TWiP #213 – Patent Smurfs

This week on TWiP: 100Cameras.org needs your help, Kodak looking to sell off billion dollar patents, future camera technology, and a round-table discussion on image backup strategies.

Hosts: Frederick Van Johnson, Tyler Ginter, Alex Lindsay, Derrick Story

NEWS & DISCUSSION

100Cameras.Org Needs Your Help
100Cameras.org exists to help bring the world of photography to children who wouldn't otherwise have access to it. From their website:

“Due to the aftermath from the Sudanese Civil War & the current drought in East Africa that has killed all vegetation on their farm, all food, firewood and other necessities must be imported from Uganda. The orphanage relies on their one truck to make this happen.  But last week, this truck broke. And their children are left in dire need of these lifeline supplies. They only have seven days to raise enough support to fund these repairs. Because if this engine doesn't start running and soon, our children will not have food and firewood in the immediate future. After next week, all current supplies will be gone. Respond to the urgency. Purchase one of the children's photographs or make a donation, and 100percent of your money will be used to fix their truck.”

Kodak May Sell Valuable Patent at the Centre of a Legal Battle with  Apple
From Petapixel: “Kodak has taken defensive measures to prevent a hostile takeover for its extensive collection of digital imaging patents. One of these patents is an image previewing invention that has earned Kodak nearly $1 billion from Samsung and LG, and that's at the center of an ongoing legal battle with Apple. With the income generated by patent lawsuits dwindling, the company is now considering the sale of 1,100 patents (about 10% of its portfolio), including the valuable image previewing patent. A sale might bring in significantly more cash than the market value of the company, which currently sits at about $600 million.”

iCam Bypasses Clunky Camera Interface with an iPhone
Zeki Ozek has develop a concept for a prototype that would allow you to attach your smartphone to a camera body and bypass the clunky factory-installed interfaces that come with many of today's camera bodies. Zeki would love to see companies like Canon or Nikon release a body and some great glass that you could just plug your smart phone into and take advantage of the applications and friendly touch screen interface. Alex would love to see this and thinks that Sigma is in the best position to release a product like this.

STORAGE DISCUSSION

Frederick, Tyler, Alex, and Derrick talk about the various storage solutions that they use to manage and backup their photo collections and some of the best practices they employee. Derrick is working on a new book that should be out in September that tackles this exact subject. The first thing he does is to organize his content in some sort of a fashion. Assuming you've done that, job two is to get your image in at least two space as soon as you can. Don't erase your memory card until you have your picture in at least two places. He really likes the solutions from Buffalo, Western Digital, Iomega, etc that allow you to load two drives into a toaster looking device that automatically creates a mirrored backup. His biggest complaint with using a Drobo is their secret encryption structure and thinks they were a bigger deal a few years ago before all of these other solutions came along. Derrick also likes the Western Digital green drives for local storage and a Buffalo drive with a pogo plug for cloud storage.

Alex employs a lot of similar techniques that Derrick mentioned including backing up the cards right away and he doesn't. On location he brings a G-Tech Safe which contains two 2TB or 3TB drives in them that are automatically mirrored. For the flight home they will typically take the drives out and send them with two different people or send one with a person and one with FedEx. Once back at the office, they store a lot of their data on Drobo Pros in multiple locations. Also, if you are backing things up on CD or DVD you need to get that data off now as they are not stable and optical media is starting to be phased out.

Tyler thinks that not enough people take it seriously and they should. He uses 2 Voyager Qs that backup to the standard Western Digital 2TB drives. He also uses the G-Tech system and Chronosync to backup two drives on his Mac. He also mentions that it's important to backup and sync your project files.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Tyler – New project Management tool: http://www.asana.com

Derrick – iPad/iPhone app: Photographers Contract Maker

Alex – Grid it: Object Organization System

Frederick – Animated photography (Some examples from Jamie Beck)

WRAP UP

Follow us on twitter.com/ThisWeekInPhoto. Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group.

Derrick Story – http://www.thedigitalstory.com or http://www.twitter.com/derrick_story

Tyler Ginter – www.tylerginter.com or http://www.twitter.com/tylerginter

Alex Lindsay – http://www.pixelcorps.com or http://www.twitter.com/alexlindsay

Frederick Van Johnson – www.frederickvan.com or www.twitter.com/frederickvan or Google Plus

CREDITS