Canon® EOS Digital Photography Photo Workshop

9.2. Image Storage and Backup: on the road and in the studio

Securely and quickly moving your images from a memory card to a computer takes place in different ways depending on where you are and how you like to work. For example, if you're photographing a day-long wedding with an 8GB flash card, you may be able to shoot and store the entire event on that one card and never take it out of your camera until you're back at your computer. Or, you may be traveling and shooting multiple cards that become full over one or more days, requiring you to transfer images while on the road to a secure form of storage.

When you are on the road or out of the studio, you have several choices for storing images in order to transport them later:

• Portable hard drive

• DVD or CD

• Memory cards (CompactFlash and/or SD)

• Laptop

Any of these may work, depending on what you're doing and what equipment you have with you. When I travel to major world sports events, I always keep redundant (paranoia) backups so that in the event one storage method fails, I have others. Throughout the day, I usually transfer images from my memory cards onto a portable hard drive that directly accepts CompactFlash and Secure Digital cards because my camera uses both types. At the end of the day, I also back up the entire day's shooting onto a DVD and then store the discs either in the safe in my hotel room or in a safe-deposit box at the front desk. When I travel, I keep the discs in a separate bag from the portable hard drive, just ...