Flickr fraught situation

CelticRambler · 28-12-2019 7:30pm

xieann wrote: »

the cons: very very messy/ I don't really understand how to use Google Photos even after 2 years.

There's nothing to understand: you accept whatever nonsense Google offers you and don't expect anything like sensible functionality! :pac:

I'm old-school, and don't trust any kind of storage I can't lay my own hands on. A few weeks ago, during a pre-Christmas tidy-up, some of my old albums came to light, and looking at all the hard-copy images (falling out of their sleeves

) I was musing on the topic of "what'll future generations have to remember us by?" - precious little chance of finding a JPG file behind the dresser or in a box at the back of the wardrobe.

Back in the present, I use Google Photos, but only for sharing individual images or albums with a wider audience. When I have nothing else to do with my brain, I try to understand how you can tag an image of landscape or an animal with the word "Switzerland" or "Kenya" and Google's search algorithm can't find it afterwards ... but will stick it in its AI-curated "People" folder!

Other than that, for me it's local copies on phone and laptop (for "current" images), and an external hard drive for back-up. Which reminds me: I need a new one.

sheesh · 29-12-2019 1:59am

keps wrote: »

Pixie was promoted by Boards- had a sticky posted by a mod - and then left us all high and dry without even a chance to recover our photos.
The worst and most devastating 'photo related' experience I had.

Really sorry I ever touched it

actually pixie was in trouble for a while before it went down its ending was expected and mourned

gzoladz · 02-01-2020 8:21am

I used Flickr for a while and I liked it, primarily to store and share pictures. I did have more than 1000 (but less than 2000) pics on the site and I did consider it but was not prepared to get a Pro account at that stage.

I deleted a lot of unnecessary pictures I had stored there and brought the number easily to 500/600, but a few other things moved me away of the platform:

-I started having issues with their mobile app, primarily to upload. Probably it was a bad coincidence but it happened for a while at the same time as we were invited to go Pro.

-The comms around the cap to 1000 felt a bit like, you pay or you go. We just want real photographers, for everybody else there is Instagram. This, combined with the issues listed above made me stop using the service more and more. This is subjective, but deteriorated the user experience.

-I was only using it to post on Boards anyway, which I hope implements an easier way to share pics as the Flickr route was a bit cumbersome.

Let's see what happens, I really liked it while I used it.

[Deleted User] · 02-01-2020 11:51am

^^^^^^^^^ had 2000 thereabouts on my own Flickr account.
Deleted a lot of $hit, now have 998.
My photos are now on my Google photos.
Did I mention I still use Picasa?

Fionn · 04-01-2020 7:10pm

Storing online is always going to be a risky venture, so its best to have some sort of a backup solution, I still have Flickr but havent posted to it in a few years.

TomSweeney · 22-01-2020 7:26pm

I see flickr have upped their prices again, from 25$ 2 years ago, to $50 last year .... now it seems I need to pay 65 EURO !!!

So I will jump providers, any suggestions ?

gzoladz · 22-01-2020 7:33pm

TomSweeney wrote: »

I see flickr have upped their prices again, from 25$ 2 years ago, to $50 last year .... now it seems I need to pay 65 EURO !!!

So I will jump providers, any suggestions ?

I left them a while ago and don't regret it...I have to admit that I enjoy it when a good decision becomes a better decision over time...

Google Photos? I supposed it depends on your requirements.

TomSweeney · 22-01-2020 8:37pm

gzoladz wrote: »

I left them a while ago and don't regret it...I have to admit that I enjoy it when a good decision becomes a better decision over time...

Google Photos? I supposed it depends on your requirements.

Yeah was thinking of Google photos, but don't Google own the copyright then ?

at least with flickr they never take that..

The J Stands for Jay · 22-01-2020 8:47pm

TomSweeney wrote: »

I see flickr have upped their prices again, from 25$ 2 years ago, to $50 last year .... now it seems I need to pay 65 EURO !!!

So I will jump providers, any suggestions ?

€25 would get you 100gb of space with Google, and the ability to upload and download folders. Flickr is so much more expensive and doesn't really do backup. If I have multiple drive failures, I can get my files back, in their folder structure, from Google Drive. From Flickr,it'll just be a mass of images. Do they even have an option to download all files at once?

TomSweeney · 22-01-2020 11:05pm

McGaggs wrote: »

€25 would get you 100gb of space with Google, and the ability to upload and download folders. Flickr is so much more expensive and doesn't really do backup. If I have multiple drive failures, I can get my files back, in their folder structure, from Google Drive. From Flickr,it'll just be a mass of images. Do they even have an option to download all files at once?

You need to order the zipped files, I did so a few days ago and I'm still waiting for the download link.

100GB isn't much though when you consider RAW and all the different sizes, to give comparison my flickr photos total ~370GB ...

Right now 500px is looking very good ... the basic plan ($48 p/y) would certainly do me ...
https://web.500px.com/upgrade

Adrian.Sadlier · 22-01-2020 11:40pm

I am looking for some cloud services to store about 5TB of data (mostly photos and video). Not as a hosting/web site which is what Flickr/500px et al do, but one where I can do an initial then subsequent incremental backups and a subsequent restore if required.

Any suggestions?

TomSweeney · 23-01-2020 12:09am

Adrian.Sadlier wrote: »

I am looking for some cloud services to store about 5TB of data (mostly photos and video). Not as a hosting/web site which is what Flickr/500px et al do, but one where I can do an initial then subsequent incremental backups and a subsequent restore if required.

Any suggestions?

If it's just pure backup then I would highly recommend amazon.

Amazon prime account includes unlimited storage for photos - including RAW.
But it's messy, it's a horrible GUI and no folder view.... but again, for the backup and security it's worth it.
AWS know their ****, there won't be any data loss disasters!!

Not so sure about video.

edit just checked, seems a prime account is limited to 5GB for file and video storage.

JDxtra · 23-01-2020 12:12am

5Tb is a lot of data to shift. Even if you had 50mb upload speed, that's still 2 weeks of solid transfers (in theory, reality will be higher).

I use Google Drive and have 1.2Tb up there. Price is reasonable and it offers a lot more than just a data storage dump. You may not want data stored with Google though.

TomSweeney · 23-01-2020 10:11am

JDxtra wrote: »

5Tb is a lot of data to shift. Even if you had 50mb upload speed, that's still 2 weeks of solid transfers (in theory, reality will be higher).

I use Google Drive and have 1.2Tb up there. Price is reasonable and it offers a lot more than just a data storage dump. You may not want data stored with Google though.

1.2TB on google ? what price is that ?

It's $3 a month for 100GB !!

edit - ok https://one.google.com/about

still quite expensive .... I'd need to go for the 2TB (assuming thats total space) and that's $120 a year ...

kippy · 23-01-2020 10:14am

Adrian.Sadlier wrote: »

I am looking for some cloud services to store about 5TB of data (mostly photos and video). Not as a hosting/web site which is what Flickr/500px et al do, but one where I can do an initial then subsequent incremental backups and a subsequent restore if required.

Any suggestions?

5TB?
Christ - you'd be better setting up your own two site mirrored SAN for that amount of data to be of any practical value to you.
Or a few of USB3 external drives

flyingsnail · 23-01-2020 10:22am

Adrian.Sadlier wrote: »

I am looking for some cloud services to store about 5TB of data (mostly photos and video). Not as a hosting/web site which is what Flickr/500px et al do, but one where I can do an initial then subsequent incremental backups and a subsequent restore if required.

Any suggestions?

If its purely for backup have a look at Amazon Glacier, $0.004 GB per month (about 20 for 5TB), the catch is you have to pay extra to download.

DaireQuinlan · 23-01-2020 10:36am

For 5TB for backup _only_ your best bet would be something like Glacier or deep Glacier. Storage costs would be negligible, but it's set up to -retrieving- your data is slow and potentially expensive (I've yet to work out if the retrieval costs are Glacier->local or Glacier->temp. s3 instance->local , second would be considerably more expensive). It is replicated though so from a backup POV it's pretty good, so long as we can assume Amazon isn't going under anytime soon. There's Prime as above, never tried them, it's tempting, but I don't know if it's replicated or what their reliability QOS metrics are like.

I just renewed my Flickr account (in for a penny, in for €119 WAIT WHAT ??!? ) but it's not backup, I only have a small proportion of shots up there.

Cameraman · 23-01-2020 4:39pm

Adrian.Sadlier wrote: »

I am looking for some cloud services to store about 5TB of data (mostly photos and video). Not as a hosting/web site which is what Flickr/500px et al do, but one where I can do an initial then subsequent incremental backups and a subsequent restore if required.

Any suggestions?

I use Crashplan. Costs about US$10 per month. It handles versioning and deleted file recovery (some other backup services remove files if not online for 30 days - so if you disconnect an external drive, or don't notice a file is missing for longer than that - tough !)

I have about 7.5TB stored - and it took about 6 months (running in the background) to get it all online initially - but could possibly be done a bit faster.

JDxtra · 23-01-2020 5:46pm

TomSweeney wrote: »

1.2TB on google ? what price is that ?

It's $3 a month for 100GB !!

edit - ok https://one.google.com/about

still quite expensive .... I'd need to go for the 2TB (assuming thats total space) and that's $120 a year ...

It's €100/year, which I think is fair considering it's feature rich and always accessible. I was paying Dropbox the same for 1Tb for a few years before that.

zom · 26-01-2020 10:10pm

Seems like everyone already built portfolio of pictures bigger than they need, no more free or cheap cloud photo storage anymore...

keps · 27-01-2020 12:34am

I’m happy to pay 65 euros to Flickr annually

I enjoy the occasional pint of Guinness

Flickr gives me unlimited storage plus access to its
groups(I use a lot of the wildlife ones) for the price of a pint a month

thebaz · 27-01-2020 12:41am

keps wrote: »

I’m happy to pay 65 euros to Flickr annually

I enjoy the occasional pint of Guinness

Flickr gives me unlimited storage plus access to its
groups(I use a lot of the wildlife ones) for the price of a pint a month

I agree Flickr its the best online photo site - be a shame to see it go - much better than 500px - and the groups and feedback are the best out ther in my opinion

TomSweeney · 28-01-2020 10:04pm

keps wrote: »

I’m happy to pay 65 euros to Flickr annually

I enjoy the occasional pint of Guinness

Flickr gives me unlimited storage plus access to its
groups(I use a lot of the wildlife ones) for the price of a pint a month

The point is it's rise in prices won't slow down.

2 years ago it was $25
last year $50 ... now it's $70 ....

so long term it's not a solution, they have their users by the balls, people afraid to leave, in 5 years it will be $200 a year ...

DaireQuinlan · 29-01-2020 12:43am

TomSweeney wrote: »

The point is it's rise in prices won't slow down.

2 years ago it was $25
last year $50 ... now it's $70 ....

so long term it's not a solution, they have their users by the balls, people afraid to leave, in 5 years it will be $200 a year ...

Luckily that whole thing about boiling frogs was a complete myth
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-boiled-frog-myth-stop-the-lying-now/7446/

TomSweeney · 04-02-2020 9:00am

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Luckily that whole thing about boiling frogs was a complete myth
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-boiled-frog-myth-stop-the-lying-now/7446/

What are you talking about ??

thebaz · 04-03-2020 8:37pm

getting really worried for Flickr - ther obviously having financial issues since Smug Mug bought them - they are now pushing customers hard to buy a year and 2 year in advance , and saying if you dont you will be forced into monthly more expensive subscriptions to still avail of Pro - I bought for a year in Novemeber - but seams a real mess right now.

keps · 04-03-2020 8:45pm

thebaz wrote: »

getting really worried for Flickr - ther obviously having financial issues since Smug Mug bought them - they are now pushing customers hard to buy a year and 2 year in advance , and saying if you dont you will be forced into monthly more expensive subscriptions to still avail of Pro - I bought for a year in Novemeber - but seams a real mess right now.

MMM that doesn't sound too good - I have paid up for a year.

Lost a load of images when Pixie disappeared off the scene- so don't want a repeat

It seems physical back up is the only other 'safety net' - but then again a 1TB hard drive I had stuff stored on failed recently - but thankfully the local IT shop was able to recover the 'lost' data - but a new hard drive was required ( 100 euro )and a 60 euro fee

Flickr fraught situation

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