Sony A9 III A9iii and backup ssd drive

[Roland]

For my first A9iii camera trip, I went to the Galapagos for a 7 day boat trip. I did not want to buy additional CF cards and took my small laptop and a new 1TB external SSD harddrive with me. Everything work as plan until on 5. day, the harddrive had an error message: Not Enough Memory Available.
Within 4 1/2 days on walks on the islands, I managed to take over 1 TB of pictures with my A9iii and a few with my A7Rv for landscaping. I could have turn down from 30 to 20 or 10 pictures per second with no pre-capture but I got some great shots with my setup that I would have missed otherwise.
In the future, I have to count on at least 1/2 TB per day on trips of a lifetime.
Although the sea lion was not moving, this shot was captured with the pre-capture setting.

• ILCE-9M3
• Sony FE 200–600mm F5.6–6.3 G OSS (SEL200600G)
• 200.0 mm
• ƒ/7.1
• 1/800 sec
• ISO 250

 

[iamdlewis]

For my first A9iii camera trip, I went to the Galapagos for a 7 day boat trip. I did not want to buy additional CF cards and took my small laptop and a new 1TB external SSD harddrive with me. Everything work as plan until on 5. day, the harddrive had an error message: Not Enough Memory Available.
Within 4 1/2 days on walks on the islands, I managed to take over 1 TB of pictures with my A9iii and a few with my A7Rv for landscaping. I could have turn down from 30 to 20 or 10 pictures per second with no pre-capture but I got some great shots with my setup that I would have missed otherwise.
In the future, I have to count on at least 1/2 TB per day on trips of a lifetime.
Although the sea lion was not moving, this shot was captured with the pre-capture setting.

I take 8TB of back-up space with me though it is really 4TB since each gets file gets copied to 2 drives. My historic rate for trips has been in the 2000-2500 images per day.

I highly suggest using the memory settings so that you have one that is set for action with high frame rate and another for what I call "bird in a tree" with a slower frame rate. This should help you in reducing the space needed but also help with time spent culling out all those basically duplicate images.

 

[Richard A]

1TB is not very big these days...

 

[Roland]

I take 8TB of back-up space with me though it is really 4TB since each gets file gets copied to 2 drives. My historic rate for trips has been in the 2000-2500 images per day.

I highly suggest using the memory settings so that you have one that is set for action with high frame rate and another for what I call "bird in a tree" with a slower frame rate. This should help you in reducing the space needed but also help with time spent culling out all those basically duplicate images.

I tried that and was so scared to miss something that I switched back.

 

[AlphaWorld]

If you filled a 1TB drive in 4 days, that’s a quarter TB per day.

I understand the desire to run at a high frame rate, but maybe turn it down on the mode, and use C5 when you know you need it (and set C5 to 60fps instead of 120!)

Maybe spend part of an evening deleting some of the duplicates? When you are running with a high frame rate, you definitely get lots of duplicates.

Or take a cheap magnetic drive, and dump everything on there, and keep the SSD for the must-keep shots?

 

[iamdlewis]

I tried that and was so scared to miss something that I switched back.

Another trip or so of going through hundreds of images of basically the same thing for each bird in a tree will cure that.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I have recently added another 4tb hdd to my PC. It will last me 4-5 years at current snapping rates.

I guess... we all photograph different things in different ways. In my search for the perfect-expression moment in concert photography, I could use burst mode. But I have more than enough with 50-100 pics from each event. And the noise would be intrusive.

Hey... If I had an a9iii and could use silent electronic shutter in mixed-LED lighting? That would be another world!

 

[Roland]

Another trip or so of going through hundreds of images of basically the same thing for each bird in a tree will cure that.

With my Capture One culling feature, it is not such a big deal anymore. And as stated, picking the perfect shot with no eyes closed, small foreground grass blade not obscuring part of the body, etc. is the reason why I chose a fast camera to begin with.
Hummingbird season in our garden is right around the corner