Photography Cloud Storage

maddogcollins

Hi All,

Had a quick look on here but couldn't find any up to date threads.

I am looking to get some cloud storage - wedding photographer in the main and as you can imagine anything from 30+GB of memory a wedding takes up a lot of external hard drive space.

Any suggestions for Cloud Storage are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Gary

gloobag

maddogcollins wrote: »

Hi All,

Had a quick look on here but couldn't find any up to date threads.

I am looking to get some cloud storage - wedding photographer in the main and as you can imagine anything from 30+GB of memory a wedding takes up a lot of external hard drive space.

Any suggestions for Cloud Storage are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Gary

I use Google Drive. I have a Google Apps for Business account and you have the option of upgrading to unlimited storage. The whole package works out at about €10/month.

I use it for backups, and for sending images to clients. I even use it as a contact sheet, as you can prevent people from downloading the images.

I also backup all my business related docs there. Invoices, receipts, software licenses, studio inventory, mailing lists, etc.

It's also a handy place to keep all your post production assets like actions, brushes, scripts, presets, whatever... As you can access them from anywhere.

Anyways, I find it very handy. It may not be the best out there in terms of functionality, but it does the job for me and the price is right.

DaireQuinlan

If you just want backup then Amazon Glacier is probably currently the best bet for volume. It's not designed around being able to actually access your data though. You store stuff in archives, and it can take hours to prepare one for retrieval. It does have some ridiculous 11 9s claimed reliability though

CabanSail

I recently bought my own cloud. (Cue - Rolling Stones "Get off my cloud") so I have full control over it and there are no ongoing costs. It's 4TB and physically sits next to my modem at home. At first I had it next to the modem in Dublin, the location is open. The one I got is from Western Digital and was on special. I also got it Tax Free as I bought it just before travelling.

What I like is that I have control of it and can divide it up as I please and give access as required.


The one I bought is White but I guess I could "Paint it Black"

maddogcollins

Hi All.

Thanks for the replies.. I'll have a look at the three options and see how I get on.

Ideally I would have access to it "on demand" so Amazon may not be an option but I will certainly check them out.

Appreciate it!

Alanstrainor

CabanSail wrote: »

I recently bought my own cloud. (Cue - Rolling Stones "Get off my cloud") so I have full control over it and there are no ongoing costs. It's 4TB and physically sits next to my modem at home. At first I had it next to the modem in Dublin, the location is open. The one I got is from Western Digital and was on special. I also got it Tax Free as I bought it just before travelling.

What I like is that I have control of it and can divide it up as I please and give access as required.


The one I bought is White but I guess I could "Paint it Black"

You may have access through the internet to this device, but surely that's not the point of cloud storage. It being offsite and immune to hardware failure/fire damage/robbery is the main benefit of buying something like google/amazon's offerings.

(I presume I'm reading that right, in that you have a 4TB NAS device in your home?)

I use Amazon for my photos, unlimited photo storage (they store the RAWs) and its cheap at less than 15€ for the year.

DaireQuinlan

maddogcollins wrote: »

Ideally I would have access to it "on demand" so Amazon may not be an option but I will certainly check them out.

No, totally unsuitable from that perspective. Great for backups though. A mulitply pronged approach is probably the best, you've got whatever storage you have at home, NAS, or just a couple of big hard drives or whatever, then some online|cloud service which you can upload to for client purposes, and then on top of that a backup on Glacier that you update every few days or every week with an archive of whatever you've done that needs to be backed up.

I have a 3TB raid in my machine at home and am organising a Glacier thing at the moment. Ideally you'll NEVER be in a situation where you need to retrieve the stuff stored in Glacier, only in the case where your normal system suffers some irretreviable loss.

AndersLimpar

Coola Boola

maddogcollins

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

No, totally unsuitable from that perspective. Great for backups though. A mulitply pronged approach is probably the best, you've got whatever storage you have at home, NAS, or just a couple of big hard drives or whatever, then some online|cloud service which you can upload to for client purposes, and then on top of that a backup on Glacier that you update every few days or every week with an archive of whatever you've done that needs to be backed up.

I have a 3TB raid in my machine at home and am organising a Glacier thing at the moment. Ideally you'll NEVER be in a situation where you need to retrieve the stuff stored in Glacier, only in the case where your normal system suffers some irretreviable loss.

Makes perfect sense. I say on demand but in reality it would be to have a back up of RAW files until the wedding is edited and delivered and then write over this with the edited files for back up if needed again. Ill have a look at Glacier for that purpose.

CabanSail

I just make sure my RAW's are secure and backed up. The files can easily be edited again if needed.

pwllor

Dropbox is very popular choice. Easy to share your work if needed to.

pullandbang

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

If you just want backup then Amazon Glacier is probably currently the best bet for volume.

Seems fierce complicated for a non techie person though. Apparently you have to write your own code to upload stuff! Is that correct or am I missing something?

DaireQuinlan

pullandbang wrote: »

Seems fierce complicated for a non techie person though. Apparently you have to write your own code to upload stuff! Is that correct or am I missing something?

Originally yeah I think you had to upload manually through a CLI or script it, but there are a bunch of clients you can get now. You can also use Amazon's own S3 uploader (disclaimer, I just found out about this now while googling for clients)

http://www.mikesoltys.com/2014/07/15/amazon-glacier-dropbox-and-google/

flyingsnail

pullandbang wrote: »

Seems fierce complicated for a non techie person though. Apparently you have to write your own code to upload stuff! Is that correct or am I missing something?

I looked into it a while back, seems amazon dont provide software but there are a number of third party's that sell apps to do it.

Personally I now only use the cloud for temporary storage, I leave it there until I get it backed up onto a hard drive that I leave offsite.

Bacchus

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I use Amazon for my photos, unlimited photo storage (they store the RAWs) and its cheap at less than 15€ for the year.

That's amazon.com though isn't it? It's not connected to your .co.uk account at all which is a pity.

Alanstrainor

Bacchus wrote: »

That's amazon.com though isn't it? It's not connected to your .co.uk account at all which is a pity.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home

It is .com, but I'm not sure what difference that makes? You can use it with Irish address/card no problem.

Bacchus

Alanstrainor wrote: »

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home

It is .com, but I'm not sure what difference that makes? You can use it with Irish address/card no problem.

I'd just be conscious of where the photos are being stored in this case. Are they on US servers? What's the data protection/access issues with hosting data in that region. Who knows what the future holds for data sharing/storage in the US (and accessing from the EU) and I'd personally prefer a service that was hosting the files in a more local data centre that's governed by the laws in the region I live in. With the recent changes to the safe harbour law, US companies are increasingly looking to seeing up data centres in the EU too. My photos are small fry in the grand scheme of things but it's something on my radar.

I'll just add too, that I signed up for the .com service thinking it was just .co.uk (url was redirected, I didn't notice). When I realized this and contacted Amazon to move the files to .co.uk servers there was absolutely no way to do this. The photos were locked into the US data centres. I cancelled the subscription (this was a few months ago).

Alanstrainor

Bacchus wrote: »

I'd just be conscious of where the photos are being stored in this case. Are they on US servers? What's the data protection/access issues with hosting data in that region. Who knows what the future holds for data sharing/storage in the US (and accessing from the EU) and I'd personally prefer a service that was hosting the files in a more local data centre that's governed by the laws in the region I live in. With the recent changes to the safe harbour law, US companies are increasingly looking to seeing up data centres in the EU too. My photos are small fry in the grand scheme of things but it's something on my radar.

I'll just add too, that I signed up for the .com service thinking it was just .co.uk (url was redirected, I didn't notice). When I realized this and contacted Amazon to move the files to .co.uk servers there was absolutely no way to do this. The photos were locked into the US data centres. I cancelled the subscription (this was a few months ago).

I'm not too worried by any of that. There is no guarantee where your photos will end up with any of these services. Most probably use Amazon S3 or similar for storage, which could be anywhere in the world.

pwllor

AmazonCloud is very cheap, are there any limitations regarding image size or format? I understand the files are available straight away to the user?

DaireQuinlan

pwllor wrote: »

AmazonCloud is very cheap, are there any limitations regarding image size or format? I understand the files are available straight away to the user?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590

Seems reasonably permissive
"JPEG, BMP, PNG and most TIFF files"
"Photos and videos you upload through your web browser on the Cloud Drive website must be 2GB in size or less. "

Alanstrainor

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634590

Seems reasonably permissive
"JPEG, BMP, PNG and most TIFF files"
"Photos and videos you upload through your web browser on the Cloud Drive website must be 2GB in size or less. "

They support RAWs too:


Nikon (NEF files) Nikon D1, Nikon D1X, Nikon D4, Nikon Coolpix A, Nikon E5700, Nikon AW1, Nikon D800, Nikon D50, Nikon D610
Canon (CR2 Files) Canon 5D, Canon 1D, Canon 1D MarkIIN, Canon Rebel SL1, Canon 60D, Canon 5D MarkIII, Canon 1D MarkIV
Sony (ARW files) Sony A7, Sony A7R, Sony A6000, Sony NEX-5T, Sony NEX-3N, Sony NEX-6

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201649930

I have 120GB up on it now, ARW from an rx100 and CR2's from a 60d. Good service. But the application to upload is absolute rubbish, and the mobile app to view photos leaves a lot to be desired.

The J Stands for Jay

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I have 120GB up on it now, ARW from an rx100 and CR2's from a 60d. Good service. But the application to upload is absolute rubbish, and the mobile app to view photos leaves a lot to be desired.

How bad is the upload app? I'm thinking of signing up next year when my extra Dropbox and Google Drive space expires.

Alanstrainor

McGaggs wrote: »

How bad is the upload app? I'm thinking of signing up next year when my extra Dropbox and Google Drive space expires.

It's terrible really. It has no concept of what you have uploaded. So initially I just selected my entire lightroom catalogue as my upload and left it running on my laptop. I then closed it out at night and opened the laptop in the morning to resume... it didn't resume, it started from scratch, and had no idea of what was already online.

So in short, it's about as bad as they come. Ended up leaving my laptop on over a weekend to let it complete. How a company as large and with as many IT devs couldn't build a usable app is baffling.

cowboyBuilder

Alanstrainor wrote: »

You may have access through the internet to this device, but surely that's not the point of cloud storage. It being offsite and immune to hardware failure/fire damage/robbery is the main benefit of buying something like google/amazon's offerings.

(I presume I'm reading that right, in that you have a 4TB NAS device in your home?)

I use Amazon for my photos, unlimited photo storage (they store the RAWs) and its cheap at less than 15€ for the year.

Thanks for that, just signed up for it, bargain!!!

I always used flickr (and still do) but my one gripe was no RAWs ..