At the moment I supply all my customers with a DVD with all their images on. I have tried to select a good quality DVD-R to give them the best chance of lasting a while.

I was thinking of starting to supply on a USB Flash Drive, but was wondering if there would be any massive benefit in doing this? I have done some googling and there are various answers for data retention from 10 years to just about forever. The same goes for DVD-R, anyone able to shed any light ???

Cheers

Cris

The only benefit I can think of is capacity. Either way, your customers need to make backups, unless you're providing them with two copies.

You might consider giving the customer the option, putting a small premium on flash drive deliveries.

Go with DVD.

1. It's cheaper
2. It's slower, but there isn't going to be a lot of wasted space on any one disc
3. More environmentally sound, since either will likely be "disposable" at some point in time. A disc is plastic and some places can recycle them, there's no solder and PCB and components to deal with.
4. Most people aren't savvy enough to make immediate use of a USB key - while most DVD players will handle picture discs (make sure to save them a set of JPG files if you're also giving them RAWs)

You're keeping an archive of all the work for yourself as well right? Then it's easy enough to make them a new disc in the future if they need one.

I can't see how a USB drive, which could be reused after the images are taken off, is less environmentally sound than a disc that will probably be thrown out anyway.

When our wedding photographer gave us our digital files (on a couple DVDs, I believe), I transferred them to my computer, my parents' computer, my in-laws' computer, and then threw the discs away. I do not want another disc cluttering up the place when I can store all my data on hard drives.

However, I know from dealing with MY clients that none of them back up their data, so I'm probably a different kind of customer. I didn't need to keep the discs for backup purposes. I'm the type of customer who would have preferred a thumb drive I could use for other stuff.

Other than that, Bruno, I agree with you.

Cris, I think either way, as a customer I might prefer receiving one item from you. If it can't fit on one DVD, maybe that's when you provide the 8GB USB drive (or bigger).

I said environmentally sound because that USB drive is likely to be useless as well. I doubt Chris is going to be buying 32GB drives, nor likely 16GB. That leaves the possibility of buying the smallest drives available which will probably be smaller than what someone might already have. They'll either let it sit somewhere, give it away or toss it.

Besides, it's easier to store a DVD, or multiple of them, in a folder of some sort, rather than having a USB drive kicking around possibly getting mistaken for any other drive, getting misplaced, lost or erased.

Savvy customers will make a backup, or Chris can provide two copies right away.

Same here. In fact, at my wedding, I gave the guys in my wedding party thumb-drives, rather than the usual crap things like engraved beer mugs.

That's why I suggested giving clients the option of a thumb-drive at a premium. After all, why would Cris care about the additional cost? It gets passed on to the customer.

I think you'd be surprised. Most of my clients don't have any USB drives, and the ones I've seen that do have ones that are something like 512MB at most (probably freebies).

That implies they don't see the value in owning such a device, which means they aren't likely to see the value in having one given to them.

I wouldn't rule it out if that's what someone wants, but I would stick with DVDs as the default. Especially since you can custom-label/print the DVD surface with an image from the wedding. The non-tech people just eat that stuff up.

Also because this isn't likely to earn you the business in the first place. But it may be something to advertise as an option. "Digital negatives delivered on DVD or optionally a USB thumb drive"

Or you could give away an iPhone with all the images stuffed onto its camera roll and the default number in the phone book programmed to your office so they can order more prints. Of course they can just click on the image in the photo viewer and shoot you an email which will be faster - and can possibly be automated on the mail server... Now that's interesting.

I'm not so concerned about the environmental or cost arguments, it's simply how long the data will actually last on each medium.

I plan to supply both a DVD, which plays a SD slideshow of images set to music in a DVD player, and a USB stick containing all the full res JPGs. The idea behind this is to remove some confusion me supplying 2 DVDs is causing, even with clear labelling some clients get confused between the 2 for some reason, so my thinking was to remove this while providing more security for the "digital negatives".

Cheers

Cris

But the JPGs are not the digital negatives..

USB sticks are NOT good for data retention.

These days, MLC NAND is pretty much grey goo aided with a lot of ECC. Without freshening the data (erase/rewrite), I would be surprised if a modern high capacity usb key would hold data for 5 years before starting to get uncorrectable errors, maybe less. As densities go up, data lifetimes plummet.

If you can get a USB stick with SLC NAND - it'll be significantly more expensive and generally will top out at a lower capacity - then you should be good for 10 years or so, maybe more.

eg this OEM advertises SLC storage:
http://www.wintecind.com/OEM/Flash/USB_W7US.html

Umm as far as my clients are concerned they are!

I never hand over my RAWs. They are of course kept within my own backup system here just in case.

I don't like to use the term digital negative, but it helps me explain to the client how important they are to them, they are used to looking after negatives so this DVD should be treated the same way. It works most of the time.

Cheers

Cris.

Thanks Hugo, not quite what I wanted to hear but very useful

I'm going to go and have a rethink...

Cheers

Cris.

I was going to say that, Shall I say from recent experience.

Most people now have a DVD player, many, perhaps in the over 65 bracket, don't have a PC, and at any wedding you'll always have grandparents, aunts and uncles.

My experience catering for a large family, is that you'll still come across a need for running out a selection of prints.

This will change as time goes on, but currently that's how I see it.

My thinking behind a USB key is that it's pretty clear it belongs in a PC/Mac or if your TV/DVD Player has USB on the front it will be able to handle the pictures on the stick anyway.

I get calls from mainly mothers of the bride wondering why they can't play the slideshow on their TV, when in fact they have been give a copy of the JPG DVD not the slideshow.

I think I'm looking at a 3 way solution, a USB key for the JPGs, a DVD for the slideshow and a sealed gold archive DVD for backup/long term storage along with a clear set of instructions and copyright explanation.

There is of course the train of thought that once I hand over the pictures it becomes their problem to look after, but that doesn't really fit my whole ethos.

Cheers

Cris