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Be Sure Of Your Backup
* 50 Ways To Lose Your Data
* Stuck On Auto
* From Film To Video
50 Ways To Lose Your Data
Before I answer your questions, I want to touch on a topic I’ve
mentioned before—but one whose importance I can’t stress enough:
backup! Image file sizes are getting bigger, storage mediums are
carrying more data, and all of this leads to the potential of
catastrophic failures.
A good friend of mine recently had the hard drive on his laptop fail.
No amount of cajoling could revive it. This was his main image-editing
computer. Although he had been following my advice of regular backups,
there’s one thing that was still missing: he assumed his backup process
was working properly. He didn’t test to make sure that if something
went wrong with his online data, he could readily access his offline
backup.
It turns out that his regular backup routine was only backing up some
of his files. He ended up having to contract with a data recovery
company to restore his files. In this case, it was to the tune of more
than $1,000, and even then, several critical files were gone.
For some people, there’s the thought that “It won’t happen to me!”, but
in reality, I think it’s a matter of when it will happen, not if it
will happen.
I’ve mentioned a little envisioning exercise before: next time you sit
down at your computer, close your eyes, wait a few seconds, then open
them and imagine that your hard drive has been completely wiped out.
What would you do? What did you lose? How important is that data?
Then, check to see if your backup is working properly. Try to recall
important files, open them up in your image editor and verify that they
haven’t been corrupted. Bottom line: if you value your images, you
should evaluate your backup system.
Stuck On Auto
Q) I’ve been enjoying my new digital camera. I’ve learned
about histograms, flash and focus, and even a bit about composition,
but I struggle with shooting modes. When it comes down to taking
pictures, I fall into automatic mode all of the time. There are two
settings that I’m trying to learn: aperture priority and shutter
priority. When should I be using them?
Trish D.
Toronto, Canada
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