I recommend at least 2 dissimilar forms of backup, eg Hard disk and optical.

Also, keep optical backups in the dark, the dyes hate UV light.

Personally I'm seriously considering going to a double DVD backup where I burn each disk twice, to two different reputable brands of media.

I've had a lot of problems with disks of various brands fading over time.


OH and as Beaky said, never ever use RW media for long term storage. Frankly with USB sticks so cheap these days I think RW optical media are obsolete.

I tried to explain it in this thread

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7487&highlight=photons

and I'm too lazy to type it out again hope it helps.

that discussion was about sensor size, but if you keep the physical size the same and increase the number of pixels the same effect applies. Smaller pixels = less light hitting each one = greater percentage error = more noise.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. From what I have seen 6MP is roughly optimal for a compact. The higher MP sensors seem to require so much inbuilt noise reduction that you loose detail almost from ISO 64.

I just haven't seen a compact past 6MP I would be happy to buy on IQ grounds, and certainly not one I would consider an upgrade from my 5MP Panasonic.

Otherwise I agree with you, most base level DSLRs are just glorified P&S cameras bought by people who believe that throwing money at photography will make their holiday snaps into masterpieces.


Although, perhaps we should consider this: The Pentax ME, MV, MG and A3 all have no manual mode at all. They are as fully automatic as cameras of their time could be. The K100D by comparison is extremely pro-orientated.

Don, You raise good points, but I would argue that your premiss is flawed. The general public don't demand better cameras, they don't have the knowledge or interest in the technology to even know what a better camera is. What they demand is higher specifications.

AF and AE as we know them were introduced on consumer grade SLRs. At that time the general public didn't buy SLRs, it was the amateur photographers who drove the development and widespread adoption of that technology.

In a world where only photographers bought cameras, your argument would be totally valid, but in this world most of the money is made by selling in large volume to fools who'll buy anything as long as it has bragging rights.

To a certain extent, this is true. Certainly it has contributed mightily to the fact that most members of this forum have a *istDL or better to play with. When I first started taking photography a little more seriously back in 2002 no one I knew had even SEEN a DSLR, let alone owned one.

However, the argument eventually breaks down. Because Joe Bloggs doesn't really know what a "Better" camera is, he chases Megapixels. To stay competitive, the manufacturer must squeeze more and more megapixels (and recently, higher and higher ISO ratings) out of their cameras. 12800 ISO and 20Megapixels will gain them more stupid customers than it looses intelegent ones, so these market forces end up making good cameras unsaleable.

Eventually you end up back where you started, the ~20MP DSLR (I'm talking in a few years time here) becomes a niche item valued only by the true photographers who value image quality above all else. The entry level models all have 45MP so they sell like hot cakes, but they take terrible photos.


Our only hope is that what happened in the P4 vs Athlon battle will happen in photography. At some point, the situation will change so that the top flight cameras no longer have more megapixels than the base models, and may even have less. If you look at the Canon lineup you can already see this starting to take hold. People will always want to have the same equipment as the pros, and when they realise that the K2D, Canon 1DS MkIV, Nikon D4 and whatever actually have rather fewer pixels than the compact in their pockets they will start to ask why. At that point, and not before, the megapixel race will be over for good.

same reason people are always drawn into whatever trap it is this week.

The MHz myth in computing lasted a very long time (although it stayed true longer than the MP myth too).

The problem is there are too many things which people want to use for them to understand them all. As a substitute for true understanding, people look for a single overriding performance measure. With computers it was the mighty Mhz clock speed until the AMD Athlon vs Intel P4 race finally demonstrated once and for all that clock speed alone is an invalid measure of performance.

With the digital camera the measure which has been latched onto is Megapixels. For a while back in the late 90s it was true that higher MP=better. Back then 2MP was pretty decent and even compact cameras sported lenses capable of out resolving their sensors with ease. As we here all know, MP are irrelavent unless you have the glass to back them up and the sensor technology to avoid excessive noise (see my response to the "not sharp" thread in this forum for a discussion of noise vs pixel size). For a while it was noticable that the good camera brands held the same view. Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Olympus and friends sat at about 4-6MP for ages in their compact cameras. Alas it seems market forces have now prevailed, the companies must give the consumer what he wants or go out of business, and what the consumer wants is megapixels.

With personal computers it took an undeniable demonstration (the Athlon was more than 50% faster than the P4 at the same clock speed), plus a concerted effort by a number of leading manufacturers to convince the populus that a 3GHz machine was not automatically "better" than a 2GHz machine. It will take the same with digi-cams, but no one seems very interested in trying at the moment.

Joe Bloggs on the street is still being sold cameras by John Smith the minimum wage lacky in a big electronics store, and John Smith doesn't have a clue. All he can go one is the numbers in front of him, and bigger looks better.

phew, looks like it's basically a case of someone missunderstanding and going "OMFGZORS!!!! THEY WANT TO ST33L MAH M3GAHURTZZ!!!!111ELEVEN".

Thats a relief.

That is seriously concerning, if true

there are some very good counter points made here however

http://kynn.livejournal.com/799971.html

and so far I have been unable to find any evidence of anything like this in the EU

Warehouseexpress are still showing stock of three models and the Benbo website shows models 1, 2, treker Mk3 and mini-treker.


Dad has one of the smaller Benbos for work and swears by it, he wont consider anything else.

I agree, even though I find taking the pictures is the bit I enjoy most, I wouldn't be able to justify or enjoy that part if there was no end result.