Shooting to laptop and transferring afterwards - how?

[DenisM]

I using a H3D 39Mp MS and, after a month or so of familiarization, I'm now shooting to my laptop most of the time.

All my editing is done on a desktop, so the transferring across of images is required and I'm curious to know what workflow others adopt.

I've been shooting a "belt and braces" single plus multi-shot of most setups so, over the course of a day, a large number of files builds up. Pretty much all of my work is on location.

I'm finding that burning DVDs is both time consuming and results in a quite a few dud files. I then have to go and copy those separately, usually onto a flash card, and transfer them afterwards.

Coming from my Canon 1DsMk3, this is all a bit longwinded.

Short of buying a laptop good enough to edit on directly, which I don't want to do, what do others do?

Thanks.

Denis

[Dustbak]

Hi Denis,

I work the same way. I am on location and come home to process with anywhere in between 5 to 20GB's of images. Editing on my laptop is way slower than on my studio machine. I would always recommend using a fast desktop machine over using the laptop especially if your editing is involving some PS actions as well.

I have tried copying to CF and than plugging the CF card into the desktop and copying and I have tried wireless 54g both I found to be too slow for my taste. I currently use a Gigabit hub in which one network card of my desktop is plugged, the network card of my laptop is plugged into another port. Make sure both machines are on the same IP net which should be different than your home network (if you want to continue being able to browse the Internet and post on various forums during copying ).

This way you can copy using Gigabit which is much faster and typically gets my files over in about 10minutes (naturally varying depending the amount but on average it is about 10min.).

Sometimes I feel too lazy to walk the stairs up to my studio space and process on the laptop...

I always regret that decision afterwards.

[Dustbak]

Both my laptop as well as the desktop machine have gigabit network adapters, a gigabit network hub (or small router) is pretty inexpensive nowadays.

[rsmphoto]

Part of my regimen on location is, immediately after the last shot, while we're packing up lights, etc.,  to make a backup of the entire shoot on a 60 GB LaCie Skwarim. A little over $100 and about 3" square, it plugs into one of the USB2 ports on my PB from which it gets its power as well. It takes a few minutes, but adds immensely to my peace of mind. Got more than 60GB from your shoot? Use 2. Once back in the studio, I just plug it into the USB2 port in the front of the MacPro and in a few minutes the shoot is there as well. Plus I have three copies. It's a system that has worked very well for me.

[Eivind Røhne]

More or less the same as Richard here. When packing up all the stuff, all files from the shoot are copied from the laptop to a USB2.0 LaCie disk (either 250GB or 500GB), and when I get back, those files are copied to my main computer for processing.

[DenisM]

Great!

All three solutions involve no DVD burning, which is what I was looking for.

Many, many thanks.

D. 

[Dustbak]

When you process to dng first (which I do in some cases), you could process to an external drive. This also cuts a step out of the process.

[NickT]

Hi Denis
If you are not backing up to an external drive while on location (not recommended), and you don't have a fast network to connect your laptop to the desktop when you return to base, you can always transfer files using "target" mode.
Connect the laptop to the desktop via firewire and restart the laptop with the "t' key held down. Keep holding the "t" until a big firewire symbol comes up on the laptop. On the desktop computer you'll now see the laptop drive mounted and you can quickly transfer files. HTH
Nick-T

[Matt Crawford]

Hey Denis,
Nick beat me to what I would have suggested. I would regularly use "target" mode to transfer large numbers of medium format and 5x4 drum scans from a desktop to my laptop. However I all ways had the negs / trannys and could scan them again if I lost the files, wouldn't feel very happy nowadays with out a backup on an external drive when it comes to files from a digital back.

I only used Firewire 400 for Target mode, I presume it works with Firewire 800 and if so what are the transfer speeds like? anyone?
Many thanks in advance 
Matt

[Andre Regini]

You might want to consider an external HDD in a caddy with an ESATA connection. ESATA transfers much faster than Giga bit ethernet and USB2, and works at pretty much the speed of the HDD. You'll probably need an dual port ESATA express card adaptor for the laptop unless you've got one of few new ones with a connectors built in. If not most ESATA caddies have a USB2 port as well. You'll also need an ESATA card for the desktop PC (dual port).

I always copy my files to en external HDD and then work directly from that, moving it between the desktop and laptop. I then do a nightly incremental back up to another external HDD (in an ESATA caddy) which usually only takes a 5 mins. The backup lives in the studio firesafe while the working drive comes home at night. When the working drive is full and the all the work completed on it, it is archived to the fire safe and the bare backup drive is stored at home. I then get two new drives and start again. I'm currently looking at drive bays (www.storagedepot.co.uk Plascom = £6.75)  for the backup drive. If I need to be more portable, I use an external USB2 2.5" HDD.

Andre

[Tim Read]

I have always shot to an external 800 firewire drive on location and then plugged the drive into my desktop when I get back to the studio, it keeps it simple.  However I'm not shooting with a 39 meg back so there may be a time penalty with the increased data involved with those huge files.

Tim