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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Photo Department Laptops
Gerik Parmele, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Columbia | MO | United States | Posted: 11:28 AM on 02.28.06 |
->> I'm going to jump in to the fray here and ask for some opinions.
We here at the Columbia Daily Tribune have two computers to use between 5 photographers. As you can imagine there are times when there is some waiting going on. This is frustrating.
The IT Department has asked if we would like to move to a laptop based work flow. Giving each photographer their own laptop to use here and away (we follow Missouri basketball and football to all away games).
I'm hoping that the laptop system will streamline our work flow, add more productivity and consistency.
I'm seeking opinions so I don't overlook anything and make sure I have all of my bases covered as I discuss this with out IT department.
So any thoughts, recommendations or opinions would be helpful. |
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David Griffin, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Concord | NC | USA | Posted: 12:07 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> We have a Desktop in the Editing room and each shooter has their own laptop w/ an EVDO card for transmitting when an ethernet connection is not available.
All images are then backed up to CD/DVD and on an external drive on the Desktop.
This works real well for us. |
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Mark Cornelison, Photographer
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Lexington | KY | U.S.A. | Posted: 2:01 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> Hey Gerik,
Our photo staff at the Lexington Herald-Leader (Ky) have had our own current laptops for about 6 yrs now. We bought the Titanium Powerbook G4 and put Super Drives in them. The Super Drive is key as well as a decent sized hard drive. I suggest at least 80GB unless you can get them to go for the 100. With image sizes the way they are growing a large HD is needed. The Super Drive is needed because you will want to burn DVD's of your archive rather than CDs.
I mention all this because our PowerBooks are a little rough now and actually need replacing. We have put alot of money into them for repairs and upgrades but they are a great machine. I believe if we had the plastic Ibooks we would have been in real trouble long before now.
Hope this helps.
Mark |
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Karl Stolleis, Photographer
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Santa Fe | NM | USA | Posted: 2:25 PM on 02.28.06 |
| ->> Actually - the Houston Chronicle bought 12inch and 14in Ibooks a few years back and they handled wear and tear great. Other than one user induced software meltdown they handled the road like a champ. The plastic seems to be more durable and remember - the Ibook was originally designed with school kids (elementary level) in mind. I used one for 3 1/2 years without fail. |
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Michael C. Weimar, Photographer
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Gainesville | FL | USA | Posted: 2:32 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> Gerik,
Greetings from Gainesville. We've had a laptop based workflow for about 5 years now. While giving the photographers the advantage of working and transmitting from just about anywhere, it's not without it's hiccups.
We (five staffers) are currently on G4 1.33 gighz Powerbooks with 60 gig drives and 1.25 gig RAM. For the convince of a portable machine , you are giving up a fair amount of processing power and storage space for an equally priced desktop machine. Not a big problem for daily and sports on the road, but we (mostly myself and one other staffer) are starting to heavily incorporate RAW into our workflow and the machine is definitely taxed compared to the dual processor G5 workstation we have. Also, space on the drive really disappears quickly.
We archive raw takes to a server in the department, which is great, but you have to be habitual about doing daily. It sometimes becomes a problem if you forget and the powers that be want to see the entire take. Only takes forgetting a couple times and having to come back in to drop the take to make you remember.
We are on about a 2-3 year replacement cycle. In and out of the office, trunk, house, laptop bag puts a fair amount of wear on the machines. A little extra care is needed by staffers as you can't toss laptops around like you could F3's. With that being said, I probably travel the most on following the Gator football, basketball and baseball teams as well as hurricanes and politics. In the five years (knock on wood) I've never had a catastrophic failure.
To cover my back, I travel with a portable, bootable Firewire hard drive that has my operating system, software, and most importantly, everything (passwords, software, etc.) to connect to the office. While traveling, I use Photo Mechanic's secondary directory ingest feature to copy to the portable drive so I always have a backup. If my laptop heads South, I can boot my Firewire drive from another Mac and get my images filed. An added bonus is that when I return, I can just hook the drive to the archive computer and dump the takes, not tying up my machine. We used this workflow for all of the football games this year. With all of the above-mentioned benefits, when the game was over, a second person could grab the drive, hook to their computer and help file, getting finished faster instead of all the images being trapped on one editor’s computer. I replace the portable drive about once a year. With hard drives, it's not if they will fail, it's when.
Hope that gives you a little insight. Feel free to call me or Kratzer and we can chat more about it.
Mike |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 2:39 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> "Giving each photographer their own laptop to use here and away"
Take the offer.
A few suggestions:
Keep your monitors if you can and the photogs can plug their laptops into them when they're in-house.
Let the photographers put their own (purchased - not bootlegged - make sure you see a receipt) software on the laptops but make sure that the installation is done under the supervision of the IT department. Tell them to stay away from any games.
Keep one desktop machine around in case one of the laptops goes down and needs to be sent out for repair.
Make sure everyone gets into a systematic data back-up routine so that nothing's lost.
14 inch iBooks (with Firewire CF card readers) are very cost effective. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 3:39 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> Some papers limit what can be installed on a laptop and keep them all pretty much the same.
While most photographers work differently in editing, captioning and sending, it is worth considering having them all set up alike.
The reason here is if someone has a computer crash and they are going out of town on assignment, they can borrow any laptop and when they sit down to edit on deadline they know what programs are installed and how the workflow should go -- no surprises in looking around going "I use Transmit for FTP, where is it, and how do I plug in an ftp site on Fetch?"
It is good to let them put some of their own stuff on there, such as iTunes music, but keep the major programs standard.
Also, make sure your systems folks don't lock the computer so that the user can't add or change anything.
I've run into circumstances where a photographer is traveling with a computer so locked and it is near impossible to hook into a network in another office where they may be working or in a temporary network such as those many organizations set up at the Super Bowl or other events. |
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Mike Morones, Photographer
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Fredericksburg | VA | USA | Posted: 3:48 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> Here at the FL-S all the photogs have a laptop with most of the software we generally use - P-shop, photomechanic, transmit FTP, Word, safari and/or netscape and some of us have Nikon software just in case. I like being able to stay out of the office and work from wherever I want.
The one problem we have had is convincing the IT department to loosen up a little as our machines are locked down with administrator passwords. This has mostly been problematic for me while on the road. I was once in Las Vegas covering NASCAR and realized that because I had no admin privileges, I could not configure my laptop to connect to the internet. And of course when I called back to get some help, they would not give the password and basically said that I was SOL as they 'weren't too good with Macs.'
Make sure you are given all the transmitting technology you can get your hands on or having a laptop becomes a moot point. |
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Rodrigo Pena, Photographer
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Palm Desert | CA | USA | Posted: 5:28 PM on 02.28.06 |
->> Gerik, you and your department will be relieved at making the bottle neck (waiting in line for a computer) go away with the purchase of laptops. I have been using a laptop for over 5 years and it has been great. The only bad point is that working on a laptop means archiving is a must. (the burner is really slow too). I must archive at least once per week. Luckily, our department is given the time and the staff to back up our photos. I burn CD's which I send via inter-office mail where the raw jpegs are archived at the main office.
The great thing is the enormous amount of freedom that I have with the laptop. I have the pc card and can transmit anywhere that I can find a wireless phone signal and also T-Mobile as a backup. It really helps since I work in a bureau about 1 hr. & 20-minute drive from the main office.
In case of a catastrophe, hopefully, I'll still be able to work. I have a power converter that will turn the cigarette lighter into my source of power for my laptop and charging batteries. It works great. I also have a case of water and food that I can store in the trunk of my car just in case I get stuck somewhere.
You'll need to install network cables or docking stations for your photogs to access your network at the paper and/or the internet. If your job place is wireless, you'll need that ability for your laptops. I highly recommend going wireless if possible.
I remember before I went digital waiting in line at the film scanner. I feel your pain. |
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William Cannon, Photographer
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Lancaster | OH | USA | Posted: 6:37 PM on 02.28.06 |
| ->> What level of toning are you guys doing on these? We are interested in this workflow but the prepress work is still an issue. |
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Gerik Parmele, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Columbia | MO | United States | Posted: 10:19 AM on 03.01.06 |
->> William,
We have a prepress department that preps our photos for the press. Basically the photographers tone their photos to their standards and prepress takes it from there. Theoretically photographers should use the densometer in photoshop to make sure their toning is correct - one should never rely just on how it looks on the screen. However for me by using the same computer every time to tone my photos I learn its quirks and become more proficient. |
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G.J. McCarthy, Photographer
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Columbia | MO | USA | Posted: 10:40 AM on 03.01.06 |
->> As someone who will be on the receiving end of any decisions made, I just wanted to quickly thank you folks for taking the time to post -- much appreciated. It's a real help to us all, especially big boss-man G.
Weimar:
Great thoughts -- as usual, you don't disappoint, sir. I really like the firewire reader idea, by the way. You tell that Kratzer he should give you a raise on pure, MacGyver-like cunning alone. Fifteen percent, Baby!!
Jim:
Interesting idea about staffers putting their own software with IT's blessing. This is particularly of interest to me, as I was just about to grab my own laptop when Gerik told me about all of this. It would be great if the company slid some new gear our way, but I'm pretty sure a couple of the programs I use regularly -- like Dreamweaver, iTunes, DopeWars (blackmarket all the way, Baby!!) -- probably won't be installed on company laptops; would put me in quite the pickle. Anyway, our IT department has really come around lately, so who knows. Maybe we can work something out, as you suggest.
Thanks again, folks. Let's hope everything "comes up Millhouse" for us Tribbers.
Cheerio,
- the other g - |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 11:02 AM on 03.01.06 |
->> "I'm pretty sure a couple of the programs I use regularly -- like Dreamweaver, iTunes, DopeWars (blackmarket all the way, Baby!!) -- probably won't be installed on company laptops; would put me in quite the pickle. Anyway, our IT department has really come around lately, so who knows"
I think that the important thing with any decent IT department is to assure them that you're not going to screw with their precious system and that you're willing to work with them.
Main line software stuff like Dreamweaver ought to be okay but I'd probably not allow any games. Making sure that you have legal software with receipts will calm their nerves about a software audit from the SPA.
You should also try and convince them to allow the photogs to have Administrator access to their machines in case of an on-the-road emergency with the provisio that any use of said password will be reported to IT along with the circumstances of its use. It'd mean a different password for each machine but they can keep track of that with a pen and a piece of paper, or a massively complex database if they prefer. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 3:18 PM on 03.01.06 |
->> On Mac OSX you can have your account that has an admin level password and then the IT guys can have a separate Admin account so when they need to do any work on it they don't have to hunt you down for the password.
Thankfully, at my office we are allowed a lot of contorl over our laptops and do most of the maintenance and software installs without the Systems department needing to supervise. If we don't already have the disk they will just hand it over and let us go at it.
I do all of my on routine maintenance and back-ups on my computer and only go to Systems when there is a major problem -- such as my rapidly failing hard drive a couple years ago.
At all offices there is someone you wouldn't trust to change even a folder on the desktop, but photographers are usually pretty technology savvy. I don't know how many times I've seen writers at games have trouble with their computer who go to the photographer from their publication for help. |
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