Advice needed - What should I buy next?

[Paul_Card]

Hi,

I'm still new to photography so am hoping members can offer me some advice on what my next purchase should be... A flashgun, new software or an external hard drive...

My wife has just given birth, three weeks ago today, to our first child. I'd been considering purchasing a DSLR and thought this was the ideal time so I bought a Canon 550D four months ago.

I've got the photography bug now, although mainly portraiture at the moment, and was advised to purchase a "nifty 50" lens add a shallower depth of field to my portraits and I'm delighted with the results.

I'm using Cyberlnk Photo Director software that was free with Digital Camera magazine a few months ago and am getting to grips with that and getting pleasing results.

I would now appreciate some advice on what to purchase next and am considering three options:
1. A flashgun or compact flashgun (althought I've not really experimented with flash yet)
2. Photoshop Elements 10 (as all the magazine tutorials seem to be geared towards Photoshop)
3. An external hard drive for storage (although my laptop has plenty of space but I'd rather not clog it up and slow it down)

I have £80 saved so far so should I purchase Photoshop, a compact flashgun or hard drive now or continue saving for a bigger, better flashgun?

Any advice and opinions would be really appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

[Martin Havens]

Hi Paul,

Congrats on the new baby! No doubt you're making good use of that new DSLR now...

In my humble opinion, if I were you, I would put it towards a new Hard Drive...

A flash gun is handy to have, but as a newcomer to the world of SLR's, I would say get used to the features of the camera you have and develop a better understanding of how flash can be used to best effect before shelling out around £150 on an external flash.

Likewise with the software, once you get a copy of Photoshop you'll never look back - but stick with what you have for now and get the most you can out of it.

You'll be suprised how quickly you can fill up a hard drive, and also, never underestimate the value of backing up all your images. Speaking from experience, if a hard drive fails on you and you've not backed it up, it's potentially very expensive to recover the images, and often it's not even possible.

So, I would say get at least a 1GB internal hard drive and set it up as a slave. If you can stretch to it, get two and set them up in a RAID configuration so that one acts as a 'ghost' drive (one drive is basically a mirror of the other, so you'll always have a back up). If you're not sure about poking around inside your PC, there are some decent external drives out there, but in my experience, they tend not to be quite as reliable, and they generally cost more than an internal one.

To keep it simple though, I'd spend around £50 - £60 on a single 1GB internal hard drive, and spend the rest on an extra memory card - you can never have to many.

I seem to have waffled on a bit more than I expected to, but I hope it's of some help!

[markgozz]

Originally Posted by Martin Havens

Hi Paul,

Congrats on the new baby! No doubt you're making good use of that new DSLR now...

In my humble opinion, if I were you, I would put it towards a new Hard Drive...

A flash gun is handy to have, but as a newcomer to the world of SLR's, I would say get used to the features of the camera you have and develop a better understanding of how flash can be used to best effect before shelling out around £150 on an external flash.

Likewise with the software, once you get a copy of Photoshop you'll never look back - but stick with what you have for now and get the most you can out of it.

You'll be suprised how quickly you can fill up a hard drive, and also, never underestimate the value of backing up all your images. Speaking from experience, if a hard drive fails on you and you've not backed it up, it's potentially very expensive to recover the images, and often it's not even possible.

So, I would say get at least a 1GB internal hard drive and set it up as a slave. If you can stretch to it, get two and set them up in a RAID configuration so that one acts as a 'ghost' drive (one drive is basically a mirror of the other, so you'll always have a back up). If you're not sure about poking around inside your PC, there are some decent external drives out there, but in my experience, they tend not to be quite as reliable, and they generally cost more than an internal one.

To keep it simple though, I'd spend around £50 - £60 on a single 1GB internal hard drive, and spend the rest on an extra memory card - you can never have to many.

I seem to have waffled on a bit more than I expected to, but I hope it's of some help!

Hope you don't mind me jumping in but I think you mean 1TB drive , a 1GB would get filled very quickly .

Mark

[Jediboy]

Hi,

Congrats also on the baby. It's great being a parent!!
No doubt an external hard drive is essential. Mines been getting a proper workout recently and I'd be stuck without it.
Flashgun also very useful, but in the short time the cameras built in flash, whilst not ideal, should see you by. .
I use PSE 9 (at a basic level but learning) and it's amazing. Great bit of kit.

The problem with photography is that it gets you, and you want the best kit you can afford. It's a shame its so expensive so you need to prioritise.
Good luck and enjoy.

[Martin Havens]

Originally Posted by markgozz

Hope you don't mind me jumping in but I think you mean 1TB drive , a 1GB would get filled very quickly .

Mark

Oops! Sorry, yes, I meant 1TB...

[Paul_Card]

Hi guys,

Thanks for taking the time to respond and for your comprehensive and extremely useful advice. I think I'll stick with the camera and software equipment that I have (until my skill level using both improves!) and invest in an additional hard drive to ensure the images I have are safe. Another quick question regarding additional drives - do you guys use them as an alternative storage space to keep your computer free and running fast or do you use them as a genuine backup and keep the images in two places?

Thanks again all.

Paul

[StephenBatey]

Two places. Data held in only one place isn't backed up.

All hard drives will fail sooner or later, hence the need to have at least two copies.

Ideally, you'll have a copy not in the same location as the original in case of fire, flood etc.

And belated congratulations.

[Ashleyj]

Originally Posted by Martin Havens

Hi Paul,

Congrats on the new baby! No doubt you're making good use of that new DSLR now...

In my humble opinion, if I were you, I would put it towards a new Hard Drive...

A flash gun is handy to have, but as a newcomer to the world of SLR's, I would say get used to the features of the camera you have and develop a better understanding of how flash can be used to best effect before shelling out around £150 on an external flash.

Likewise with the software, once you get a copy of Photoshop you'll never look back - but stick with what you have for now and get the most you can out of it.

You'll be suprised how quickly you can fill up a hard drive, and also, never underestimate the value of backing up all your images. Speaking from experience, if a hard drive fails on you and you've not backed it up, it's potentially very expensive to recover the images, and often it's not even possible.

So, I would say get at least a 1GB internal hard drive and set it up as a slave. If you can stretch to it, get two and set them up in a RAID configuration so that one acts as a 'ghost' drive (one drive is basically a mirror of the other, so you'll always have a back up). If you're not sure about poking around inside your PC, there are some decent external drives out there, but in my experience, they tend not to be quite as reliable, and they generally cost more than an internal one.

To keep it simple though, I'd spend around £50 - £60 on a single 1GB internal hard drive, and spend the rest on an extra memory card - you can never have to many.

I seem to have waffled on a bit more than I expected to, but I hope it's of some help!

Paul says that he has a laptop so an extra internal drive is not an option. My suggestion would be to go for a 500Gb portable USB drive.

I realise you wont get a 1Tb one for that sort of money but the extra flexibility the drive will give him should compensate for the reduced storage space.

[Martin Havens]

Originally Posted by Paul_Card

do you guys use them as an alternative storage space to keep your computer free and running fast or do you use them as a genuine backup and keep the images in two places?

I have an internal 1TB drive with all my images on, and then an additional external 1.5TB drive which I have everything backed up onto. I'm also planning on getting an extra internal drive to set up a ghost.

Originally Posted by Ashleyj

Paul says that he has a laptop so an extra internal drive is not an option. My suggestion would be to go for a 500Gb portable USB drive.

I realise you wont get a 1Tb one for that sort of money but the extra flexibility the drive will give him should compensate for the reduced storage space.

I need to stop reading things so quickly... I missed that bit!

Although, for £80 you can easily get a 1TB external drive... the prices had rocketed because of the earthquake in China a short while back (at least, I think it was the one in China...) but they seem to have settled down a bit now. Take a look on ebuyer.com and there's quite a few to choose from - you can sometimes grab some real bargains on there. My external Samsung 1.5TB was only about £70 from them, I seem to recall...

[greenwing]

Just to stick another variable in - if buying an external drive, try to get USB 3. That will give some degree of futureproofing.

Chris