I was getting tired of my download workflow. When I came back home after photographing a wedding it took me so much time just to download the 3000+ images and back them up. Shooting in RAW + JPEG I filled up like 10-12 CompactFlash cards and every ten minutes or so I had to change the card in my reader. Of course I could work on something else in the meantime, but I always had to check if the download was completed and I could change the card. Otherwise the whole process would even take longer… There had to be a solution to make this faster and easier.
First I changed from 4GB SanDisk Extreme IV to 8GB SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash Cards. That meant half the cards to handle, to carry around at the wedding and to download and back up at home. There was a dramatically price drop in the 8GB cards during the last months, so upgrading was not expensive. And for saving my time on a boring routine job it was worth it anyway.
Second I went for the new Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 CompactFlash Reader. They are stackable and you can daisy chain up to 4 of them and then they will allow for concurrent downloads. So you can download 4 cards at a time. Sweet!
