I read, I planned, I watched and I read some more… Then I had to learn and find what worked for what I had and what I could bring with me. Workflow while on a Safari in a remote area is different. Early mornings and early evenings with limited technology to what you can bring can strain a “typical” workflow.
My intent was broken down into minimizing complexity and maximizing security. The last thing I wanted was the memories of a trip of a lifetime being lost due to a bad decision or confusion.
On my workstation at home, I have 2 computers, 3 monitors, clear and well laid out peripherals with backups happening automatically of all computer based data. During a safari? Not so much.
The basics behind my workflow were to shoot images to dual (XQD / SD) mirrored slots in my Nikon D850. That would give me immediate field “backup”. I chose to use 64GB cards so that any major or catastrophic failure would be minimized to a few hundred images. With XQD Cards (and now CF Express) remaining fairly pricy and not many issues with SD Card speeds, I chose to use a 1 to 1 ratio through 2 cards each trip out. This allowed me to safely shoot nearly 1,200 images per drive.
I brought 24 SD Cards and 2 XQD’s. The SD’s were all pre-formatted in the camera body and placed in a Black Pelican carrying case. Once full or once the game drive was complete for that session, they were write protected and placed into a Red Pelican carrying case.
The XQD card was copied to a 2TB SanDisk Extreme SSD storage drive and that file was then imported into Adobe Lightroom via “Cope with DNG” on a 13″ Apple MacBook Pro.
Once I verified that the original image was on the SSD Drive and the DNG file was imported into Lightroom, the XQD card was put back into rotation with an in camera formatting.
Although it may sound complex reading through it, it isn’t much of a variation of my typical workflow other than the permanent storage on the SD Cards.
In the end, it worked well and there isn’t much I would change other than more XQD cards to put into that rotation.
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