POLL: Which online service do you use to store your photos?

[Turkish]

I am about to switch to online services to store my photos. I am willing to pay upto $30/year for the pro accounts so space shouldn't be a problem as this seems to fit the bill for most of them. I don't want to use my own hosting because I don't trust it but that's another story. Anyways, so which one do you use and what are the pros/cons for it? Gracias

 

[vshah]

smugmug...if you write an app using their api, they'll give you lifetime free hosting

 

[IronWing]

beyourownpornstar.com

 

[Steve]

Picasa, when it's not pics.bbzzdd.com or www.pictars.com or http://www.rootminus1.com/freepics/

 

[fatpat268]

Depends...

imageshack if I need to upload quickly... flickr if I need to upload a whole set of pictures.

I used to use photobucket, but half the time their site doesn't work correctly in firefox for me.

 

[PrinceofWands]

None. I have hard drives.

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

 

[TestedAcorn]

I mainly use photobucket but i use pics.bbzzdd.com on occasion.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

I've never once had the need to have 30GBs of photos with me. If I ever did I'd set up remote access to my home file server. *shrug* personal preference I guess.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

I've never once had the need to have 30GBs of photos with me. If I ever did I'd set up remote access to my home file server. *shrug* personal preference I guess.

reliability of your home server is far less than $30/yr w/ flickr or smugmug. All depends on your needs.


I use flickr mostly, I like the community based approach, and it's cheap to have an "oh shit" copy of everything. It's also nice when most of my family uses it, and we can just easily share with each other. But flickr is very "stream of conscious" and not easy to traditionally share albums and such.

I also started using smugmug, but more for client presentation/work, and it's a bit more expensive to start with. This is more traditional in having albums, and better privacy management IMO.

All depends on what you want to do. Picasa lost out for me because they resized your uploads (not sure how true that is if you pay for more space, but it gets expensive vs flickr or smugmug).

 

[ja1484]

I don't store photos. I remember shit. It's less labor intensive, and I'm not arrogant enough to think anyone else gives a shit about some random scene from my life.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

I've never once had the need to have 30GBs of photos with me. If I ever did I'd set up remote access to my home file server. *shrug* personal preference I guess.

reliability of your home server is far less than $30/yr w/ flickr or smugmug. All depends on your needs.


I use flickr mostly, I like the community based approach, and it's cheap to have an "oh shit" copy of everything. It's also nice when most of my family uses it, and we can just easily share with each other.

I also started using smugmug, but more for client presentation/work, and it's a bit more expensive to start with.

I understand, though you can't claim the reliability issue as fact. I have about 7100 hours uptime *knocks on wood* right now, and no losses thanks to my array. All that on a computer pieced together from spare parts, using entirely free software.

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

I use flickr mostly, I like the community based approach, and it's cheap to have an "oh shit" copy of everything. It's also nice when most of my family uses it, and we can just easily share with each other. But flickr is very "stream of conscious" and not easy to traditionally share albums and such.

This is my main concern with Flickr. I currently have a free account there and Picasaweb looks like it would be easier to just store and share. But Flickr is $25/year for unlimited storage and Picasaweb is $20/year for 10GB or $75/year for 40GB, which makes it much more expensive than Flickr (just as you said).

Since I am gonna use this mainly for storing backups of my photos, I may just go with Flickr.

Does Flickr have a download whole set/album option as a compressed file?

Thanks.

Edit: Also, do you know if there's a way to take users straight to your sets rather than photostream when they type in your personal Flickr URL? I took a look at the settings but couldn't find it, which is quite annoying.

 

[LS8]

I host my own photos.

 

[CrazyLazy]

Get it a host, lot easier to upload then flickr/photobucket.

 

[AccruedExpenditure]

Facebook

 

[mugs]

I store my photos locally. I use Picasaweb to display my photos.

 

[Brainonska511]

You're going to use an online service for backups? Why not just get an external drive for backups. The only reason I use a photo site is to show photos to friends.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I don't, but a cousin of mine who lives in Germany uses a site called dropshots. I don't care much for taking/collecting and storing photos, but if I did I'd probably use it too.

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511
You're going to use an online service for backups? Why not just get an external drive for backups. The only reason I use a photo site is to show photos to friends.

Well I travel a lot and I don't want to carry an external drive with me. I'll also occasionally share photos with people....

 

[Baked]

I don't store my photos online, but I do upload photos to picasaweb sometimes. But most of the time, I just email photos to people. Store photos online... lol...

 

[jamesbond007]

I like Flickr as an additional 'backup' location. I enjoy the capability to make galleries/sets private or public. This way, I limit who can see the photos.

For those wondering, I do not believe you can upload compressed files of any kind. Taken from the website:

Flickr officially supports JPEGs, non-animated GIFs, and PNGs. You can also upload TIFFs and some other file types, but they will automatically be converted to and stored in JPEG format.

Flickr is fast, no limits of any kind (assuming you have the pro account), and it's reliable. There is also a program you can install on your machine (OSX and Windows variants) to assist you with uploading images, tagging, and creating galleries.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

Why in the world do you need access to 30GB of photos 24/7?

im closing in on 50 gigs and i just store things locally on HDDs mirrored backup + DVD archive

If I put stuff online i normally host them myself

 

[KK]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

Why in the world do you need access to 30GB of photos 24/7?

im closing in on 50 gigs and i just store things locally on HDDs mirrored backup + DVD archive

If I put stuff online i normally host them myself

Why wouldn't you if you could?

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: KK

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Turkish

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
None. I have hard drives.

I don't like carrying HDs with me. And I have yet to find a $20 thumbdrive that can store 30GBs of photos.

Why in the world do you need access to 30GB of photos 24/7?

im closing in on 50 gigs and i just store things locally on HDDs mirrored backup + DVD archive

If I put stuff online i normally host them myself

Why wouldn't you if you could?

Exactly.

For the one who wonders, I purchased a Flickr Pro account an hour ago and like it so far.