transferring from camera to computer

hi,

i'm pretty much completely new to digital photography - been using an fe for

years but recently bought a d300. what software do you generally use to transfer

photos from your camera to computer? i've had a lot of problems with the nikon

software that came with my camera (takes up a huge amount of cpu time and sucks

up lots of memory, even with a gb of ram and an amd 3500 64x cpu), so i've been

using the windows scanner and camera wizard that pops up when i connect my

camera. will that affect the quality of my photos at all?

 

thanks.

The free Nikon Transfer program seems speedy and efficient on my ancient AMD machine, at least when I use it with a card reader. Or are you referring to some other Nikon software?

First of all, I'll have to say LUCKY YOU for getting my dream camera D300!!

 

I find using a card reader plugged into your computer's USB 2.0 is the simplest and fastest way to transfer the images from the camera. You can then use Adobe Lightroom to tweak your NEF RAW images. If you don't have Lightroom, you can download the free RAW Therapy to do the same.

Welcome to the D300 club!

 

Just curious! why people keep asking about transfer programs? What are they?

 

I only connect my camera to my computers (Mac & PC) with an USB cable, turn on the camera and right away I get a folder on the desk top of the Mac or the Explorer window on PC. Then I just move the files to wherever I want in the computers.

 

This can also be done with a card reader but I don't like to be removing the card from the camera to the card reader. There is a chance to damage the pins inside the camera and I also think that is one of the reasons why people keep having problems with memory cards. (This is just a thought)

 

Rene'

I am just the opposite, I don't like to connect the camera directly to a USB port on my computer and always plug the card into a card reader. I then use Downloader Pro to download the files to a new directory, renaming them on the fly to a filename consisting of the date, a camera identifier, and a sequential number based on the actual shutter actuations of the camera.

I always remove the CF card from both my D70s bodies and put them in a Firewire 800

reader on my MacBook Pro with OS 10.4.11. It's set to launch iPhoto 7.1.3 automatically,

where I just click the import button and faster than any other connection I've ever used, in

come all the photos. I also go to the Finder and copy the contents of the CF card to an

external hard drive, and burn a CD or DVD as an additional back up. I then place the card

back in the camera and format it.

 

I find iPhoto to be very useful and quick, with good editing and organizing features,

although I think you need to have OS 10.5 to be able to read D300 NEF. (I'm looking

forward to getting two D300 bodies to replace the D70s bodies sometime late in the year,

when I save enough money.)

With my D70 I always removed my CF card from the camera and used a card reader and Nikon transfer to move pohtos to my computer.

 

With my D300 i have found that it is much faster if I connect the camera to my computer (about 4 seconds per photo with the camera connected to the computer compared to about 15 seconds using a card reader).

 

Nikon Transfer can be set to transfer to a primary and a backup location at the same time giving you an instant backup of your work.

Every camera seems to come with it's own transfer software, but if you have Windows XP you can use its native camera transfer process to load the images to a specific folder then delete from the camera after. I use it for both my Nikon and Fuji. No point in loading yet another piece of software. You can then post-process with your software of choice. PS I never take the cards out of the camera.

I myself just posted a question about transferring photos from my Nikon D200 with Picture Project. It crashed.

 

IF I can retrieve all my archieve photo files in PP then I will always use the USB port to transfer my photos from now on.

Beware of transferring into program software that comes with the camera. I am learning the hard way.

 

Does anyone know if I uninstall Picture Project will I lose all my photo files from that software? Will they be regained if I reinstall program again?

 

Susan

Hook the camera to the computer or plug the CF card into a reader. Create a photo file folder on your desktop. Open the picture folder on the CF card. Drag the photos to the folder on your desktop. No special programs needed. Task completed.

whether you use USB or card reader, xfer programs or explorer to get your images into the PC, it's all what seems best to you among the many good suggestions. your problem with performance, on the other hand, haven't been addressed directly here. past forum posts have suggested removing unneeded apps and system services. run the MSCONFIG program in windows to remove unneeded startup items. one thing i've found that improves performance on my system is fast disk I/O. make sure you move your cache from Capture NX from a slow drive to a fast one. and also, make sure to defrag the drive before specifying a cache location, and keep the drive defragmented if things begin to slow down. also, your video driver probably has lots of bells and whistles that can be throttled back, in favor of performance (without sacrificing quality). image files -- especially RAW files -- are BIG, and it helps to optimize your computer to work with them.

If you use a USB cord, you will run into troubles if the power fails during the transaction. If

you use a card reader, you should be very - I said very - careful when placing the card in

either the camera or the reader. The pins move easily inwards or outwards if the position is

incorrect. As a result of such an incidence, several circuits in my D300 blew up. I still use the

reader approach but much more carefully than earlier.

I just created a download directory, turn on the camera and move the files. I make a habit of keeping the battery at a healthy level.

Whether you use a card reader or connect directly to the camera, the basic process is nothing more than a file transfer, which you can do with standard operating system tools (e.g., Microsoft Explorer). You must configure the Nikon camera in its menue to be a data storage device (rather than a remote device). The only thing you get from a special program is the ability to view or edit images at the same time, which is unnecessary and usually undesirable.

 

That said, an USB2 or Firewire card reader is about 3x as fast as the camera-to-computer method. Transfer from the camera also is a battery-hog. If you run out of juice, you can corrupt files in both the computer and memory card.

 

I notice that you have a x64 computer with 1 GB of memory. This is not nearly enough memory! You should have at least 4GB for an x64 system, and can use 3GB of that for Photoshop.

 

You don't have to worry about your video card configuration, nor do you have to defragment your disk drives if you use the NTSC file system (which is very efficient). It can take a day to defrag an 100GB drive giving you a negligible performance boost, only to have it fragged again after a day's use.

Hi, I've just joined photo.net. I bought a Nikon D300 a couple of months ago and have a question on the same topic (transferring from camera to computer), but a different issue. I simply want to be able to transfer my pictures to my computer with those photographed vertically rotated automatically.

In the Setup Menu on the D300 I have set Auto Image Rotation 'On' and USB to 'M/P' (I have also tried 'MSC'), then used Nikon Transfer and in ViewNX the pictures are rotated correctly, which is fine. However when I view them on my hard drive with MS Explorer they are actually still stored horizontally. From there I select the best and upload to my travel blog.

I know I can rotate them in Explorer (one by one) and some other programs automatically in batch mode (but it takes ages and is an additional time-consuming task I can do without) but I am on a 1 year trip and transferring thousands of photos a month so it's just not practical.

Can somebody please help - am I overlooking something or doing something wrong, or is there some other software I can use that will automatically transfer and rotate photos to their correct orientation on my computer in the one process.

Thanking you in anticipation

wow, thanks very much for the replies.

David: I was trying to use capturenx, i think, which i found to be very unstable and just infuriating to use - i didn't know there was a different program. i just installed nikon transfer and it seems to be very fast, actually stable, and easy to use - thanks very much. the photos i've transferred also almost seem to look better than those i transferred using the native win xp program - though maybe that's just my imagination.

 

Victor: I'll look into getting a card reader - for now, transferring from the camera seems to be working well enough, but a reader would be nice to speed things up a bit. as for the D300, i am very, very happy with it. although i feel a little bad about shooting less film, i am actually getting out and shooting far more photos now that i don't have to spend as much time developing (which, although fun, isn't exactly my favourite part.) best of luck to you.

 

William: thanks for the advice. everything else seems to be running reasonably quickly, so i think the problem is just the program i was using - from what i have heard, capturenx can suck up a lot of memory and cpu cycles - as soon as it opens, cpu usage jumps to, and stays at, about 90%. no problems so far with nikon transfer, which seems to run pretty quickly.

 

Everard: i'm not sure about a program to automatically rotate photos, but i do know that the windows photo viewer resizes photos to fit your screen when you rotate them, which seems to decrease the quality, which, it seems, can't be undone. if that's an issue, it might be better to use photoshop or gimp or whatever else to rotate instead, because they don't automatically save changes to your photos, unlike the windows photo viewer, which does seem to.

 

anyway, thanks everyone.

I had the same question as Everard. When I transfered photos to my computer using

Picture Project they were put in the Picture Project folder on my hard drive oriented

correctly. A few days ago, because I was having problems with PP that prevented me

from importing photos, Nikon Support suggested I download View NX and Nikon

Transfer. However, when I transfer photos to my computer with Nikon Transfer they are

put in the Nikon Transfer folder all oriented horizontally, no matter how the camera was

held when the picture was taken. They are all displayed correctly when viewed in NX,

but when I open them in Photoshop I have to rotate and resave half my photos. I shoot

in both NEF and JPG format and I seem to have this problem with only the JPGs. The

NEF photos are saved in the Nikon Transfer folder all oriented correctly. I, too, take alot

of pictures and it's very inconvenient and time consuming to have to manually reorient

half my photos.

 

I called Nikon Support today and the guy seemed surprised to hear my problem. He did

some tests using a D-80 (the model I'm using) and Nikon Transfer and confirmed my

results. He told me that since this is new software it may be a bug, or maybe just a

feature they decided not to include. He said he would pass on the matter as a possible

bug or an option to include in the next version of the software. The more comments/

complaints they get the more likely they might be to fix this.

 

If you want to call Nikon Tech Support to comment, the number is 1-800-NIKONUX