> More SD cards means more things to lose.
> A portable hard drive offers centralization
> of data.

Yes, so you lose your portable hard drive (or break it) and you lose everything you centralized :)

I pretty much always have one of my laptops with me when I am traveling (the only time I’d need the ability to offload images). So I don’t see much of a point to buy a dedicated device just to hold photos. Also, my PMP (Cowon A2) could be used for that as well (has USB host support).

I concur with the “Understanding Exposure” recommendation.

A recent series of articles on Digital Outback Photo (http://www.outbackphoto.com/) discusses backup and archiving your photo files, and is worth a read before you accumulate too many gigabytes.

Michael Reichmann’s Luminous Landscape site (http://luminous-landscape.com/) offers a number of good articles in his “Understanding Series”, targeted at folks who are a bit beyond being a beginnner.

I use White House Custom Colour (http://www.whcc.com/) as my online lab when I want larger quality prints, and WalMart for my snapshot (4″x6″) printing. (I need a new photo printer at home, but first need some $$$ to appear from somewhere.)

Finally, look around for different descriptions of photographers’ workflows. Your workflow will probably be somewhat unique to you, given the many variations described by photographers of varying expertise. And, obviously, details of your workflow will vary as the tools and tool features you use change. Establishing a workflow improves the quality and efficiency of your postprocessing, the efficiency factor becoming increasingly important as you deal with the growing number of image files you’ll create during a shoot.

Bob

Hey, this post made it on Engadget.

“thanks Nuts…….shows how much I have to learn. Did buy a book specifically for the 40D so I am serious about learning. Will check out the forum you mentioned. thanks.”

oops, I didn’t see your comment. You prepare to drop loads of cash. Hahaha…buying the camera is the first step to being broke.

Regarding a book which is highly recommended is called Bryan Peterson “Understanding Exposure”

I recommend this to any beginner. It allows you to understand why you bought a digital SLR and what it’s capabilities are….buying a book, specifically about the camera is really not worth it. The manual is more than sufficient. Peruse the forum and the spending begins.

Overall, once reading the book I mentioned, you shouldn’t be using the “green box” mode. That’s what your point and shoot is for….hehehe. You should be shooting using the “M, AP, or AV” mode.

Seriously though, start with that book and believe me, learning how to use your camera is secondary to what you will find out about why photography is so awesome…and for the people who are not in photography, they will never understand till they have an slr in their hands and understand it’s not just about pushing a button.

I don’t mean to stray off topic but to save you time and money and to provide some advice.

Travis: I currently carry 4 x 4gig cards. Why? I carry two cameras, Canon 40D and XTI. Most times when I’m carrying one, it’s a different story but more than 4 gigs on a CF card is risky. (TIP 1: Always reformat CF cards after you offload pictures). Although I’m looking to venture getting an 8gig card due to price dropping. Still I won’t be filling it up to 8gig before offloading it.

Secondly, having a device such as this posted here or the Hyperdrive or the Epson or many ones out there, (the two top ones are Epson P3000/5000 or the Hyperdrive), this allows you to carry less CF card (although it doesn’t hurt to have more, especially now that it’s getting relatively cheap) but this devices allows you to offload your images directly to the device versus a laptop.

I usually carry my tablet with me when travelling overseas or anywhere and coming back to my hotel at night I would offload it onto my laptop, now I can offload to the device. In addition, I can carry it with me during the day. Once it gets full, I offload into the device, throw the device into my backpack and while it’s offloading 4gigs worth of images, my other CF card is now filling up in my camera. So you can see why this is helpful. The Epson has a beautiful screen (which is why I recommend it) and you can show off the pictures right away.

Scott and Kevin: You both will love the camera and the link I provided is Canon specific forum. I represent Thinktank products on that forum (http://www.thinktankphoto.com) of course I’m also a photographer. Any question regarding photography, shoot away there.

Lastly, guys it’s the 40D not the D40…lol ;)

D40 is a Nikon. hahaha…now that’s taboo!

thanks Nuts…….shows how much I have to learn. Did buy a book specifically for the 40D so I am serious about learning. Will check out the forum you mentioned. thanks.

nutsandbolts, I haven’t invested in anything (other than the camera), so I’ll check out the Epsons. Thanks!

Travis, I’m sure I could buy a few, but you can’t always judge how useful an alternative solution will be based on price. More SD cards means more things to lose. A portable hard drive offers centralization of data.

Scott, I’m thoroughly enjoying my “learning how to use” the XSi. Hope you find the same with your D40! Also, nutsandbolts answered your “why RAW?” question far better than I could have. :)

You mean Canon 40D.

Why would you shoot RAW?

One of the biggest advantages of raw is flexibility.

When a photographer shoots JPEG, the white balance, tonal curve, sharpening, compression, and other choices are essentially burned into the file. The sharpening and compression are irreversible (you can blur the JPEG image to reduce the sharpening, but that is not the same as undoing the sharpening and it will degrade the image). Color and tonal problems created by improper white balance or tonal curve can be adjusted somewhat in a JPEG file, but it will cause some degradation of the image. The problem arises because the camera sets these parameters into the image at the time the photo is taken. Making changes to these parameters at a later time can be difficult (e.g., loss of detail in the shadows due to the use of a contrasty tonal curve) or impossible (e.g., undo file compression).

So..I can go on more about this, but I’ll leave that for another forum. try http://photography-on-the.net/forum where I’m involved in as well.

Congrats on the purchase. Just sold my old Rebel XT and upgraded to the Canon D40……..looking forward to learning how to use it. Question: why the decision to move to RAW?

How many 16G SDHC cards could you buy for $139?

Welcome to the the digital slr world. I’m sure you are just beginning to realize how expensive this hobby can get.

Check out the Epson P3000 or P5000, although I would suggest to get the P3000 and upgrade the hard drive to 120. Well too late now since you have this…then again maybe not :P.

I’m looking to purchase the Color Hyperdrive 0 for my backup needs. Raw, as you can see can take a lot of room. :)