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Just back to photography after many years and new to the digital world. Have bought Q2 and got Fotos app working on my iPad Pro and subscribed to Lightroom. I don’t use a PC so will be limited to utilising the IPad. My aspirations are modest and I will only use Lightroom for cropping and auto correct to start with.


Some basic questions.

Where is the best place to store photos. I’m a bit concerned about using the Lightroom storage facility in case I move away from it in the future. Should I just use Apple photos or is Instagram a better solution and easier to share photos with family and friends etc.

I now see that a free ninety day subscription voucher for Lightroom came with the camera. I didn’t use this and just downloaded LR from the App Store.
Question -  is the Leica version different to and more suitable for the Q2 than the one I have downloaded.

Should I use jpeg or DNG or both bearing in mind my limited use of Lightroom as indicated above.

Many thanks in advance 

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Good morning...I am no expert, so for what it's worth....

I used the LR catalog system for storage forever and recently migrated to Capture One with ease.  I think most other editing systems have the facility to migrate easily from LR.  Use LR to start with and see how you like it.

I doubt there is much, if any difference in the Leica voucher version of LR and the version you downloaded from the App Store.

DNG for sure if you want the most from your editing experience.

Hope this helps a bit!

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Instagram is more for sharing your work to the wider public than for storage. I would not rely on Instagram for storage of your photos as you will see with use that Instagram heavily crops your photos to fit its frame sizing and also heavily compresses them to reduce size and thus quality. 

I use a combination of Apple Photos (local storage not cloud) and LR CC (not classic) for editing photos. I find LR CC more basic and thus easier to get on with than LR Classic. Overtime I may switch to Classic but for now I’m happy with LR CC and it seems to have the features I require.

Oh, and, yes, the 3 month free trial version you get with the camera is exactly the same as what you would have downloaded from the App Store.

Cheers,
Delirious.

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I would recommend storing your photos on an external HDD.  That way they are available to you no matter what device you may use in the future.  Always keep a backup as well.  
 

DNG is the way to go for maximum file data.

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+1 with what others have said. 

I’ve been using LR Classic since it first came out as a Beta version. 15 years. I still far prefer it in combination with Photoshop. LR Classic has grown to be very powerful now for developing photos, printing, managing your library of all photos and even making books using Blurb. I’ve done all that many, many times. I’m exclusively an Apple iMac and MacBook Air user. All of my photos are in a library on an external HD that is always plugged into my iMac. I prefer G-Drive HD’s. I backup my library to two other external HD’s at the beginning of each month or just following a major shoot. I do not re-format my SD card until I have the three full copies of my library (main library HD and two backup HD’s). 
 

My advice is move away from an iPad as your main photo managing, viewing and development tool. It’s very limited and the color on the display I suspect will not be as consistent as a full LCD display. Obviously it could still work fine if your needs are modest. 
 

The LR CC version has the one advantage that your photos are backed up to the cloud. You also can go between devices easily with the same photos. I do not need that capability and I like having full control of my backups. 
 

No doubt you should use DNG if you want to get the most out of the images. Just beginning though JPG’s will be better Out Of Camera (OOC) and may serve your needs for awhile. They have the advantage of not requiring a lot of post processing. 
 

The Q2 is a fantastic camera. I urge you to take lots of photos and see what you like for subjects. Also, follow this forum regularly and you’ll be inspired, helped along the way, and learn to really enjoy the hobby. 

Good luck. Look forward to your posts of images. 
Dan

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The Q2 is an expensive camera that is able to produce very high quality images. To get the best from it you need to take RAW images (DNG) not JPEGs. I don't think you have said how much storage you have on your iPad but it may not be enough if you use RAW images as the file size is very large. You probably need to store your images on an external hard drive. For the record LIghtroom doesn't store your images. The images on your hard drive are linked to LR. What you see and edit in LR is a virtual image. So you could store 2 TB of images on an external hard drive that you can then manage "virtually" in LR on your iPad. Persevere with LR - it will reward you. Finally, I suspect you will find an iPad limiting and in time will move to a laptop or desktop.

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I use an iPad Pro when I am traveling and shoot Raw + Jpeg.    I use Lightroom and it works well for me.    I also took a life time subscription to Pcloud for my storage.   That was a less expensive option than paying Apple or Adobe a monthly storage fee.    Shuffling the files around takes a little bit of getting used to but if you write down your workflow (I am old) it will help you keep track of where everything is.    I organize everything by Month/Year and then Project.      ie while on a trip this month would look like this:   (Folder Name) 2020 (Sub Folder Name)   6 June 2020  (Sub sub Folder) Bob's Birthday.    Hope that helps.

 

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2 hours ago, jwestman said:

   I organize everything by Month/Year and then Project.      ie while on a trip this month would look like this:   (Folder Name) 2020 (Sub Folder Name)   6 June 2020  (Sub sub Folder) Bob's Birthday.    Hope that helps.

 

This is very important information. Then you can organise stuff within Lightroom or Capture One however you want, as your catalogue is referring to the structure jwestman suggests. You might also want to be sure to have a back up. You can do that with another HDD, with a subscription cloud service or even for free using Amazon photos, if you pay for Amazon Prime.

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Thank you all for your really insightful and helpful replies. I am now busy organising my photos into folders and sub folders before backing up to my newly purchased Samsung SSD.

I will also use the LR back up and Apple I cloud back up which I am already subscribing to.
When that’s done I can get back to using the wonderful Q2 which I am appreciating more and more each time I use it.

I will persevere with LR although there is so much to learn - the tutorials are really helpful.
 

Thanks again 

Curious2

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Am 5.6.2020 um 11:34 schrieb Curious2:

Just back to photography after many years and new to the digital world. Have bought Q2 and got Fotos app working on my iPad Pro and subscribed to Lightroom. I don’t use a PC so will be limited to utilising the IPad. My aspirations are modest and I will only use Lightroom for cropping and auto correct to start with.

Mmmm, that sounds as a not too good idea as digital photos are very volaltile ...

I don't know if it's possible to attach a external disk or similar sorage medium to the IPad,
if so then buyt the necessary hardware and make it work.
If the IPad does not allow external storage devices, well then you have to move your photos to the cloud.
Whatever of the big cloud providers should be fine, as you have a Apple product cloude space ath their systems will probably work best.

To be operating system independent i suggest that you get a cloud space at a normal host provider or cloud provider that you won't be chained to the Apple cloud.

However, i strongly suggest that you get at least a (used) 13'' MacBook to be able to attach a external harddisk and edit your photos in a more comfortable way.

Chris


 

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You’re basically limited to on iPad and cloud storage.  You could probably use the Files app on the iPad (if running a recent release of iOS) to move them to an external USB storage device.  This requires having an iPad Pro with USB-C port though.  If you don’t have that, you’re gonna have to invest in a ton of iCloud storage or pay Adobe for space.  I’m a Lightroom Classic user on Mac and I routinely back up my photos to my Synology, back the Syno up as well, and backup the MacBook. Paranoid?  Yeah, a little, but I’m a network engineer by trade and see people lose data all the time that sets them back months and sometimes years. If your photos are important to you, you’d be best served by getting a laptop and a bunch of external hard drives to use for storage and backup.  

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Hello,

to be on the safe side, I do the following:

  • identical backups to several external disks of raw and processed images. The disks should not all be from the same brand and should not all be bought at the same time. Checking the readability in regular intervals and replace disks if necessary.
  • not relying on any commercial archiving software, since nobody knows how long this will be supported (think about many years into the future! See what happened to Google's Picasa.). I write metadata into the images with EXIFtoolGUI (e.g. PersonsInImage, event, ... information the camera cannot write for you automatically). The metadata are exported into a plain text file and then imported via VBA-macro into an EXCEL spreadsheet. There I can use filtering and links to the images for display or exporting the selected subset of images to share the selected images with others. Should the EXCEL-format some time in the distant future be no longer supported, I can always fall back onto plain text files, which, this is my assumption, will be readable forever.
  • I would not use a laptop or ipad for processing the images without having checked the gamut of the screen to be at least sRGB.
Edited by Jossie
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Jossie.

fascinating insight into almost bullet proof archiving.  Can't argue with the processes.  However, the it appears that OP doesn't have the same outlook and would have to enter the learning curve at the very bottom as well as invest in a whole range of additional equipment and learn programming.  The reality of his current position is that he doesn't have the most basic storage facilities and is relying on very inappropriate and  inadequate systems to store and edit his images.   I doubt the OP has ever seen the images in their full glory.    Hopefully he will pick up and adopt some basic advice from all the respondents on this thread.

Edited by lucerne
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On 6/14/2020 at 11:21 AM, Jossie said:

I would not use a laptop or ipad for processing the images without having checked the gamut of the screen to be at least sRGB.

And calibrating...

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