This sounds a good way to store photo's etc,

but what interested me about your post was that you format your card each time, i have only formatted my card, when i bought them,

is there a reason for doing this?

and should i be formatting my card more regular?

If anyone knows the answer i would be very grateful,

Sorry Bazza for hijacking your thread, but this post got me thinking

With each photo there is a "cookie crumb" that is saved on your card even after the photos have been deleted. Your cards will eventually stop taking photos because it will be full of those cookie crumbs. You should always format your new card when you get so that it starts fresh with your camera and I always format my cards after I pull the photos.

I format the card each time (in the camera not in the card reader) because it gets rid of all the little odds and sods that gather on the card if one just deletes the images.

It also means that I can use any of my cards in any of my camera bodies without generating extra folders all the time.

Back a while I encountered, what to me is a problem because of my naming policy when importing into LR (date_file Number.cr2 so for an image taken today the file is renamed on import to 20120111_7898.cr2), when I failed to format a card that had been used in a Canon 40D and when I used it in a 5D the image number count continued on from the last image on the 40D.

Apparently, when an image is taken the camera looks for a hidden file on the card that stores the last image number. If it does not find that file it defaults to the internal image count number. Formatting prevents this from happening by clearing all hidden files from the card which deleting the images does not.

Hope that makes sense as I have confused myself now

Steve

Thank you Steve for explaining that, i think i've got the basic's and i will format my card in future

Interesting thread! Just been thinking about this, not quite sure how I will be going about it yet!

sorry if this is a little off topic but just got me thinking, some of you have mentioned file types. Tbh, not something that will make much difference to my photos atm but; if you save as a jpeg, does it make any difference how many times you open the file, edit, etc, to the quality of your image? I know this might be a daft question, but I just wondered.

Hi Natalie

It can make a difference to the quality of the files over time if you make multiple edits & saves to/in jpg format.

If you are going to make lots of edits over time it's worth keeping a master file in a non lossy format, although the file sizes will generally be bigger.

This is why I prefer to shoot and archiving in RAW, I can then decide what parts of the data make it through to the finished jpg file, although this can mean more work on your part. But also I always have the original range of data for any given shot, should I wish to do a different PP in years to come.

Thanks Ken, but what do you mean when you say that some data can make it through/you choose which data?

I'll need to look more into this I think (will help with digital scrapping too)

Hey Natalie,

Basically most modern cameras sensors will capture more data than can be displayed or stored by a jpg file, therefore some data has to be wasted.

Typically a RAW file might have 12 or 14 BIT's of information per pixel, where as a jpg file is 8 bit.

When your camera produces a jpg file for you, it is the manufactures software that decides what data is included in the final jpg, although you can generally tweak these settings a little via the cameras menu system. For example: sharpness, saturation, brightness etc.

There is quite a good Wikipedia article HERE on different file formats.

Thanks Ken