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Shooting in the Dominican for 10 days. Best way to keep organized and backed up?
  • tylerknighttylerknight

    Hi there,

    I was recently hired to do a shoot in the Dominican Republic in late November and I am just getting all of my gear ready for the end of the month.

    I'm looking for any tips or information anyone has to shooting internationally and especially in a warm humid climate like the Caribbean.

    So far I will be using the following:

    Panasonic GH4, GH3 and AC90 Canon 5d mkii Zoom H4N x2 Shure Wireless Lav mics X2 1tb WD passport drives x6

    Any suggestions as to the best way to backup or if even using separate drives is the best option?

    Tyler

  • 9 Replies sorted by
  • balazerbalazer

    Some good info in http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/8931/secure-storage-solution-on-a-travelling-documentary-shooting/p1

    I recall a suggestion to back up footage to memory cards and mail them home at regular intervals. That seemed pretty smart to me.

  • brianlbrianl

    plasticized checklist, Be wary of moving cameras from icy air con to humid outdoor heat. Keep an eye on your gear, that stuff is equivalent of 5 years salary for some over there. You can lock you sd cards and use it for backup.

  • CFreakCFreak

    +1 @brianl When gear goes from a cold environment into a hot one, it sweats. Combat this by taking lens caps off, port cap off for 15-30minutes if things are fogging up. Usually happens in Winter in colder climates. Might not affect you. Sometimes cleaning a lens 100% in a very humid climate is near impossible. Will have better success cleaning in an air conditioned environment, then bringing it into the humidity. If it sweats, don't touch it, just let it get up to temp.

    I pulled focus on a low budget 35mm movie in Santo Domingo in the 90's directed by Angel Muniz. Lot's of memories: -Kids tried to clean my beat up tennis shoes by painting them. -The sound guy, who was a NYC 2nd generation hispanic, got ripped off $20 USD because someone approached him in a public square offering a really good exchange rate, some kids came and tried to take the money, they all ran off and he let them go because they dropped a crumpled up bill on the ground, it was a $1 USD bill, not the $20 he had given the guy. -A young female extra I sat next in the crew bus on the last day of the shoot was looking for a US man to be her husband. -The local hire electricians, pulled electricity directly off the power line poles to bring power to the set. -Be safe, eyes open, etc. -The ice seemed to be purified, the tap water not. Excellent Papaya and El Presidente beer.

    Yes, watch your gear.

  • tylerknighttylerknight

    Thanks everyone!

    I won't have the ability to mail home sd cards at intervals or the budget to purchase enough to keep footage on SD cards with 10 days of shooting.

    It's at a4.5 star resort, basically filming guest speakers and live cooking demonstrations so very simple stuff, but looking at 3 cameras per shoot, 1 hour per shoot, and 4 shoots per day, that's far too many sd cards to budget into the project.

    Will I be okay with backing up to these externals with 2 redundancy drives?

    And for protecting your gear any suggestions? Of course the room safes aren't going to be big enough to hold all of my gear.

    It is all insured of course, but that won't make me feel any better if it gets stolen.

    Tyler

  • CFreakCFreak

    Will I be okay with backing up to these externals with 2 redundancy drives?

    Yes, that's what I do… You could make 1 of them an SSD drive (no moving parts) to be extra safe.

  • tylerknighttylerknight

    @CFreak

    Thanks! I would say SSD would be a good choice except for the fact that we're looking at approx 2 TB of footage from the 10 days

  • fotosiamofotosiamo

    Joey L did a great article about traveling and shooting.

    http://www.joeyl.com/2012/12/5-critical-tips-for-travel-photographers/

    "When I travel for photography, I know that the most valuable things I have are not my cameras or equipment. The most valuable thing I carry are the images I am creating. Gear can be replaced, (get it insured worldwide), but the photographs can not. 



    I have a very simple formula. I travel with a laptop, and dump my images to two different hard drives. Each drive is an exact replica of the other. I then always keep those two hard drives in different places. For example, one is in my pocket at all times and the other is left at the Indian guesthouse. Or, perhaps one drive is in a piece of checked baggage being chucked in the bottom of the plane, and the other is safe with me in a carry-on bag. With this system, it is very hard for both drives to go missing.

    

On more rugged trips or journeys into dangerous areas, I can take as many as 4 drives with me. That way, I can mail one home half way through the trip, and another at the end of the trip before I fly, while still carrying two hard drives home with me. Call me paranoid, but I do not take any risks about losing images."

  • DrDaveDrDave

    I know you said you don't have the budget for extra SD Cards, but having a stack of those is absolutely number one on my list. I use camcorders with dual SD slots and do the clone while recording. I find that I often simply do not have time to do anything other than film, so this is the easiest, fastest and safe way to keep the data.

    On my last big trip, I bought a number of items on eBay through the client well in advance, like lights, tripods and big batteries, and checked that these had arrived before I did. I brought a stack of cards, plenty of chargers, and a small stack of 2GB USB 3 WD bus powered drives. A couple of lightweight on- cam mics in case my audio rig went down.

  • brianlbrianl

    I agree with Doc, however, and not that he's saying this, SD Cards are not a good item to get off ebay because of piracy.

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