How Your Computer And Your Camera Work Together

Note: This article was published back in September of 2018. I’ve made some changes and additions to this new publication.

How Your Computer And Your Camera Work Together

By William Lulow

These days, we are all “digital photographers.” Whether you use your mobile phone or a high-end digital camera, you are creating “files” not simply photographs. In the days of film technology, you had to take the picture, develop the film and then make prints in the darkroom. Digital imaging has done away with the darkroom part, but the developing and printing of the images is still very much with us. One thing that has always bothered me about the advent of mobile phone cameras, is that we now pass the phone around to look at images instead of making prints for exhibition! I don’t care what you say, images on cellphones are too small to appreciate as photographs. They are great at what they do. They give you something to look at. That’s it. For those images to be considered true “photographs” they must be printed so they can be examined more closely. Try squinting at three or four hundred images from someone’s vacation and see if you don’t begin to agree with me.

On the other side of things, most digital cameras, even if they are only 12 to 18 megapixels in size, create images that are roughly 59 inches by about 39 inches. They create JPEGs that vary in size from 20 to 40 megapixels each.  These are way too large to either print or have your computer do anything with except, perhaps to store them. So, some kind of processing must be done if they are to be usable. Even CAMERA RAW images, which contain much more information than JPEGS are too large to maneuver and must be converted to JPEGS in order to edit and send them. I have often questioned the need for RAW images at all, if they need to be converted at the end anyway. I’d rather be taking more pictures than sitting at the computer converting all my RAW files. 

When these files are sized, there is some information that is inevitably lost, but not enough as to destroy most of the important pixels. At any rate, digital photographers have to be able to download image files from the camera to the computer and then be able to work on them, size them and retouch them, if necessary, so that they are usable for a client or printed by the photographer and/or a color lab. They even need to be sized if the photographer intends to share them.

I recently had to upgrade my computer because the old one was taking too long to display the images so that I could work on them. The computer is an integral part of the digital photography process. Since images are so large and getting larger, these days, you need a computer that can handle larger file sizes quickly. A minimum of 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive is almost a necessity today. You also need a program for editing your images. This usually means an image editing package like Adobe Photoshop or Apple iPhoto. For my money, Adobe has become the industry standard when it comes to cropping, sizing, retouching and printing photographs. Also, you cannot buy the programs on discs anymore. You must lease them on a yearly basis from Adobe. There are pluses and minuses about this arrangement. One of the drawbacks to this system is that you can’t actually own the program. But, this also serves as a positive because while you are leasing it, you are constantly getting the latest version with all the latest upgrades. In this day and age, this greatly outweighs the higher cost of leasing.

With this being said, you need to learn how your computer interacts with your camera to download images you take. You have to learn how to store your digital files so you can retrieve them easily.

I have a method that I have used for some time now, which largely avoids the pitfalls of digital image storage. First, I make a folder on my EXTERNAL DRIVE that is marked with the year. For example, last year’s was PHOTOGRAPHS2018. This year’s is PHOTOGRAPHS2019. Within this folder I then make folders for every single job I do during the year and give it a name. I now have something that looks like this:

PHOTOGRAPHS2018

     Chappaqua Scenes (Personal)

            Winter

            Summer

            Spring

            Fall

     WoodsLaw (Client)

            Group

            Individual

     SummerTrip (Client & Personal)        

            Chicago

            St. Louis       

            Arkansas

This setup is called a “hard drive tree.” Now I can find any image I may want simply by going to the year it was made and the name of the job. I do this for things I shoot for myself, not just for clients. When I download images from the camera to the computer, a dialog box opens that allows me to specify into which folder I want to place them. It also allows me to give the batch of images a unique name and to number them any way I wish.

 So, the interaction between the camera and the computer becomes of paramount importance when you are downloading large numbers of images from a photo session. I use both Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Bridge to download my images. I find Bridge, an earlier program a bit easier to use for this, but I like Lightroom as well and use it for my batch processing.

Like most photographers, I also use my iPhone from time to time. Lately I have been using it to record my lighting setups on location. Since I am a photography teacher as well, I like to keep track of how I go about getting images for a particular assignment. My technique is to use my iCloud storage to keep track of images on my smartphone and then to download them to separate folders on my external drive. I usually label these “SHOOTING IMAGES” to differentiate them from files that have to be sent to a client. I also like to post images on Instagram which I do from my iPhone. So, from time to time, I transfer images from the computer to the iPhone also using the iCloud program.

 If you are meticulous about how you “talk” to your computer and tell it where to store things, you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating images on your drives. I have four external hard drives that have 2-3 TB of storage each, and several smaller flash drives varying in size from 8 to 64GB. This enables me to store all of my images on these drives and virtually NONE on the computer itself. This comes in very handy should the actual computer need servicing or upgrading. All you do is unplug the externals and they can be used by a laptop temporarily should that be necessary.

 The other thing I always tell my students about anything electronic is that if it’s not doing what you want it to, it is something YOU are doing or not doing. The fault is almost never with the machine. Computers will do exactly what you tell them to, no more, no less. If you keep this in mind, you will always be able to communicate effectively with your computer. Also, computers are machines. They will eventually break down and need to be replaced. The technology which makes them work is constantly being upgraded. So, a five-year-old computer is already ancient. If you are using a machine like this, it’s time to invest in a newer one. Keeping up with the rapidly advancing technology is extremely important in the field of digital photography.