees the drive in desktop stand, for easy access which plugs directly into one of the computer’s USB port.
If you need more storage space, then I’d suggest what is known as a NAS drive. These are basically networked harddisks, which plug into your network, via your switch or wireless router. NAS drives tend to start in capacities of about 500mb, I actually use one myself, and the capacity I have is 2TB. My desktop computer is configured via the Windows 7 Backup and Restore Centre, to ensure my data is backed up daily at 10pm automatically.
The importance of backing up your photographs, is down to how much you value them, if you couldn’t care less, then dont bother, but if they have vast sentimental value then you’ll not want to lose them, and try and make every possible effort to look after them.
Next week – a practical session, foliage arrangements, closeups, you name it!
No comments:
Post a Comment