This forum is for posting your best bird photos and videos. Although the site is focused on BC Birding, topics here and photo postings can include birds from around the globe. As well, provide a link to your photo galleries.
By MDB8
#88448
Flickr changed ownership several months ago and now the new owners are starting to fiddle with the service. Pro users will now pay $50 U.S. per year, with some discounts available for other services.

The big change for me is that Free Users no longer will be able to access 1 TB of storage. Instead they will be limited to 1,000 images and uploads will not be possible if you reach that limit. These changes will start in early 2019. Users will have a month to change to Pro and afterwards their images in excess of the limit will be deleted by age. Oldest first. I never used Flickr to store any images and hence hardly accessed the 1 TB limit. However, I have about 7,500 JPEGs on my Flickr account. I know I won't be going "Pro", so eventually Flickr will be eliminating most of the images I have uploaded. My personal "liked" JPEGs total around 15,000 and they are on a directory on a RAID drive connected to my desktop PC. So none of my photos will be lost, just not available for others to view. (My true archives are stored in TIFF format and also reside on several large RAID drives.)

Previously Flickr allowed 200 images for Free Users. I did manage that by eliminating older images myself prior to uploading new one. I doubt that I'll bother with such housekeeping and just leave the account dormant. Sic transit.

I am not a member of any so-called Social Media service, not liking the concept. Anyone know the limits of various other so-called Social Media services? Facebook, Instagram, etc.

And, FWIW, there are new images uploaded on my Flickr account since I last submitted a post here.
By mcrosbie
#88483
As far as Facebook goes, there appears to be no limit, however, I haven't posted more than 20 photos in one day. I try to watermark my photos prior to sharing on Facebook, as there is no protection for our photos posted there. At least Flickr gave us the option to chose copyright and not allow others to download our photos. I would not use Facebook as a place to backup my valuable photos online. I personally pay to use OneDrive from Microsoft. I also upload many of my photos onto Google Drive and Dropbox. I tried using Speedybackup but it was horribly expensive and you had to keep subscribing repeatedly. I stopped using it.
By MDB8
#88484
I recall when a couple of cloud services went defunct. Customers lost all their data. I don't expect MS to go defunct, but I just don't trust such services. Like giving your DNA to Ancestry. It's there for everyone to use. I assume that you can use strong encryption for cloud services (really strong encryption, no encryption with limits).

Regardless, I use NAS and simple external drives such as those shown in the link. My NAS box has 5 drives ("Reds") and is configured as a RAID 10. Almost impossible to fail. Also, the box has its own processsor and, as it only uses 4 drives and the 5th is a spare, if a drive fails, the processor immediately activates the spare and loads it with the data that was previously on the failed drive and sends me an e-mail. I can simply press a button to remove and replace a damaged drive.

Nowadays, though, I use the Western Digital My Book Duo drives which I configure as RAID 1 (one drive mirrors the other). The top of these boxes opens, allowing you to replace a damaged drive, should one fail. They connect to your PC via a USB port. These WD boxes also contain "Red" drives which have a reputation for reliability.

https://www.wd.com/products/external-st ... k-duo.html

I'm still uncertain what to do about the Flickr changes. Most of my photos are organized by Groups where a Group is a species. It would require many many hours for me to re-organize to maintain the Group structure. If Flickr deletes old images by date of upload, many Groups/Species may end up being empty of images. Also, should I ever obtain images to populate more than 1,000 species, then these new Flickr rules would stop me from maintaining my current format. Seems best for me just to walk away from Flickr. I have a strong aversion to subscription business models such as Flickr is imposing. I could elaborate, but it would require too many words to type.
By Guyzerr
#88487
If you upload a photo to ANY social media site it will be degraded. If you're ok with that continue on. If not, pay for the service at a reputable site. If you can afford the camera you can afford to pay for someone's service / site. Nobody survives by working for free.
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