The first step is to decide whether the system you have now is good, or needs to be improved. What matters most is that it makes sense to you, the filenames of the photos are unique (can’t be repeated) and that you can find photos pretty easily. If all of those are true, then you just need to make sure you’re adequately backing up your photos. If any of those aren’t true, then keep reading.

I’m a big fan of organizing based on date shot. Each year I create a folder named for that year, and download all the photos I shoot that year into it. And rather than simply dump all those pictures in there, I create a folder for each day I shoot, and all photos from that day go into that folder.

The next step is to make sure the filenames for those photos are unique and give information about them. The number the camera gives a photo when you shoot it has no meaning outside the camera, and in time will be repeated. All good image programs offer the ability to rename files, and can usually do that during the download process, saving you time. My photos have names with the date first, then one word (or group of letters and/or numbers) that says something about what the photos are, and finally a sequential number. For instance, the 159th photo I shot on the fourth day of the Oregon workshop I taught on June 23 this year is titled 20120623_OregonD4_159, and it’s inside a folder named 20120623.

So at this point, I have a year folder (2012), inside of which are dated folders which contain all the photos I shot that day, and every photo has a filename with that date and some other useful information. And my browser (Photo Mechanic by Camerabits) does that for me.

When looking for my best photos, I don’t want to dig through all those folders. That leads to the next part of my organization, which is to create small collections of the best photos. I’d prefer these collections were bigger, but I’m just not that good ☺. That means throughout the year, I take my favorite pictures and copy them to another folder, this one titled “2012 Best.” And at the end of the year, I comb through that folder and select just the very best, which are then copied to a “Best of” folder. These smaller collections make it easy for me to backup my best pictures, as well as find them when I need them. Which leads us to backup, which is the final part of the puzzle, and one I review each year in December.

I always download to my laptop’s internal hard drive, then try to immediately backup to a second, external drive. That’s important – having two copies of your photos. When at home, that second drive is a mirrored drive in my office, which means it contains two hard drives that show as one. If one drive should fail, the data (photos in this case) are still intact on the second one. And every couple of weeks that drive is backed up to another (single hard drive in this case, just in case…). The next step is burning DVDs.

Every couple of months, all of the photos I’ve shot are backed up to DVDs. I’ve seen too many hard drives fail to trust them completely. I’ve considered moving to Blu-Ray, but despite the advantage of higher capacity disks, the small number of Blu-Ray optical drives in use keeps me using DVDs. Yes, it takes time, but I burn DVDs while doing other things in the office, so it’s not a big problem.

At the end of the year, I buy a new hard drive for the coming year (2TB again) and prepare to retire the current year’s hard drive. First I burn all of the “Best of” collections to DVD as well, then wipe the mirrored drive and start over with it for the new year.

So the whole process looks like this:

- On download the photos are re-named and placed in a date-based folder structure. – Then I copy them to a mirrored hard drive that has this year’s photos. – I backup that mirrored drive to another hard drive, which is synchronized every month or two. – Over time I’ve created a set of multiple hard drives with all the photos I’ve ever shot (one hard drive per year the last few). – Then there are two hard drives (one main, one backup) with all my “best of” collections. – And lots of DVDs, with every photo I’ve shot over the years on them.

Finally, a copy of each DVD with those “best of” collections goes into my safe deposit box.

When people ask about backing up photos, and how many copies they need, my usual response is, “however many copies lets you sleep soundly at night.” The key is to know that should a disaster strike your house, most (if not all) of your most important photos will survive.

What keeps me awake these days? My kids. They’re both in college now, and shoot lots of photos with their cell phones. And I worry about what’s going to happen to those photos. So I’m looking into ways that the photos on their phones can be automatically backed up to the cloud.

Once you’ve got a system that works well for you, make sure and remind your friends and family to backup their photos. If they don’t, odds are they’ll lose them. It’s a sad fact that while people today are doing a better job documenting their lives than ever before, fewer of those photos will exist in years ahead. Help make sure this doesn’t happen to you, or them.

If you want to read more about what this involved, see some shots and a link to the video, you can find them all at http://reedhoffmann.com/learning-dslr-video/.

Of course, most of us know by now that megapixels aren’t everything. In fact, nowadays, they’re fairly far down my list of what’s important. When I got my first 6MP camera years ago, I felt we’d finally made it – digital now beat film in most important areas. Remember, the more pixels, the larger you can use a photo. That’s important for printing, where you generally want about 200 PPI for high-quality prints. For screen use, you need far fewer. If you’ve got a big full HD TV, it’s resolution is 1080 pixels high by 1920 pixels wide. Multiply those two numbers and you’ll see you only need 2MP to fill that screen.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to go back to 6MP cameras. If they can give me more pixels, great. But more important is image quality. There are point-and-shoot cameras and cell phones with pixel counts nearing (or even going above) 20MP. But the image quality isn’t very good. What I care most about is sharpness, good color, great dynamic (tonal) range and good high ISO performance. That’s what I look for in a camera, not the pixel count. That’s why I’ve been happily shooting the Nikon 1 cameras (j1 and V1) since they were introduced. Only 10MP, but very nice image quality.

Two weeks ago I finally got my hands on a D3200. Again, 24MP. But of course, what I wanted to see was how good the images were. So I took it to Colorado on a quick camping trip, and then to Chicago this past weekend for a photo workshop I was teaching (http://www.MentorSeries.com). I’m happy to say I was very pleased with it. Very good image quality. That’s not to say I’ll be doing all my photography in the future with it.

In my role as a photo instructor, I’ve had hands-on experience with entry-level cameras for ten years now. Working mostly with Nikons, I’ve found them to have generally good quality, but they’re not designed for my kind of shooting. I like to work fast, making adjustments to the camera and exposure quickly while shooting. That’s not how these cameras are designed. They’re made for people who are going to use them primarily in point-and-shoot mode (full automatic), not for serious photography. That doesn’t mean they can’t do that, it just means they’re slower to work with. For most changes you have to go into the menus on the back of the camera (few buttons and dials). And, of course, as a less expensive camera, they have fewer autofocus points and a less powerful AF system, and are less rugged and weather-sealed.

My verdict? Very good quality, very high resolution in a compact, inexpensive package. A very good starter camera, or even as a back-up. Obviously this won’t be my main camera, but I enjoyed shooting it and was very pleased with the photos. To see more from my trip to Chicago, go to http://reedhoffmann.com/nikon-d3200/ and click the link to the gallery at the bottom of the story.

One of the accessories you can buy for the V1 is an adapter called the FT-1 (for about $250). That lets you mount most Nikon lenses on that little camera, and still have metering and single-servo autofocus. However, you have to factor in the 2.7X crop factor, which can be significant with a long telephoto lens. A 500mm lens, for instance, when used with that converter on the V1, now has an effective focal length of… 1350mm! And unlike a teleconverter, which has glass in it, the FT-1 doesn’t, so there’s no loss of light.

So last week I took the V1, the FT-1, my 500mm. f/4 lens and the TC-14e II teleconverter to a Kansas City Royals game. And I hauled that gear out to the fan area behind center field and set it up on my large Gitzo tripod. Normally that’s too far from the action for photos, but I had a plan. The TC14 is a teleconverter, and when added to the 500mm lens makes it a 700mm f/5.6 (one stop of light loss due to the added glass in the converter). And when I mounted that combination onto the V1 with FT-1, I now had a focal length of 1890mm. Now I could shoot all the way to home plate, and make pictures of the batter with the catcher and umpire looking on. Which is a photo we rarely see, because of the distance.

The V1 is ”only” 10 megapixels, but it will shoot RAW (NEF in this case) files, and thanks to the built in viewfinder is easy to frame (a challenge with telephotos using just a rear LCD). I used it for a night game and had to shoot at 3200 ISO, but still felt the photos held up very well, especially after being processed by Noise Ninja to reduce noise with minimal impact on sharpness. And I look forward to using this combination more, and during a day game.

The old saying “Variety is the spice of life,” is true of photography too. Finding opportunities to make different pictures is a great way to challenge yourself. Look at the gear you’ve got and say, “how can I use this in a different, creative way.” You may surprise yourself with what you come up with.

While the file sizes are BIG, the pay-off is amazingly fine detail. In portraits I can often zoom in on the eyeball and see the reflection of myself. I recently shot a wide-angle landscape shot where I thought there was spot on my computer monitor, but it turned out to be a fly. At 100% magnification, I could even see the wings.

The camera fits my hands extremely well. Nikon’s re-designed their classic pro body to be a bit rounder, and it feels good. I’m also having a lot of fun with the new features and added ways to customize the camera. The two-axis virtual horizon, visible in the viewfinder, is one of my favorites. I’ve always had a hard time shooting images that aren’t crooked, and this really helps. Particularly if I’m lying down, or in some other awkward position.

And they’ve made it possible to program different features for one-button access. I’ve got the depth-of-field preview button set to turn on that two-axis horizon, the Function button programmed to let me dial Auto ISO on and off (which can be set to change based on focal length), and the AE-L/AE-F button set to allow me to cycle through the different crop modes.

Those crop modes let me switch from 36MP FX frame to 25MP (1.2X crop) or 15MP (1.5X DX crop) and others. Why do that? Two big reasons. One, there are times where I want a tighter framing than the lens will give me. Rather than capture the shot loose, I can turn on the DX framing and get it right in camera. And that smaller frame is a smaller file size than the FX frame. If I do shoot full frame (FX), the added benefit of 36MP is that I can make serious crops and still have loads of information.

Of course, I’m not the only photographer to fall big-time for this camera. Jim Brandenburg, best known for his decades-long career with National Geographic, gave an interview on his experiences beta testing the D800. Here’s the link: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid86584601001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAF14d-I~,3OR_xWwP7ALkx0kbYvq3Ur-F_4g9Indb&bctid=1513837339001.

So, yes, I’m sold on this camera. Now I can’t wait to try the D4!

The fastest (wide maximum aperture) zooms today are f/2.8. That’s great for helping you shoot in low light with faster shutter speeds, or giving you more control over shallow depth of field (letting the area in front and behind your subject go out of focus). But there are non-zoom lenses that are even faster, generally down to f/1.4 and occasionally to f/1.2. Those lenses have incredibly shallow depth of field (the eye is in focus but not the tip of the nose), and are usually shot to show that. But you usually pay a lot of money for that faster aperture.

A Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-S lens, for instance, sells for about $1700. The 24mm f/1.4 AF-S is $2000. If you’re a pro, or just have the money, those are great lenses. For other people, though, that’s getting expensive. However, there are less pricey options out there as well. The Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S is only $500. That’s about 2/3 of a stop “slower,” (lets less light in) than the 1.4 lens. Remember, full f/stops (1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11, 16, 22…) mean half (from say f/4 to f/5.6) the light allowed in or twice the light (from f/5.6 to f/4.0). And those premium fast lenses (f/1.4 in this case) are generally higher quality too. But there are some deals to be had.

Nikon makes a 50mm f/1.4 AF-S lens for “only” $500. And the 1.8 model is just $220. That 50mm 1.8 AF-S is new, too. What’s new is the “AF-S” part. Any Nikon AF-S lens will autofocus on any recent Nikon DSLR body. But not all of Nikon’s lenses are AF-S. If not an “AF-S” lens, then entry-to-intermediate bodies won’t be able to autofocus. These cameras include the D40, D40S, D50, D60, D3000, D3100, D5000 and D5100 (and probably a few others). That’s because in an effort to make the cameras small and less expensive, Nikon didn’t put an AF motor in the body. AF-S lenses don’t need that, as they have their AF motor in the lens. Those are the newer style lenses. And that Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-S is one of the latest of the new releases of AF-S lenses. So I got one to give it a try.

On the photo trip I just led to Peru, I wanted to go as light as possible. I’m leading a trip to China soon, and both of those trips were going to be weight-restricted. So Peru would be a test for me. My plan was to carry two cameras bodies (Nikon D800 and D7000) and two lenses (Nikon 16-35mm AF-S f/4 VR and 70-200mm AF-S f/2.8 VR). Plus a few small accessories, like a speedlight and filters. But I was nervous about the gap between 35mm and 70mm. So I added the compact 50mm 1.8 AF-S lens to the kit, since it’s tiny and lightweight. And it quickly became one of my favorites.

Using that 50mm lens did two things for me, both of which are good. First, as a “fixed lens (not a zoom), I’d have to think more about my distance to the subject. And thinking in photography often results in good things. Secondly, I’d have a faster aperture (f/1.8) than I’m used to working with, so decided to shoot it only wide open (f/1.8). That meant a different look for those photos, which was also good.

Now shooting a lens wide open in low light is easy. You usually have to do that just to keep a reasonable shutter speed. And we’re used to seeing shallow depth of field in low light. It was outdoors, in sunshine, that the lens became really fun to use. Shallow depth of field with a normal lens isn’t what people expect in bright light. So when I started doing that, the photos looked different. And as I mentioned, in photography, different is often good. That’s because “different” can make a picture unique, and get people to stop and notice. Just look at the cover photo on my business Facebook page. Shot with that 50mm at 1.8, only the llama is sharp, everything else is out of focus: http://www.facebook.com/KCphotographer.

To shoot a fast lens wide open in bright light, though, requires a combination of low ISO and high shutter speed. Otherwise you risk overexposure. That meant I was usually at ISO 100 (and sometimes 50, or what the D800 calls “L 1.0”), and my shutter speed was usually well above 1/1000. And even when I wasn’t in bright light, having that lens at f/1.8 meant my shutter speed was still fast, lessening the chance of blur.

Downsides? Just one big one. At 1.8 you better be sure you’re in focus, because there’s no depth of field to save you. Check your focus, shoot, check again, shoot more. All you need is one good shot, right?

The lesson I learned from this? Don’t get in a rut. Don’t always use the same lenses the same way. Change things up, try something different. Play, experiment, and most importantly, have fun. After all, if you’re not having fun with your photography, it’s time to find a different hobby.