Digital BW, The Print

If you don't need the access to AA batteries like Andy, I can tell 
you the 20 gib mindstor is a great solution...you do need a couple of 
extra battery packs to use it in the field, but it is very fast (fire 
wire and USB) and rugged and reliable...I've been using it for about 
3 months.

Final storage, though, has only one decent solution...DVD...there is 
a lot of controversy over what the ultimate format will be...HP and 
others have recently started a betamax/vhs war of formats when they 
introduced the DVD+ format. There was already plenty of confusion in 
the DVD-R arena.

It seems to me that DVD-R has so much more market share outstanding 
with the huge installed base, that even if DVD+ wins the marketing 
wars, they will have to support a read function for the DVD-R, so 
I've just bought my second generation DVD-R burner (they keep getting 
cheaper and better). There are a lot of good ones out there...I opted 
for a pioneer A03 (already not the latest and greatest)again because 
it seems to be the largest market share and is compatible with MAC 
and windows.

Be forewarned...it will look like a brave new world of videophiles, 
but once you get the hardware and set it up (actually quite easy) and 
establish your workflow (you'll wreck one or two disks <g>) it's a 
snap and by far the quickest, safest, most efficient way to store 
images...now you'll need to find the perfect catalog 
software...another topic <g>

Cheers,

Tom O'Connell

TomOC@...
www.thomasoconnell.com




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Bob Frost" <bobfrost@b...> 
wrote:
> Jerry,
> 
> I'm considering the new Fuji S2 for a move into digicams. I know 
most of the
> advantages and disadvantages versus film, but something no-one 
seems to
> mention is storage of the image files. If you're going to get the 
max out of
> the camera, you're going to save a 12 million pixel image in raw 
format or
> largest tiff, at about 50 MB per image. On my last holiday I took 
about
> 13/14 films (36 each) so that would be getting on for 500 images at 
50MB per
> image = 25GB!! So I would have to buy a portable computer or hard-
drive to
> store them on while I'm away, and then instead of putting them all 
in my
> filing cabinet until I want to scan an image, I've got to keep them 
all on a
> computer, until I might want them one day. Copying just that batch 
of images
> to CD is going to use about 40 CD's and take hours. Using DVD-R will
> probably take just as long; fewer disks but costing far more.
> 
> How are you and others coping with this storage problem that is 
only going
> to get worse as camera resolutions increase, unless better lossless
> compression systems appear?
> 
> Bob Frost.