It’s almost Canada Day! It’s almost the 4th of July! Celebrate by taking some great photos. Do at least two of the following three things to protect your photos and keep them forever.
Take good care of your cards
Yes, I said cards. Use more than one card in your camera. If something happens to your camera or if a card malfunctions before you have a chance to back it up, you won’t have lost everything.
The more cards you use, the fewer photos you can lose. Rotate the cards daily rather than letting a card fill up before you use another one.
Keep the cards that are not in the camera in a card case. This protects them from heat, humidity and dirt, and it also keeps them organized.
You don’t want to give a thief the opportunity to get all your photos, so keep the card case someplace else from where you keep your camera.
Make a copy of your photos every day
Are you travelling with a laptop? Make a copy of everything on the card every day.
You’re going to take that card out of the camera and replace it with another card every day anyway, so do that and copy those photos right onto the laptop.
If you don’t have a laptop, maybe you have a tablet. You can use a USB OTG cable and the cable that came with your camera to transfer files from the camera to your Android tablet.
Your tablet has to be capable of that, and you do need an app to do the transfer. Don’t wait until you’re on the road to learn how to do this; try it at home first. Here is one way.
Apple offers a camera adapter kit to accomplish the same thing using in iPad/iPhone. See this Apple Support article for details.
If you are lucky enough to have a Nikon DSLR with built-in Wi-Fi, you can easily transfer your photos to any Android or iOS device.
If you have a Nikon DSLR without built in Wi-Fi, you can probably use the Nikon Wi-Fi adapter to create the wireless network.
Wow! What a time to be alive.
Put your photos online
Once you’ve loaded a copy of your photos onto a laptop or tablet (or even a phone), you can store another copy online. You have lots of choices.
Dropbox is good if you have enough storage. OneDrive is good if you have enough storage. But by far the easiest way to go here is with Google Photos. They offer an enormous amount of free storage.
From a computer, visit the Google Photos website, sign in to your Google account and upload (or just drag and drop) your photos into your secure cloud storage.
From an Android or iOS device, install the Google Photos app, set up the backup and sync, and your photos will upload.
You can keep those photos completely private, or you can choose to share any of them. Bonus: This is a much better way to share those vacation photos than trying to email them.
Great Cycle Challenge
It’s almost complete! If you’re reading this before the end of June and want to sponsor my rides to help kids with cancer, go here. Many thanks!
Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along!
Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna, a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to [email protected].
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.