Hi All,

I have a week of 5 back to back weddings, which all start at 2pm and end at 1am. I have spent pretty much all I have on kit and am trying to find the cheapest solution for reusing the batteries and memory cards I currently own.

I have 9 LP-E8 batteries which should last me through each shoot, instead of buying more batteries my plan is to buy 8 chargers of eBay at £6 each and when I return home at 1am I place them all on charge and go to sleep. This way I won’t have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night to switch batteries.

My main issue is the memory cards of which I have 7x32gb Class 10 Transcend. What is the quickest and most effective way for me to get the data off my memory cards and onto my computer overnight so I can format reuse them the next day? I have a Mac Pro and currently use a USB card reader. I really don’t want to be sitting there at 4am copying data.

Many Thanks

So on the 6th day, you plan to have 5 weddings on your computer? Have you done anything like this because overall it's one major exercise.

By the last one the creative level will be way down, you'll need your 2nd shooter?

I'd check around and see if you can rent spare cards and d/load after you've recovered on the 7th day. Make sure you have enough external HD space?
If not you could d/load and edit them one at time.

If they're all in the one hall, maybe you could take a sleeping bag, but take a couple of your chargers and a packet of NoDoz to each wedding as back up :)
Good luck.

Cheers.

So on the 6th day, you plan to have 5 weddings on your computer?

So, will you rest on the seventh day? :)

Seriously -- that is one schedule! Good luck. I would think that all the business would afford you a helper who's paid to change the cards overnight. Or maybe a robot?!

So on the 6th day, you plan to have 5 weddings on your computer? Have you done anything like this because overall it's one major exercise.

By the last one the creative level will be way down, you'll need your 2nd shooter?

I'd check around and see if you can rent spare cards and d/load after you've recovered on the 7th day. Make sure you have enough external HD space?
If not you could d/load and edit them one at time.

If they're all in the one hall, maybe you could take a sleeping bag, but take a couple of your chargers and a packet of NoDoz to each wedding as back up :)
Good luck.

Cheers.

I have a second shooter on each day so that part is covered :) It is just trying to save £270 as I don't want to go and buy another 10 SD Cards. I Have purchased 2x2TB Western Digital Black hard drives so I'll have plenty of room on my Mac Pro. If I could attach 6 SD cards at once to my Man and copy them all accross overnight that would be cool.

If you have 5 weddings, surely the profit from these would stretch to buying 10 more cards for £270. Getting more cards will take the stress out of the situation.

How are you going to check that the transfers are OK before wiping the original files from the cards? and back up to two devices just in case.

If it was me, I'd get the extra cards, they'll always come in handy.

Peter

I'm PC rather than Mac so I'm not up to speed on compatibility but I understand that mac pro can use USB3 now:

USB 3.0 products for Mac (http://www.barefeats.com/hard136.html)

USB3 is very fast indeed. I am getting a genuine 5x faster download time than USB2.

You need one or more of these Lexar USB3 card readers:
Lexar® Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader | Lexar (http://www.lexar.com/products/lexar-professional-usb-30-dual-slot-reader?category=213)

Then you need the appropriate expansion cards / express cards for your computer.

If its not too late I would also swap out your external hard drives for USB3 from USB2 if applicable so that you can download straight to those drives at USB3 speeds. Make sure you get the cables as well.

Downloading is so quick you could finish two 32gb cards just whilst you are unloading your car and having a late night coffee. But it would make sense to download during the day then just backup from one external drive to the other on your return home. I would not want to risk doing all the downloading at home in case of unforeseen problems such as power cuts or just gremlins.

You could also recharge batteries used earlier in the day during the speeches etc.

I would not want to risk cheap ebay rechargers unattended overnight without thorough testing because of the fire risk, as several of my photographers colleagues have found to their cost.

You can also get inverters for use in cars. These enable you to connect mains powered devices such as external hard drives to the cars cigar lighter sockets so you can carry on downloading if you have a long drive home; however I would prefer to download straight to a laptop drive at that point and I have a spare laptop battery for just that event.

However now might be the time to buy some high spec. new cards in anticipation of your next camera purchase as that way it doesn't seem like money wasted :- )

Not sure what cards you use but I saw these on special at Robert White recently:

SanDisk Professional 32GB Compact Flash Extreme (60MB/s) | Robert White Photographic Ltd (http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/sandisk-professional-32gb-compact-flash-extreme-60mb-s.html)

£72 is a great price for that spec of 32gb 60mb/s UDMA and from Sandisk. These are the cards I use in my 5DII's together with USB3 and I paid twice that.

Pete

I just ordered the Lexar card reader, thanks Peter!

Hi All,

My main issue is the memory cards of which I have 7x32gb Class 10 Transcend.

Not to bash Transcend but I'm not sure that is a good idea to have all that footage on a 32GB card specially on a Transcend. Youre gonna have severe problems if any one of these 7 cards malfunctions. we've learned our lesson with these 32GB cards and now exclusively use 16GB cards.

Also with all the $$ from these back to back weddings surely you can afford to invest in more cards.
You are brave my man for doing these shoots..

Good luck,

Kren

I'm a little confused. People are getting married in the middle of the week?

Muslim weddings consist of many mini events leading up to the wedding day but still last the same amount of time (sometimes even longer than the wedding itself)

Not to bash Transcend but I'm not sure that is a good idea to have all that footage on a 32GB card specially on a Transcend. Youre gonna have severe problems if any one of these 7 cards malfunctions. we've learned our lesson with these 32GB cards and now exclusively use 16GB cards.

Also with all the $$ from these back to back weddings surely you can afford to invest in more cards.
You are brave my man for doing these shoots..

Good luck,

Kren

Thanks! I have another shooter so we should be ok (fingers crossed) I have already spent $$$ on Hard Drives, Batteries, Lenses, Glidecam, but yes another round of investment is needed.
Sorry to hear about the 32GB trouble you had. Are you still using Transcend 16GB?

Is there any way that you leave you second shooter at the event for the evening, to film on their own and in the mean time head home yourself to regroup the gear for the next day. Even if you were able to leave a bit earlier that would help ?
thanks
David

Transcend had a batch of 32GB cards that were faulty but usually their cards are good. I must admit I have two 32GB Transcends from the Taiwan factory and they work fine...I too prefer to use 16GB and during ceremonies I use 2 x 16GB cards in the A-Cam and write to both as that's one bit that cannot be reshot...you can always redo a cake cutting but not a Church ceremony!!!

These weddings sound very much like traditional Indian weddings where the ceremony and rituals last for a complete week and that's just one couple!!!

A brave move doing Muslim wedding events..I had so many problems with ethnic weddings I dropped them quite a few years ago and only do Western weddings..just too much footage required, lack of the language barrier and understanding the quite complex rituals was too much for my tiny brain!!!

Good luck on the shoot...hope you are charging accordingly too..I was told that in India competition is so fierce that a videographer will cover a 3 day ceremony and edit it for a mere US$300!!! Rather them than me!!

Chris

five? that's a record!
i do two in a row, or three sometimes, but only when I have to, most of the time I try to avoid back to back events, but anyways, when i do have to shoot back to back, at the reception i copy all footage to laptop and when I come home it's only 20-30 min I need to back up, I leave to copy all footage to external HD for a night, in the morning I make sure all is good, and only after that I format cards and delete footage from laptop ready for the next round, but when the marathon is over first thing I do I make a second copy of all material on another hard drive.

I'm PC rather than Mac so I'm not up to speed on compatibility but I understand that mac pro can use USB3 now:

USB 3.0 products for Mac (http://www.barefeats.com/hard136.html)

USB3 is very fast indeed. I am getting a genuine 5x faster download time than USB2.

You need one or more of these Lexar USB3 card readers:
Lexar® Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader | Lexar (http://www.lexar.com/products/lexar-professional-usb-30-dual-slot-reader?category=213)

Then you need the appropriate expansion cards / express cards for your computer.Just to confirm that I am using USB3 on Mac. Sonnet Allegro PCIe cards in the Mac Pros & a Sonnet Tempo ExpressCard in the MacBook Pro. Whatever you do don't get a Lacie USB3 card as on the Mac they only work with Lacie devices (there is a hack to fix this but it's flakey).

Edit: I just noticed lying on my desk a CalDigit USB3 ExpressCard that I purchased when I temporarily mislaid the Sonnet Tempo ExpressCard. That works great too.

Sanho 320GB HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA Multimedia SHDCSUDMA320

copy your data across as you can during the evening + 1 on the way home and 1 over night - by the morning all cards should be free to use and you can leave the colorspace to dump to a hard drive - by lunch you should be ready to go.

beware - by day 4 I suspect you won't know your arse from your elbow and you'll miss a card or something - you need a routine where your 2nd shooter checks what you do in regard to backing up - it may seem silly on day 1 but on day 5 it will save your bacon.

This would be great if you could preview the videos.

After a lot of thought I have decided to buy another set of memory cards.

The max I can possibly go through on one shoot is 7 16GB SD cards and I also need to supply me second shooter with 7, I also already own 7.

So my plan is that I buy 21 16GB SD Cards I take 14 to the first wedding, when I arrive home after the shoot I will give the 14 memory cards to my wife who and take another 14 for the next days shoot. She will then copy the first set of 14 onto my Mac throughout the day while I am shooting. This means when I come home the next day we can repeat the process. It's going to cost around £340 but no hassle.

Cool Tarig, (or is it Peter :) that's even better than trying to rent some. I assume your wife knows how to check each d/load .. but by the fourth day
she could become relaxed and complacent and you end up in strife.

I'd write out a complete step by step checking procedure, and ask her to follow it carefully before you get to quickly check it then reformat the cards.

Post editing is another project altogether, again I'd write down a list of the names of each weddings bride and groom and relatives and leave it by the phone, so you don't mix them up if they ring to ask how the editing is going.

Do it by numbers, like airline pilots do .. sounds boring but double or triple checking by numbers works, they rarely screw up.

Cheers.

Thanks that is something that I will most diffenatley do. The next issue is batteries as I need to buy his and mine. I use Hannel ones at the moment with a third party battery grip and the battery life meter goes from two bars to red empty in a matter of seconds. Would that be the battery grip that is faulty or the batteries? It never stays on two bar, it either displays a full battery or one that is just about to die.

That will most likely be your batteries. 3rd party ones rarely hold as much as the official ones. Even if they quote a higher capacity. Also they lack the chip the cameras use to monitor battery levels so they show all is well and then BAM! Battery goes red and dead. For that reason we went all official canon last year.

The only advice I can give you with that many back to backs is be careful. Late at night your tired, wanting to goto bed to be up for the following day and you rush copy all the data off so you can get some kip. You then end up overwriting something or missing something or not verifying your data like you would if you had the day to do it.

You could copy and charge during the day. Thats what we did when we used to do back to backs. So all you have to do at the end of the day is copy the last card you used and then get some much needed sleep.

The Lexar card reader mentioned earlier is very fast, but keep in mind folks that it cannot transfer faster than the card is capable of. My expensive, fast cards transfer much faster than the cheaper slower ones. Formerly with USB 2.0 reader they were all about the same. The bottleneck has switched for me from being the reader to the card. All in all, the Lexar USB 3.0 reader is worth every penny and then some.

My main issue is the memory cards of which I have 7x32gb Class 10 Transcend. What is the quickest and most effective way for me to get the data off my memory cards and onto my computer overnight so I can format reuse them the next day?

BUY MORE CARDS

Do not reuse the cards until you have had a chance to begin working on the projects and confirm that you have indeed transferred all the material, backed it up to a third location, and there aren't any problems. Until then, set the cards aside.

Sorry for resurrecting dead threads and spamming the forum a bit. I find all this stuff fascinating, and I've never had much chance to talk shop with wedding videographers in my area, so that's why I'm so loquacious now.

I've only ever gone for two days back to back, and only been put in that situation a handful of times. I'll be faced with three days back to back in a month's time. Cards and batteries were a huge worry in the past. For cost reasons, had to reuse. My solution was a gear-based one; but it wouldn't work for the OP, if he didn't already have the needed kit. Sleep was also a big worry.

Card solution: use a Nexto drive. Someone earlier suggested a laptop, which amounts to the same thing. Back it all up while you're at reception. When you get home, set it copying to your computer, and go to sleep. When you wake up, verify all the data against the cards, then set your backup copy going to another drive before you leave the house.

Batteries: electrically-minded friend rigged up a powerboard in the car, and I madly wrangled chargers here every chance I could get, as well as attached battery chargers everywhere I went. Walk into the bride's house -- looked for a power point. Walked into the church -- looked for a power point. I'm glad I have enough batteries now that I'm spared that sort of madness, though I still routinely have 6 chargers going at the reception.

For Canon batteries, the Pearstone charger can be powered from the cigarette lighter. But there are many similar options... Another fallback piece of kit I had with me was a large Tekkeon battery that could be used with a dummy battery to power a 5dMkII all day. So, if worst came to worst... Though it never did.

Also a bit helpful to know that it becomes harder to charge a battery the fuller it's charged -- it becomes slower -- so if the battery is at 90% plus, it's more time efficient to yank it and put something else on that's more in need.