For Those of You With Digital Cameras, Picture Question?

[TeresaNJ]

Do you download all the pictures you take that you want to keep to your computer? How many can you realistically have on your computer before it starts to slow it down? If you don't leave them all on your computer, what do you do with them?

 

[JimB.]

WHat I do is "cull" my pictures prior to downloading onto my computer. I'll erase the ones that s*** off of the memory card, THEN download.

I'll then print the ones that I want "hard" copies of, re-evaluate & delete the one's off of my computer that no longer interest me and save the rest.

I probably end up with about 5-10% of the pictures I take stored on my laptop. & Yes, it is beginning to "chug", but that computer is mostly for pictures only anyway.

 

[We4mickey]

What i do with my pic's is put them on a zip disk or burn them to a cd. Then i can get them any time i want.

 

[helenabear]

I eventually burn them all to a CD. Once they are there I don't have to keep them on my computer anymore. Recently I have burned straight from CF card (via a USB card reader) to a CD.

 

[LarryE]

I have about 1.5 million pictures on my machine so far and don't notice any difference... but with a 120gig hd and 2.4gig processor there better not be any slow down

 

[ToyStory Fan]

Another vote for burn'em to CD. Usually scrub through them to see if they are worth keeping (if I haven't done that "on-the-fly")

 

[TeresaNJ]

Thanks guys. So then if I put it on something like a zip disk since I don't have a CD burner, if I wanted to do something to a picture, say like in Photoshop, or if I wanted to print a picture, I would just put the zip disc in and then I could pull it up?

 

[cindy_k]

It depends on the type of Zip drive you have.
If you have an Internal Zip drive then putting the disk into the computer and pulling up the file in a photo editor should work just fine.

If you have an External zip drive (especially a Parellel one) then I would copy the file to your harddrive before attempting to edit it in a photo editor. Those Parellel drives are just way to slow.

Now for your original question: I also burn them on to CD after reviewing them for Keep worthyness. CD Burners have really come down in price and Cdrom's are really cheap to buy. About 10 cents a disk for 700 megs compared to $10 for a Zip Disk for at most 200 megs.

Have Fun!
Cindy in NY

 

[Dan Murphy]

When I near capacity on my flash card, about 1,000 pictures, I just them all onto a CD and label it for the dates covered. When I am doing pictures for here, I just copy them off the CD to my hard drive for ease of work. And as said, try to add a burner to your PC, price is so low, convenience so high.

 

[ToyStory Fan]

Kind of a spin-off of your original topic, but I would agree that zip is okay if it's internal, but I have had numerous problems with external zips. Additionally, the zip disk is still only magnetic media so it has a "shelf life". Burnt CD's will be as good for as long as there are CD/DVD drives to play them on.

As others have mentioned CD burners have come down...I got mine for $50 from compgeeks.com,and it included the Nero Burining Software which is great for "backing up" audio CD's too.

 

[jfulcer]

Yet another vote for getting a CD burner to use for archiving your pictures. You can fit 7x or more the number of pictures on a CD than a Zip disc and it's a lot bigger.

More pictures should not slow your machine down.

 

[TeresaNJ]

Okay, you all have me convinced. A CD burner it is. My zip drive is internal, but it took me a long time to figure out how to transfer information to it. Instructions are terrible! I love my computer, and wish I had more time to figure out all the great things I can do on it. I took a couple online classes about a year and a half ago, such as "How to Build a Web Page", and "Adobe Photoshop", and also one on "Knowing Your PC" or something like that, but unless you have lots of time to practice it all goes out the window.

My other hobby is photography, and I just ordered a new digital camera from Amazon, after doing tons of research here on the DIS and on numerous sites on the internet. I decided on a Minolta Dimage S414. It is a 4 megapixel with 3x optical and I think 2.5 or 3 x digital zoom. It got a 5 star rating on almost every site I went on, plus it had the features I was looking for. I already had a cheap, practice digital camera that used compact flash cards and rechargeable AA batteries, so I was kinda hoping to find a camera I liked with those features so I could use what I already had, and the Dimage has. Plus, it was only $350 at Amazon! It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that some higher priced models have, but I don't need all those right now. I am very excited about this purchase and can't wait until it comes. This is why I was worried about what I was going to do with all the pictures I'll be taking with two Disney trips in the next 3 months. Thanks again for all the advice.