[Anvh]

Hold on... I found that if I "add folder -> D:" or "add folder -> Z:" after "subst Z: D:\dcim" it only allows for "Copy". However, if I do "add folder -> D:\dcim", it only allows for "Add (Add photos to catalog without moving them)". That's not exactly intuitive, but seems to be just what I want. Could it really be that simple?

Yes that would work and it won't create extra file on the SD card either this way but that isn't a problem.

What you need to change in your workflow is when you're done with editing that you will use lightroom to export the photos to the external drive.
This is much more healthy for your SD card, they are only designed for so many writes you know...

[Ikarus]

This is much more healthy for your SD card, they are only designed for so many writes you know...

Most things are finite in this world, but in this case, I'm not too worried. From the SanDisk SD Card Product Manual:

SanDisk SD cards have an endurance specification for each sector of 100,000 writes typical (reading a logical sector is unlimited).

Therefore, extremely heavy use of the card in cellular phones, personal communicators, pagers and voice recorders will use only a fraction of the total endurance over the device’s lifetime. For instance—it would take over 10 years to wear out an area on an SD Card based on a file of any size (from 512 bytes to maximum capacity) being rewritten 3 times per hour, 8 hours a day, 365 days per year.

[Anvh]

Then can surely last but they aren't desigened to be used like you use them with all those random reads and writes the program does.
Actually the class 2 and 4 cards are perfect for those but the cards most of us use in the camera is for moving bulk so the random preformance is dropped.
Besides what do you gain by writing it first to the SD card and then to the backup, it's just an extra step in the process you can take out without any lost by the looks of it.

[Ikarus]

Besides what do you gain by writing it first to the SD card and then to the backup, it's just an extra step in the process you can take out without any lost by the looks of it.

Perhaps I should add that I'm unlikely to batch process hundreds of photos at a time. The bad ones get deleted right away, the ones I consider having potential I keep, but might not touch for now and only the definitive keepers get more attention. For this, my data flow is SD card -> external USB drive -> NAS -> mirror NAS. The internal hard drives in my computers do not play any role in that flow, so what I'm saving is the time and space for copying the SD card contents, good and bad, onto the local drives in the editing computers (I use more than one).

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Last edited by Ikarus; 02-29-2012 at 10:16 PM.

[Anvh]

Then lightroom really isn't for you since it is cataloge based, so instead of applying all the changes to the file it saves the changes in a cataloge on the computer. You're really fighting against the way the program is designed to work, certainly when you also use more then one computer.
I think you've throwed your money away... You could have bought photoshop elements with more function and more tooled to your way of working.

[reeftool]

I don't think you threw your money away. Give Lightroom some time. The one thing in common with everybody is that as time goes on, we begin to shoot lots of photos. When I first got my K10D, I would go out and shoot 20 or 30 shots. My mind was still in a film mentality. I had an 80 gig HD on a 2002 computer and edited in Picasa. A couple of years later, I needed a bigger hard drive and added a 320 gig. My newest computer has 640 gig with a 1 TB external. I now go out and shoot hundreds of shots in a day. You are going to need a lot of SD cards. Multiple backups are also necessary because everything fails sooner or later. Most of us have learned that lesson the hard way and lost photos and other valuable information.

If you love photography like most of us, the day of batch processing hundreds of photos will come sooner than you think.

[Ikarus]

Then lightroom really isn't for you since it is cataloge based, so instead of applying all the changes to the file it saves the changes in a cataloge on the computer.

Actually, I've come to think that I should be able to use it the way I want. I've managed to set it up such that it writes the edit meta data to the DNG file on the SD card, so the edit status gets preserved locally in the file and later backed up along with it.

I now go out and shoot hundreds of shots in a day. You are going to need a lot of SD cards. Multiple backups are also necessary because everything fails sooner or later. Most of us have learned that lesson the hard way and lost photos and other valuable information.

If you love photography like most of us, the day of batch processing hundreds of photos will come sooner than you think.

Don't get me wrong. I've come back from a shoot with more than just a few dozen shots myself many times, but I'd be lying if I claimed that I had nearly as many that were actually worth processing and keeping. I also agree with the need for backups, but my desire for a fail-safe solution is precisely why I don't trust the concept of a single centralized catalogue. In my opinion, the edit state is best kept individually with the raw file it refers to and that's just what DNG was designed for.

So yes, I decided to keep it and give it some time. Thanks to everyone for your advice and for staying with me through the process. This community is great!

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Last edited by Ikarus; 03-01-2012 at 01:02 AM.

[Anvh]

I also agree with the need for backups, but my desire for a fail-safe solution is precisely why I don't trust the concept of a single centralized catalogue. In my opinion, the edit state is best kept individually with the raw file it refers to and that's just what DNG was designed for.

You're seeing this a bit wrong.
The catalog holds the edits and it gets optimized, checked and backed up weekly and the original files are kept save, that means nothing can go wrong with the original files while you're editing them. When you work and constantly save your work then that's the point things can go wrong corrupting the file.
Besides that there is an option to backup the actual files up with the edits, that's build in lightroom 4 now i believe to automaticly do that.

ps. for the way you work now, set it up to create 1:1 preview when importing, this will make things a lot faster for you since it makes preview files on the harddisk so it doesn't access the SD card that much then. Be sure to delete the cache afterwards because it does take up some room.

[Ikarus]

You're seeing this a bit wrong.
The catalog holds the edits and it gets optimized, checked and backed up weekly and the original files are kept save, that means nothing can go wrong with the original files while you're editing them. When you work and constantly save your work then that's the point things can go wrong corrupting the file.
Besides that there is an option to backup the actual files up with the edits, that's build in lightroom 4 now i believe to automaticly do that.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, holding the edit meta data within the files is a must. I agree that there is always a risk (albeit small) when altering a file, but the impact of this happening is a lot smaller than if the catalogue for the whole database were to get lost or corrupted and there is no local meta data stored in any of the files.

ps. for the way you work now, set it up to create 1:1 preview when importing, this will make things a lot faster for you since it makes preview files on the harddisk so it doesn't access the SD card that much then. Be sure to delete the cache afterwards because it does take up some room.

So far, processing speed seems pretty brisk, but thanks for the tip, I'll give this a try!

[Jasvox]

Maybe this has already been mentioned, but will say it anyway...

You do not have to import all the photographs onto the hard drive in order to process them. You can check only the one or ones you want to PP and do it that way. Check it out.

Jason

[Frogfish]

FWIW, review your work-flow. Editing from an SD card, or for that matter storing images on them longer than is absolutely necessary, is a disaster waiting to happen.

You should ALWAYS back up your SD card contents at the earliest opportunity - preferably in the field - and NEVER edit an original, unique, file.

+1

You may not have had an issue yet but it IS a disaster waiting to happen. The problem not being your SD card but the camera. I found this out the hard way and now download and then reformat the cards before every shoot .. or else have backup cards with you for when the camera fails to recognise your card in the field (and you don't want to reformat to solve the issue).

To say you haven't had an issue yet is a bit like a drunken driver saying he hasn't crashed his car yet ........

[reeftool]

Yes, over time, you will get fragmented files all over the card and it will slow things down. I believe our cameras use Fat32 and that was an issue back in the days of Windows 98 when defragging your hard drive was a regular chore.

[martyd14]

Check out Zoner Professional 14. Much like lightroom with non of the headaches.
And no i don't work for Zoner...i'm just tired of people complaining about lightroom.

Zoner.com | Trial Version

[Anvh]

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, holding the edit meta data within the files is a must. I agree that there is always a risk (albeit small) when altering a file, but the impact of this happening is a lot smaller than if the catalogue for the whole database were to get lost or corrupted and there is no local meta data stored in any of the files.

Well you could indeed lose all your edits off a week but that's much less worse then losing an actual photo.

Yes, over time, you will get fragmented files all over the card and it will slow things down. I believe our cameras use Fat32 and that was an issue back in the days of Windows 98 when defragging your hard drive was a regular chore.

Luckily a sd card don't need to spin so don't worry, you actually should never defragment them.
Same as with a ssd.

[Ikarus]

Perhaps I haven't expressed myself well enough. It's not like I keep the data on the SD card for a prolonged period of time. It typically only lasts there for a week until it has filled up with raw data and exported jpegs, when everything gets moved to the back-up drives. If the card should fail in the camera, this is a problem regardless of the workflow. The only case where my method would be inferior, is if the SD card was fine during the last shoot but then starts failing during the editing without me noticing in time to copy the data to a safe place. But then again, it's not like data corruption on hard-drives never happens.

I will admit though that if I were to make a living off of the data on the SD card, I would back up the untouched raw files after every shoot. However, I would not use Lightroom for that and they would not go to the local hard drive in my editing computer.