I Did The Unthinkable!

Rick's Antiques, Forest, Virginia.  How many of you remember Esso gasoline? (click to enlarge)
Nikon Z7; 24-70mm f/4 S lens @ 24mm; 1/125th sec. @ f/9; ISO 64

I confess.  I did the unthinkable.  I took a road trip and took only one camera.  Worse that that, the camera has only one memory card slot.  Can you believe it?  What was I thinking?  Or was I thinking?  For this terrible transgression, I could easily lose my Blogger's License.  I may even have to turn in my photography gear.  What's next?  A thorough flogging, maybe?  Oh my!  How dare I defy conventional wisdom?  Lol.

Last week I took a quick two-day road trip just to get out of the area and see what I could find to photograph in another part of Virginia.  I had the yearning to wander.  The trip was a bit disappointing, photographically speaking, as the weather was hot, humid with off and on thunderstorms each day.  I actually came home earlier than I planned as the weather was forecast to deteriorate even more.  Severe storms and flash flooding were predicted for the area I was visiting.  I don't mind photographing in storms, I just don't want to get washed away during a flash flood!  I managed to make a few images but nothing great.

I took the Nikon Z7 in sort of a "shakedown" trip.  As you no doubt know by now, the camera takes only one memory card.  It has an XQD card slot.  I didn't take a backup camera and there is no second memory card slot in which to instantly backup my images.  However, I wanted to test that, in the future, if I traveled extensively and only took this one camera, how would the "image backup" system I had in mind work in a practical sense.  There is only one way to find out and that is to try it out in a real life situation. 

I really didn't worry about the camera nor the card failing leaving me "dead in the water," so to speak, with no camera and no images on this trip.  I assessed the chance of failure is extremely low.  I didn't see it as a gamble at all.  Also, I wanted to make a statement to all of those naysayers and questioning Internet and YouTube influencers out there that taking a single camera with a single card slot is okay.  Us old timers did it for years and years and never lost sleep over not having a second camera or two of anything else we depended upon to create our negatives or slides.  After all, back then and until very recently, there was only one roll of film or one card in our cameras.  No camera held two rolls of film simultaneously.  You had to trust your gear and trust yourself.

For you unsure photographers out there, you don't need to always take 2 cameras with multiple card slots and a bevy of lenses.  Sometimes you just have to trust your gear to function as it is designed—and 99% of the time it does.  Failures are few and far between.

That being said, failures do happen on occasion.  In fact, there are multiple points of failure possible in our digital photography world.  Does that mean I need to take a backup for the camera, each lens, battery, battery charger, battery charger cord, memory card, lens cloth, L-bracket, Rocket Blower, each filter, hard drive, hard drive cord, card reader and even another camera bag—just in case something fails?  Of course not!  You can worry about failures.  I'm not going to waste my time.  In 49 years of serious photography I can't think of a single film or digital camera, lens, memory card or anything else that has failed me other than me failing.  It is more likely that there will be human failure before your gear fails.  Over the many, many years I've dropped stuff.  I've lost stuff.  I've accidentally deleted stuff.  My fault.  Not the gear's fault.  The chances of a failure with your modern digital gear is really minuscule today, not to say it couldn't happen.  In my opinion, the chances are really small.

Now that I've got that out of the way, the purpose of the short trip, besides getting out and wandering was to test how my proposed backup system would work using the Nikon Z7.  Since it has only one card slot, I wanted to test how easy and efficient regularly backing up my card to a wireless external battery powered hard drive would work.  Is it workable?  Is it efficient?  Is it convenient?

Wait a minute!  Hold your horses!  "Didn't you just say you aren't worried about failures?  Why now do you say you are planning on backing up your images?"  

Well, I didn't say that nothing will ever fail, especially me potentially screwing up.  Then there is theft and losing gear.  That happens as well.  And, there is a difference between a short, 2-day road trip and a 4-week road trip to places I will probably never visit again.  It's the same reason I buy car and homeowners insurance.  To hedge that tiny little bet that something won't go wrong.  Again, I've never needed to access my backups when I travel since I've never had a failure.  But, again, insurance is prudent.

Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro battery powered portable hard drive along with its AC/USB connecting cord and plug.  Also shown is a Lexar XQD card reader. Of course I placed the Nikon Z7 and 24-70mm f/4 S lens in the
frame for perspective. (click to enlarge)

How do I backup my XQD memory card from my Nikon Z7?  I already own a Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro battery powered portable hard drive.  I've used it in my past travels with good success.  Backing up to this device is fast, easy and takes very little time.  I have the regular (spinning) hard drive older model, 1Tb, which I don't believe they still manufacture(?).  I think all the newer ones are SSD hard drives.  However, you still can find them.  The 2TB model is $165 on Amazon as of this writing.  Other manufacturers make similar devices, some with an LCD panel so you can actually see your images as sort of a double check that they copied successfully.  Some people like these devices and others don't.  Some say they don't work well and others say they do.  I've had no issues with mine.

You can also load music, movies and other files into these and because they wirelessly connect to other devices, such as an iPad.  You can use it to stream those digital files as well.  I strictly use mine for image backups.

To use it, I just push the off/on switch.  It takes about 30 seconds to boot up.  I then insert my XQD card reader into the USB port, press the button and it copies my image files to the drive.  Depending upon the number of images and the file size of each, most all the time, mine are copied in a minute or two.  Also, the device has an SD card slot so if you are using SD cards, you can plug your SD card directly into the drive.  In either case, the device backs up incrementally, which means it only copies the files it already has not previously copied.  That saves time.  It also creates a folder for each day you backup your files so it is easy to identify images by the day you made them if you need to do so.

The device comes with a combination AC/USB charging cord.  You can also plug it into a USB port in you computer and use it as a regular drive.  I normally plug it in after returning from a trip (of course no gear failures) at which time I delete the copied files from the WD hard drive—but only after importing my files into Lightroom and putting another copy of the new images on a second external hard drive, as I would do with any image files.

On this short trip, I kept the device in my camera bag.  For test purposes, after returning to my vehicle following each time I got out and made some images, I pulled out the Passport Wireless Pro, turned it on, backed up those images, turned it off and went on my way.  I normally wouldn't back up this frequently, but again, I was in test mode.  I wanted to test how easy it is to back up files after each shoot.  Typically, I would back up my files at the end of the day while in my hotel room.

I can say that all worked as planned.  The drive is not too large, heavy nor cumbersome to use as frequently as necessary.  I found it a viable way to back up memory cards when your camera only has one—which, of course, will almost never fail anyway.  But it gives you that extra copy of your image files away from your gear itself.  Kind of liking keeping a backup hard drive away from your home.  Remember, insurance.

If you have any questions of comments about backing up data while on the road, please leave them as we can all learn from your knowledge and experience.

I'll put up some more photos from my little road trip in my next post.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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