Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: photographic technology

Too Much Help
Is it possible to have too much help in our photography? Are there long-term downsides to some of the technology we employ? What does it do to us as creatives?
Photographic technology
One of the characteristic things about photography is that it is closely tied to technology. Since the invention of photography, it has been technology based. The specialized emulsions and chemicals and techniques required training and a certain level of technical savvy.
Today the technologies have changed drastically, but the tie between photography and technology has not changed. If anything, it is stronger than ever. Being a “serious” photographer just about requires a complex camera system, a capable computer system, and specialized training in the tools.
The companies that make our technology try to ease some of the cognitive load by getting more helpful all the time. Usually, we welcome that. Who would not want our tasks to be easier? But we need to ask ourselves if there are hidden costs in taking the easy path.
©Ed Schlotzhuaer
AI
The antagonist I want to single out is what we generally call “AI”, or Artificial Intelligence. It is creeping into many aspects of our art with the promise of making our life easier or getting things done faster.
I will be very open that I am against most uses of the things called AI, as embodied by large language models like ChatGPT. Not only in photography but most areas of life. I am not just a Luddite. I spent a long career in the tech industry, and I studied and practiced AI at some points of my career. So I have some familiarity with what it is and how it works, including a moderate knowledge of the technology within it and its limitations.
Study of coding
I am curious about lots of things. I enjoy looking at seemingly unrelated areas and trying to see parallels or applications.
Many studies are starting to be done on the human impact of AI. One that intrigued me was a study of software developers in Italy and what happened when their access to AI was cut off.
In 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority suddenly banned ChatGPT based on privacy and security and non-compliance with European data protection laws. The effect on software developers was immediate and dramatic. Code check-in on GitHub – a proxy measure of output – dropped 50% in 2 days.
But on further analysis, 2 very interesting things emerged: the output of inexperienced coders went up slightly while the output of experienced coders went way down, accounting for most of the drop in output.
One of the suggested explanations is that novices were concentrating more on developing basic skills for themselves, therefore not relying on AI as much. Experienced developers, on the other hand, embraced AI to do a lot of the routine work. But the productivity booster had become a crutch. They lost a lot of the ability to do the work they used to do.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Productivity tools
I believe there are parallels for photography. At this point, I will ignore the novices just learning the craft, since I am not there and can’t think like them anymore. Let’s concentrate on experienced artists.
Our tools constantly offer to take over more of the photographic process. Some of this is good, but not all of it all the time. I have bought into a lot of it. I don’t think my handheld light meter even works any more. And I have long forgotten how to use the manual calculators to determine exposure or desired depth of field. Now, my camera’s metering is so good that I usually trust it. And DOF, well, I can immediately see my image after shooting, so I can check it easily.
I often use “AI” tools in limited ways. In Lightroom (Classic, the only “real” one ☺) I often use the Auto button to see it’s opinion of a good starting point. It does a pretty good job for the outdoor shots I usually take. I seldom leave its settings untouched, but it can be a time saver. Likewise, I use the manual Remove tool a lot for dust spots and distraction removal. I very occasionally use the generative remove, although it is about a 50/50 chance of it being better than doing it manually. Lightroom is getting much more capable of creating useful masks. I often use them as a starting point.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creative rot
But who says art should be effortless. Our tools want to take over increasing portions of our work, to “help” us and make it easy They offer to automatically remove dust spots, they provide great aid in removing distractions, they offer to distort our images to align verticals and horizontals, they offer to cull our photographs and assign keywords, etc. All these things can be helpful time savers, but at what cost?
Like the experienced coders in the Italian study, at what point do we start losing the ability to do our own work?
Editing, for example, is something I consider a necessary skill for photographers. I have noticed in my own work that I am now sometimes uneasy in manually removing complex distractions. My initial instinct is “that’s hard and will take a lot of time; maybe it would be better to just let the software do it”. That is a warning flag to me. I feel that I need to be skilled at doing this and confident that I can. If I cede these decisions to my tools, I believe I have abrogated part of my role as an artist. I am responsible for every pixel of my image. Software should not take over important creative decision making.
Or take culling images as an example. I strongly believe culling is a critical part of the artistic process. Confronting our mistakes and selecting the best of a series is a necessary part of improving our work. I would rather not spend the time required to do it, but I feel I must. Without it, I am deluding myself about my actual work. I can’t afford to let the computer do it for me.
There are too many examples to list. AI technology is trying to embed itself in most phases of our process.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The other AI
Let me pause for a moment and note that I am not discussing fully AI generated images. There are times and places to use them. They are not inherently bad. It is kind of like hiring an illustrator to create some graphics for a presentation or a graphic designer to make pictures for a marketing brochure. Those are business products, not art.
I firmly believe that AI is incapable of coming up with creative new ideas or art. It cannot do more than it is trained on. Good art is a product of human creation. I admit that there is a lot of bad art that is no better than AI.
Caution
I am not going to abandon technology advances. Many of them make my life easier and more convenient. But I do intend to maintain a certain skepticism that will keep me from becoming dependent on convenience features.
If the great automatic metering and auto focus in my camera went away, I still know how shoot fully manual. If most of the automatic aids in Lightroom and Photoshop disappeared, I still remember how to do things the hard way.
I fear that younger photographers who have grown up with the tools do not have that fallback position. We could soon be in a position where photographers require AI tools to do their work, because they cannot do it themselves. If they have to rely on it to do their basic work, then why not allow it to do more and more. At some point, who (or what) is the artist?
I do not believe my smarter tools have negatively effected my images or my creativity so far. I keep a watch for that.
Or maybe I am wrong and completely out of touch. Maybe photographers are no longer required to be masters of our technology. It could be that the requirements for making an original and creative work are different from what I believe. In that case, I am just an old dinosaur holding on to a forgotten past. But I choose to believe my knowledge and experience is something AI cannot copy.
Maybe this disquiet about too much help is one of the reasons there is a resurgence of interest in “old school” technology, like film and manual cameras. Many long for simpler days when we were more in control and closer to our end result. I am somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to give up most technology, but I refuse to be controlled by it.
February 4, 2026
Transmogrification
Photography is a process of transmogrification – a transformation of one form to another. It’s a wonder an image ends up a recognizable representation of a scene. Some don’t.
Transmogrification
If “transmogrification” is unfamiliar to you, you are probably not a Calvin & Hobbs fan. I am a shameless fan. In my opinion, it was one of the most creative and humorous cartoon strips in history.
Calvin (a little boy) and Hobbs (his imaginary friend who is a stuffed tiger) were always getting into typical little boy trouble. One of his “inventions” was a transmogrifier, a device (cardboard box) that could transform anyone into anything else.
One of the reasons the comic is meaningful to me is that I had 2 active boys who always pushed the limits, and then some. Now, I have another newborn grandson, so I will be starting over in that world.
I thought the author, Bill Watterson, invented the word, but it turns out to have been used as far back as 1671. It is a real word, not a made-up cartoon word.
Not deep philosophy
This discussion of the transformations that take place in making a photograph will be purely practical. I will not get into philosophical questions. We could do long analysis of indexicality or semiotics or formalism or the photo theories of John Szarkowski or any of dozens of other theories that attempt to explain why we see what we see.
I don’t avoid this just because I am not capable of the deep thought. My nature is to be more of a pragmatist in my basic life philosophy. That’s why I went into Engineering rather than Science.
A theory of why I made a particular image may be of a little bit interesting to me. It might help me to understand my process and vision. But I don’t think it benefits my viewers or really changes the final image.
To someone viewing my image, it is what it is. It has to stand on its merits as they see them. I may have had deep theoretical intent behind what I did. but they don’t care. And despite any philosophical basis I may have used, if I don’t like the image either, it is useless. Don Giannatti recently said on Medium “A good photo is a good photo.” So true
A series of transformations
There are 3 main groups of transforms between a scene and a final print: in our head, in the camera, and in the computer. I include our head because it is probably the most important one. I will only describe a raw image processing path, since that is all I use. When I talk about a processing step, I mean a point where the result can be altered.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
We see a scene and our brain goes through a lot of steps before we are even close to pressing the shutter release. We evaluate what we are seeing, determine what is significant, decide how we feel about it, what is our intent in taking this picture and if it is even worthwhile, and generally how we will compose and frame it.
These steps may happen rapidly and instinctively, or they may be a slow deliberate process. That depends on the situation and our shooting style and our experience. But they probably happen.
Camera transforms
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Assuming we decide to take the picture, now several processing steps take place within the camera. First, the light from the desired scene comes in through our lens. The lens determines the field of view, wide or narrow. It also “contributes” its own distortions – the MTF, barrel or pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting, etc.
After or within the lens is the aperture. This opens or closes to let in more or less light. As a side effect, the aperture size determines the depth of field – the amount of the image that is in sharp focus. Focus depth is one of the creative decisions unique to photography.
Then the light is controlled by the shutter. The shutter opens for a precisely controlled amount of time when the photographer presses the shutter release. That opening time controls the amount of light that can pass through. The aperture and shutter work together to provide two of the key variables that determine exposure. The side effect is that shutter speed also determines the perceived motion blur of the scene. This is another creative decision.
Next, the light hits the sensor where photons are converted to electrical signals. The total number of pixels is fixed here, as is much of the quality of the final image. The sensor also introduces some kinds of noise into our data.
A deep, dark secret that many people do not internalize is that at the sensor, the information is “analog”. That is, it is varying levels of electrical signals. It goes through an Analog To Digital converter (ADC) to digitize it. Gain is also applied here as determined by the ISO setting. Higher ISO values apply more gain to boost the signal. There is a tradeoff the artist must make about the ISO setting, the amount of gain, since that determines a lot of the noise in our image data. Each pixel’s electrical value is digitized to create the matrix of digital values representing the image.
Next the digital data flows through the digital signal processor (DSP) section. Each manufacturer applies its own proprietary “secret sauce” of processing to enhance the response of the sensor. This is why there is a Leica look and a Fuji look, etc. A jpg image is also processed from this to create a quick preview of the RAW data. The data is assembled into RAW data format for storage and then written to the memory card.
The memory card receives the raw data that represents the image as processed by the camera.
All these steps are just what is within the camera. I have not even mentioned our decisions of how to orient the camera or support it. Is it fixed or intentionally moving? Where is it positioned in relation to the scene? These decisions were probably made at the “head” stage.
Computer transforms
©Ed Schlotzhauer
We typically take that memory card and read its contents into our computer through a cataloging program such as Lightroom. Now the data is stored locally on our computer system for access.
The type and amount of processing that can be done here is too vast to describe. We might use Lightroom or Photoshop or Topaz or any of several other software applications to operate on the pixels, bending and shaping and polishing them to our satisfaction. We may crop or delete large sections, combine images in various ways, change color drastically, even to black & white. There is little limit.
Finally, to make a print, our print processing software uses profiles for the printer and paper we will be using to re-transform the image to a new color space. This is necessary to create a print that mostly matches what we see on our monitor. Raster Image Processing is used to do error diffusion and other complex calculations to create a new representation that creatively shapes the pixel values to patterns of microscopic ink dots that will produce the final image. The printer sprays the ink onto the paper substrate.
We now have an image.
Uniqueness of photography
This series of transformations partially serves to define the basic difference between painting and photography. It should be clear that a photograph is a capture of all the light and forms that was seen by the lens. Everything gets recorded.
The photographer has command of composition and viewpoint and lens selection and exposure to control what gets captured. But everything that was there is recorded. One of our jobs is to carefully select what to record, removing distractions.
Distraction removal often continues to the post processing steps. And new elements may be added to the image. These happen long after the image is captured by the camera.
A painter starts with a blank canvas and adds the elements he desires. Nothing can be there unless it was his intent to place it there. If he didn’t paint it in, it does not exist.
Photography is a subtractive process while painting is an additive process.
Over time we photographers learn how to control what ends up imaged on the sensor. We must be vigilant as we are looking through the viewfinder. Learning to actually see all the faults and distractions is a skill. Learning how to deal with them is part of our art, as is learning how to process the image to end up with the result we want.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The chain
As we can see, there is a complex chain of transforming steps that an image goes through between the “real” scene and the resulting depiction in a print. Most of these steps can seriously change the final result.
I take 2 main points from this: all images are modified and as artists we exert the control over the intent of what we are creating.
An image is not the object or scene. It is possibly a representation of the original. Or it can be completely different. I intentionally avoid any discussion of referent philosophy, other than to say a picture is not the original thing, it is an image that may or may not have something to say about the thing..
How the image corresponds to the “real” scene is the artist’s choice in creating the image. As artists, we have an abundance of control points in the process. How we choose to use them is our decision. It is what we do as photographers. The result of all these transformation steps is an expression of our artistic vision.
I called it transmogrification because the complexity of what is going on is almost science fiction or fantasy. But this is what we deal with every time we take a picture. As photographers, we must understand this chain. We do not have to understand all the technical details, but we must be able to use the steps available to us to create the image we want. As artists we must understand how to control all this technology to shape the final image to our vision.
It’s a great thing, though. Taming all this technology and learning to use it well is part of the joy of being a photographer. It gives us tremendous creative freedom.
Ultimately, though, our viewers do not care at all about our technology. They only look at the image and decide if it is worth looking at for more than an instant and if it has some relevance to them. Technology, like good magic, should be invisible.
January 28, 2026
Post Exploration
We focus a lot on the process of taking pictures. And rightly. But the world of post processing is another rich opportunity for “making” images.
Taking pictures
When we think about photography, we think about taking pictures. After all, that is what photography is, isn’t it? That is where we capture the data that becomes the final image. For many, the thinking stops there. Click – picture.
Maybe crop it a little, or remove a distraction. Perhaps work on the overall color. But the picture is the picture. No reason to make many changes.
Many people, especially some “serious” photographers, feel that the image should be made whole and complete in the camera. Anything other than simple edits that make no substantive changes to the original image is suspect or forbidden. That is their opinion, and they are welcome to it, so long as they do not try to bind it on me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Post processing
But for other photographers, the world of post processing is much larger than that. Yes, there is cropping and distraction removal and some color tweaks, but those are just the basic first steps.
I will go out on a limb and say that post processing is as large and important a skill as is capturing images. The world of digital imaging has thrown us into a situation where what happens after the shutter press can be as important as what happens leading up to it. And our tools have become far more powerful, enabling “darkroom” processing far beyond what any film shooter ever dreamed of. It would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
I assume you shoot RAW images. There are times to shoot jpg, but those are rare in my world of fine art photography. But RAW images require extensive editing. They look bland right out of the camera, since they did not go through heavy-handed jpg processing that is trying to make a best guess of what we wanted.
Just enhancing
After that initial round of basic edits, we get more serious for the images we pull out to work up. Now we probably do some initial sharpening. Then set overall contrast, black & white points, maybe some clarity to punch it up some more.
At this point the image is starting to take shape. Now I may spend a lot of time working on tonal gradations. Basically working on the details of lighting and separating element so they can be seen more clearly. Then there is working on global saturation and luminance and maybe even hue of individual colors.
We may decide to add a vignette to help focus attention on the subject. Perhaps we will use color grading or profiles to change the overall “look” of the image. Maybe so far as going to black & white.
There are so many more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We can easily spend hours on one image doing these and many more. I have watched hundreds of hours of tutorial videos describing techniques for doing these things. Really getting in depth on Lightroom Classic or, especially, Photoshop is a project requiring years. And they are moving targets.
But at this point, we have a nicely corrected image – that is still basically the original photograph. It may be exactly the scene as we remember it, or it may have a color wash, or even be in black & white, but it is the same photograph.
Again, this is where another large group of photographers stop.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Permission to play
And that’s where I stop with most of my images. But there are other doors to open that can lead to new destinations.
Here is a statement of belief for me: pixels are raw material. They are just pieces of data saved on your computer. They do not “mean” anything except for the meaning we ascribe to them when we view them all together as an image. This is my belief. but since it is not based on laws or regulations or fundamentals of nature, it is just my belief. Feel free to disagree and act accordingly.
But since this is my belief, I am free to do anything I want with my data. There is nothing like PETA for protecting against the abuse of pixels.
I give myself unlimited permission to play with my data. And I do, to degrees. The problem is that it is hard to break away from old habits and beliefs. Too often, I am trapped by my limited thinking. I see an image. I don’t always see what those pixels could become. That, more than camera resolution or tools or computer power, limits what I make.
Permission to play does not mean I will always take advantage of my freedom. I am self-limited. My actions don’t always follow my beliefs. But I’m trying to break my mental barriers.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Making new images
I love compositing, combining 2 or more images to make something new. It is a joy when I can take 2 dissimilar images and make something different from either. Sometimes I put together 3,4, 10 images. The resulting image may only have bits and pieces of each source file. Did you know that a TIFF file has a maximum size of 4G Bytes? After that you must bump up to the PSB format. Quite a few of my experimental images do that.
And I love taking an image and processing it with different textures or digital effects to create a very different look. So much so that sometimes when I am out shooting, I mainly shoot textures. I have a good library of them.
And have you played with some of the interesting Photoshop filters that are built in? Quite a variety of tools for blur, rendering, warp, landscape mixer, distort, stylize, etc. I can experiment for hours in Photoshop trying new combinations of things.
Some actually create results I like. But you never know until you try.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The digital world
My point is that our “photo opportunities” do not stop when we press the shutter. Capturing a good image is very important. But there are endless possibilities for improving it or totally changing it in post processing. Sometimes we see opportunities for doing more than just making an image look better. Post processing is another creative outlet.
Digital images are much more malleable than film. Pixels are just data. Data can be processed. There is a world of opportunity in the post processing, if we can break out of our limited view of what can and should be done to our pixels. I call it post exploration.
If you are a fine art photographer, the ethical choice is to do your best, most creative work. Not to protect pixels.
October 29, 2025
No Medium Format
Despite their advantages, and as much as I would like to, there is no medium format camera in my plans any time soon.
Fine tools
It is a joy to use fine tools. The better we become in any craft, the more we appreciate our tools. After all, we use them frequently and tend to push them to their limits. I believe this is as true for a photographer as any other artist or craftsman.
Plus, there is the ego boosting feeling of possessing and using something expensive and exceptionally well made. It makes us feel important. We must be a better artist, because we have better tools.
Most photographers are familiar with mega-pixel lust and/or lens lust. We “need” the latest technology breakthroughs, the highest scoring products. They will improve our photography, right? Well, sometimes. But probably not by themselves.
One of the ongoing lusts I fight is the desire to move to a medium format system.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Medium format
Camera systems have always been characterized by the size of the recording medium they expose. In film it was 8×10, 5×7, 6×6 cm, down to 35 mm. Digital systems tended to smaller formats, because of the cost of the sensor chip. For a long time, the 35 mm “full frame” sensor was king. Other lower cost sizes also became common, like APS-C, micro 4/3, etc.
Of course, there are many other contenders. Polaroid made a few huge sheets. There were 11×17 cameras. Others, especially in digital, range down to microscopic cameras small enough to fit unobtrusively in a pair of glasses. And don’t forget the tiny sensors in your phone, probably the most used cameras in the world today.
The cameras in the slot between 5×7 and 35 mm are called medium format.
Brave adventurers in the digital world decided to push digital larger than 35 mm. Their goal was to recapture the detail and mystique of legends like the Hasselblad 6×6 cm or Mamiya 6×4.5 cm medium format systems.
These huge sensor chips are a strain on semiconductor production. They are very expensive because the yields are low for such a large chip, and the production volume is small. But makers like PhaseOne, Hasselblad, and Fujifilm persisted and developed successful products, and the results seem to be spectacular.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Advantages
I do not speak from first-hand experience. Only from extensive research and reading. From what I can determine, the medium format digital systems are a marvel of image quality, with tangible and intangible properties that cannot be matched by 35 mm full frame cameras.
One obvious thing is that the larger sensors have a larger number of pixels. Typical medium format cameras have 100 MPixels, compared to 60 for the highest resolution full frame camera today.
But it is more than just number of pixels. The larger sensors allow larger pixel sites. This means each pixel gathers more light and each pixel has lower noise, greater dynamic range, and better color accuracy. Medium format lenses are also generally higher quality than 35 mm ones.
Overall, the whole system is high quality all the way through. This leads to files that can be printed at huge sizes with astounding detail and color.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Disadvantages
Of course, these advantages do not come for free. Everything must scale up physically with the sensor size. This makes the cost of all the components, including the sensor and lenses, go up exponentially.
Larger also means heavier. In a studio that is not a concern. But I shoot only outdoor, and I lug my equipment wherever I go. Heavy is bad. Big is bad. Medium format is both.
I indicated that the lens sizes must scale up for medium format. The lens must create a larger image circle to cover the larger sensor. This not only makes them heavy and expensive, but the physics of lens design and the small market limits the practical ability to make wide range zoom lenses. So, currently, something like a 35 mm equivalent range of 28 mm to 75 mm is about the best that is common for a medium format zoom. Other sizes are available, but nothing like the “super zooms” we love in full frame cameras. Medium format wide angle lenses are much easier to make and more common.
Underlying all of this is the sheer cost of the system. Buying into a medium format system with a reasonable selection of lenses can add up to 10’s of $1000s. Much more if you decide to go with PhaseOne. Do I want medium format or a new car? Medium format or a luxury anniversary trip to Europe?
Reality
The reality is that the medium format system currently is too big and heavy, it is too expensive, and I can’t get the type of lenses I want to use. At least, this is true for my value system.
My old body wants to shed weight I must carry, not add to it. Less is more when I am out for hours at a time. I seldom even carry a tripod anymore.
The “mainstream” camera companies like Sony, Cannon and Nikon have done a great job of improving their full frame products. To the point where it is a hard decision to make the jump. Yes, I’m sure it is true that if I did an A/B comparison between my Nikon and a Hasselblad 100 MPixel I would agree that the Hasselblad was better. But maybe not better enough for my needs.
Cost seems obvious. I am not earning enough from my photography to justify the huge increase in cost. I would have to rationalize it on factors other than cost, and I can’t right now.
But for me, an overriding factor right now is lens availability. This is a very individual decision point of view. I have become a photographic minimalist. I don’t like carrying extra lenses and I don’t like changing lenses in the field. One simple reason, besides fear of dropping one off a cliff, is that I get far fewer dust spots on my sensor if I do not change lenses outdoors.
I have adopted much of my vision around my marvelous Nikon 24-120 mm Z lens; it covers 98% of my needs. To the extent where my attitude now is that if this lens does not work, I will move to get the shot or make a different shot. I have made several multi-week trips now, taking only one camera body and one lens. It has worked great for me. No regrets. I can’t yet do this with a medium format system.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
No compelling need
I would love to use medium format. Just the sheer quality of the output would almost be worth it. Looking at the detail of my images at 1-to-1 on my monitor is a joy right now. I’m sure the joy would be even greater for a medium format image.
But I understand the reality of my life is that I am not called on to make billboard sized prints where you could put your nose up to it and marvel at the detail. I am not required to do portraits that have glowing, lifelike skin tones and shading when printed life size.
Would I like to be able to shoot like this? Of course. We always long for the best tools, the next technology bump. But the cost is so great I cannot justify it.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, Nikon has satisfied my basic needs with a high quality 46 MPixel sensor in a small mirror-less body, coupled with small, lightweight, high-quality lenses that meets my expectations. These cover my real-life needs. I can’t justify the change just for my ego.
Canon and Sony also cover those needs with excellent products, but I am a long-time Nikon user.
As of right now, there is no medium format system in my plans. It could change, but there is a high barrier to climb. I hope Nikon jumps their full frame system to 100 MPixel before I give in and take the plunge.
October 15, 2025
You Still Need To Backup
Backup is one of those hygiene subjects we would rather not think about or talk about. But it is important. You need to backup intentionally and consistently.
Film days
Back in the “good ole’ days of film”, (they weren’t really the good days) we never had to worry about backup. The developed film was the permanent physical backup.
All we had to worry about was storing it properly and in a fireproof location. These days, finding a fireproof location is more of a challenge. Photographers who had some exceptionally valuable images might have duplicate film images created and stored in a vault or safety deposit box.
I have many filing cabinet drawers full of slides and negatives. Sadly, I never look at them. Partly because they are old and I have improved a lot and changed my interests some. But mainly because, being physical instead of digital, they are hard to search and locate. I can’t see me ever taking the time to scan them all.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Digital days
I expect the majority of you reading this shoot digital exclusively. I know I do. Digital has many advantages. Obviously, since it has almost completely taken over photography.
But digital. has a huge disadvantage. The image data is ephemeral. It has no physical presence. If we delete the file, it is gone. Permanently, if it is not backed up.
What would happen if your main image disk said “poof” and a little smoke leaks out? All your images are gone unless they are backed up. As if they never existed. Most of us would consider this a disaster.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Disks fail
But disks are very reliable, aren’t they? We can find published reliability numbers like 1,000,000 hours MTBF (mean time before failure). That sounds very safe.
But those are projected statistics for large numbers of disks. My particular drive could fail tomorrow. And they do. I am sitting here looking at a stack of 11 failed disk drives that I am waiting to get in the mood to take outside and smash with a sledge hammer.
SSD drives seem to be more reliable than rotating magnetic disks. Seem to be. But let me reveal a dirty secret about solid state drives: they are so unreliable that they are extensively engineered to mask their failures. Bits fail all the time. Whole sections of an SSD can go bad. The drives have sophisticated error correction algorithms built in to allow for this and keep them functioning with no apparent data loss. Kind of like RAID built in.
They haven’t been around long enough to have conclusive data, but in general, SSD’s seem to be more reliable than magnetic disks. But they fail.
Don’t get me wrong, SSD’s are an improvement, and I will switch when prices go down enough for the quantity of storage I need. My point, though, is that SSD’s still fail. They are not some magical device you can forever trust your valuable images to and be guaranteed safe.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Clouds fail
So, the obvious solution seems to be put all your data in the cloud. Right? Let somebody else handle the storage management.
There are problems. Cloud storage gets pretty expensive in the quantities most serious photographers need. And keep in mind that this is an ongoing expense.
And how fast is your internet for upload speed? I am fortunate to be served by one of the best internet providers in the nation. Theoretically, in perfect conditions, I could upload a Terabyte of data to the cloud in a little over 3 hours. IF everything is perfect and if the cloud storage could accept data that fast. Previous internet providers I had would take weeks to upload this much data, because upload speed was much slower than the download speed.
But even if you successfully get your data into the cloud, it is now at the mercy of the service you use. They can go out of business, or change business models, or raise prices. If you use Azure or the Amazon cloud your data is probably pretty safe. Maybe even Adobe. But you have no control. I like to control what is important to me.
Lightroom cloud?
Maybe the Lightroom cloud storage is the right answer for you. It is for some. If you are just starting out in photography, it may be ideal for you.
The latest data I saw said Adobe offers up to 1TByte of storage. That’s the tip of the iceberg of the 10 TBytes of image data I currently have. If they offer that much storage, it would be expensive. If I work an image in Photoshop and composite multiple images and use lots of layers, it can exceed 4GBytes for one image. That eats up terabytes fast.
And to access your images, you must have internet access. I have a fantastic internet provider, but outages still happen occasionally. Yes, Lightroom stores a highly compressed small version of images locally on your computer, but that does.not seem good enough to me.
There are some other reasons I will not use the cloud version of Lightroom, but they are not directly related to backup problems.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Seize control
Digital image data is a blessing and a curse. There are significant advantages to it, but never forget, it can easily go away.
So we must proactively manage our data. That means backup. An aggressive, thorough backup plan that you monitor. This is a time to be paranoid.
If you are on a Mac, step one is to plug in a large external disk and enable Time Machine. This is the automatic backup system built into Macs. It is so good that it may, all by itself, be a reason to switch to Macs. I’m not kidding. Make sure it is configured to also backup your image data.
I will give you a glimpse into how paranoid I am in protecting my data. Even though my main image storage is a RAID system, my data is backed up hourly to Time Machine, and daily to two external disks, one of which is a network attached RAID drive. Every week I also make a copy that I keep offsite, and about once a month I make another snapshot of my data that is kept offline and safe.
Some local backup with a layer of cloud backup is a feasible alternative now, but so far, I have chosen not to go that route.
That sounds like a lot of work, but except for the weekly and monthly offsite backups that are not normally physically connected, it is all automatic. Thank you Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. The CCC plug is FYI and just to let you know the specific tool I use. I get no consideration for recommending it.©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make it automatic
I admit, I am paranoid about my digital assets. They have been created over a long time with lots of work and expense, and they are precious to me. I do not intend to loose them because of a preventable accident.
Earlier I mentioned a stack of 11 failed disk drives. That is just the current accumulation. Many more have failed over my time of being a digital photographer. But I have never lost a file because of a disk failure.
I believe a well thought out, in depth backup plan is a must for any serious photographer today. Perhaps I overdo it. But I am not willing to take the risk of doing too little.
I have tried to be clear that this is just my way of doing backup. Like all photographic workflow decisions, it is usually a personal choice. Yours may be lighter weight or more rigorous. Do what works for you. But do it.
Do not let backup be something you might remember to do once in a while, if you think of it. You won’t think of it at the right time. The clock is ticking.
September 17, 2025