Photos and videos are some of the best memories you can have from a vacation. It is also very easy to lose it all. Here is a guide to how to secure and organize your photos while traveling.
What can go wrong?
A lot can happen to your photos. They can get stolen, the storage device can be damaged and the files can be corrupted (unreadable). The possibilities to do anything about this varies, but the key factor is to be preventive, not reactive.
Backup
No matter how long or short you travel or how many photos you are taking, backing up the content is essential. Backups don’t need to be complicated, but the effort you should put into it depends on how well you want to protect your files.
The most common ways of storing the files are:
Extra memory card: Copy everything on your memory card onto a secondary card. If one breaks you still have the other one. Some mid to high-end cameras have dual card slots. This allows you to backup your photos automatically in the camera. Note that Nikon (and possibly other manufacturers) only copy the photos and not videos to the secondary memory card.
Laptop/PC: If you bring a computer for your trip you can store the photos on it in addition to the memory card in your camera.
External hard drive: If you plan on taking many photos a single memory card will not have sufficient storage capacity. Storing the photos on a computer might work, but given that you wipe the memory card to make room for new photos the photos you just “backed up” will only be stored on your computer and nowhere else. External hard drives are fairly cheap, small and a convenient way of storing your photos in a secondary place. There are mainly two kind of hard drives, rotating discs and SSD-drives. The first one is the cheapest, but very prone to damage from vibrations (that is, being dropped on the floor), especially if the accident happens while it is powered on. SSDs are faster and more resilient to physical damage, but in return they cost way more. In most cases rotating discs are the way to go, unless you have a lot of money and want the best available. If you don’t want to bring a laptop there are some external hard drives that support direct copying from memory cards.
Memory sticks: Same concept as hard drives, but usually more resilient to physical damage and with less storage.
Cloud services: Storing files in the cloud gives you a backup that is remote, usually has an internal backup and recovery mechanism and can be accessed from anywhere. The downside is that large files take long to upload and unless you pay there are usually storage limitations (however, services such as Dropbox provides 1 TB of storage for a very low price).
It is also very important to remember that having a backup is not enough, they key is to store it separately from the originals. Having two memory cards with the same photos does not help a lot if they are both in your backpack when it is stolen… If you are traveling with others it’s a good idea to keep one copy each.
How much storage is needed?
This is of course something that varies a lot, but here’s a rough estimate:
One JPG image takes up 5-10 MB. If you shoot 200 photos a day this adds up to 1-2 GB per day.
One RAW image takes up 15-100 MB. If you shoot 200 images per day this adds up to 3-20 GB per day.
A Full HD video (1080p) takes up 100-200 MB/minute. If you shoot half an hour per day this adds up to 3-6 GB per day.
A 4K video (2160p) takes up 500-1000 MB/minute. If you shoot half an hour per day this adds up to 15-30 GB/day.
A real world example: After 3 months around the world shooting in RAW with a DSLR and recoding video in 4K we needed 1 TB of storage. This was based on me organizing the photos during the trip and deleting unnecessary files.
Organization of photos on a longer trip
If you travel for a longer time or take many photos it can easily get chaotic. These are the steps we use to organize our photos:
- Copy the files from the memory card to computer/hard drive once per day. Format the memory card after copying the files to prepare it for the next day and prevent confusion regarding which files you have already backed up. Create folders named with today’s date to make it easier to organize them.
- If your camera has a dual card slot configure it to backup mode. The secondary card you leave in peace and only format when full. This way you have an additional temporary backup.
- Go through the photos and delete the unnecessary ones when you have time. Develop the photos if shooting in RAW and export the finished images to JPGs. These take up far less space and can be uploaded to cloud services.
Things went bad, now what?
It is often possible to recover your files even if all hope seems lost
Lost/stolen: This is probably the worst scenario. What you had is probably gone for good. However, if you at any point had your files stored somewhere else like a laptop that you still have you might be able to recover those files. See “deleted by mistake” further down.
Damaged storage device: Most drives can be recovered if you still have them. The question is really whether or not you are willing to pay for it. Data recovery often cost from $500-1200. It’s worth checking your insurance as they sometimes cover data recovery.
Deleted by mistake: There are many applications that let you recover deleted files from memory cards and hard drives. When a file is deleted it is actually not wiped from the disk, but the reference to the file is removed. The file only truly disappears when a new file is written in its location on the storage device. Therefore the chance of recovering a deleted file is greater if the disk has plenty of free space.
What is the probability of something going wrong?
Not much. Most likely you will not have any issues on a trip. But that goes from travel insurance too, right? And yet you buy that. It’s for the same reason as backups: the one day you need it you really cannot be without it. Do not think of backups you do not need as a wast of time, but appreciate the fact that you were lucky enough to not need it. If your travel for long enough you will need it at some point. At the end, here’s a small story about backups:
After 23 days of photographing animals and scenery in Africa our bus was robbed while we were having a bathroom break. The robbers focused on camera gear and almost everyone lost their cameras including us. Tora and I were the only ones that had taken backups and because we spent 10 minutes every evening copying the files to a hard drive located in a safe the robbers didn’t find we did not lose a single photo. The others in our travel group lost 2000 photos each and with them all the memories of what might be the best 3 weeks of their lives.
Perform backups.
