I have just purchased a Nikon Coolpix 990.

I was planning to buy a new desk top anyway, but I want to optimize my storage capability for digital photos. I have heard that CD-RW are the best way to go. I believe that a front mount USB port seams also to be a necessary option. What about "fire-wire" ports? There has been a discussion about CD-RW storage discs. What is the difference betwen CDRW and CD R? Isn't a blank disc a blank disc? I have ordered a set of NiCd "D" cells to build a battery pack as recommended on Dansdata.com. Any feedback on battery pack options? Some of you seam to use a laptop for field storage, is there any loss when transfer or downloading to the desktop? I have a 80m CF and I believe a laptop would be of great use on long trips. What do you use to store picture files? I had imagined a CD collection that would be used as "photo albums"

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Clint

-- Clinton A. Darby (clint.darby@nucorsteelsc.com), August 07, 2000

Answers

CDRW's are rewriteable-I have never needed to use this so I archive all of my images either to CDR or DVD. What sort of platform are you looking at for a new desktop? I work cross platform and just ordered three of the new MAC G-4 500mghz machines each with 1 gig of RAM-- should be smokers with Photoshop, but I find little difference in the performance of Photoshop from MAC to PC. I believe "fire-wire" is MAC specific. Laptops are great for storage when in the field and there should be no quality loss in transfer of the images. I ALWAYS archive my photographs as high resolution TIF images and work from this. Normally on a CDR I am able to store 30+ images with each being around 18-20megs in file size. My personal vote is for CDR. For the money they are great. At work I use a DVD jukebox system with four writer/readers on a Dell server. This gives me the capability to store approximately 1.2 terrabytes of retreiveable information at any given time, but obviously this is outside the realm of possibilities for most users. I'm going to have to check out the site you mentioned on building battery backs--I have always considered this to be risky business.

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), August 07, 2000.

"Firewire" the name is owned by Apple, Apple also charge a fee to liscense (sp?) the technology and thats why you dont see it on PC's. You can buy a "Firewire" PCI card more often referred to as IEEE-1394 for about $100. Sony calls IEEE1394 i-Link and Compaq sells their more expensive desktops with the IEEE connection. For a consumer digicam its not important as they all use USB for now. You can use the "firewire" hardware on PC's its just not that common yet. I'm using the Epson 1600 Firewire under Windows 2000 without a hitch...

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), August 07, 2000.

Why not investigate the Pocket Hard drive from Lacie? up to 18Gb in size and you can transfer via Firewire or USB. Fits in your shirt pocket!

-- Torcuill Torrance (torcuill@posres.co.uk), August 16, 2000.