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Posts Tagged ‘photographers’

Professional Photographers Guide To Buying Printed USB Flash Drives

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

If you’re a professional photographer who is considering abandoning CD and DVD’s in favour of USB Flash Drives then there are some basic facts you need to be aware of before you commit to buying flash drives printed that are printed with your brand or logo:

  1. Most companies that supply USB flash drives printed with a company brand or logo are principally supplying then as giveaway promotional products – the sort of thing that you pick from a company booth at trade and retail shows. Typically these flash drives won’t get a huge amount of usage and the demands the drives need to support in terms of read/write speed are pretty light.

    Typical read/write speeds of a “standard” promotional USB flash drive are going to be around 4MB per second (write) and 10MB per second (read). This is more than adequate if all you’re doing with the drive is loading up a couple of sales brochures maybe the odd short media file and links to your company web site but, if you’re a professional photographer or wedding video company you may (depending on what you are doing with the drives) need to specify certain minimum requirements – read/write speeds, grade of memory chip etc.

  2. If you buy standard promotional USB Flash drives and you then start to load very large video files or wedding portfolios onto them then you’ll immediately notice that they’re not the quickest of products. If you’ve been used to working on Apple Mac’s and you use top end Memory Cards with fast read/write speeds, or perhaps you use Firewire to move data around then by comparison a promotional USB flash drive is going to be a “horse and cart”.

    For example top end SD cards or CF cards have a read/write speed of around 40MB per second – X10 times the speed of standard promotional USB flash drives.

  3. Top end, high performance USB flash drives typically have read/writes speeds of 20MB (ish) per second, significantly faster than promotional versions but still not as fast as High Speed SD or CF cards. These high performance USB sticks also carry a significant price premium.
  4. If speed of data transfer is an issue for you then you might want to consider getting quotes on printed USB Flash Drives that work to the new USB 3.0 standard – these have read write speed of around 50MB – 100MB per second so they are blisteringly quick! Again, the downside is cost (they’re new so they’re going to be expensive) and you need a PC or Mac that is equipped with USB 3.0 USB ports to take advantage of the speed improvements. They’ll still work on USB 2.0 PC’s but only at USB 2.0 speeds! Still at least if you have USB 3.0 and you buy USB 3.0 sticks you can dramatically reduce your own data-loading times – your customer won’t notice any speed improvements until they upgrade to USB 3.0.
  5. A sensible compromise if you’re looking for decent data transfer speeds it to ask your supplier to quote for upgraded USB 2.0 flash drives – they’ll be a little more expensive but you should get something that has a longer warranty period and better performance with speeds closer to the High performance products sold by brands like Kingston and Lacie. Remember if you don’t ask for this you will just get “standard” promotional USB flash drives which are fine they’re just slow!
  6. Apart from speed the aesthetic of the USB flash drive will be important but there are lots of different models to choose from and the internal components of all of them can be upgraded to include High Speed, High Performance controller chips and flash memory modules.
  7. Ideally talk to your supplier about what you plan to use your USB flash drives for and get them to recommend a solution. If you’ve chosen your supplier well and they know their industry they should not only be aware of the issues but they should be able to put forward a range of different solutions.
Photographers UBS Sticks

Photographers UBS Sticks

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Professional Photographers Guide To Buying Printed USB Flash Drives

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Graduation Photos sold on Branded USB Flash Drives

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

It’s the end of the educational year and students are leaving school for the summer. Some of the lucky/unlucky students (depending on how you see it) are leaving three years study at University to enter the big wide world of work.  University Graduates means University Graduations and there are many of them each year throughout the UK.  Last week our local University, The University of Northampton was holding it’s Graduations.

USB Memory Sticks Used at Graduations

The graduation process is a good celebratory end to a three or four year course of study.  It can be however, quite expensive.  Behind the ceremony and the awards, graduations can cost a lot of money for the students on top of three years of accommodation and living costs.  Graduates need to pay for gowns and these have to be bought with a specific company so the cost is dictated and there is no shopping around for price.

Photos are another cost for those graduating.  Everyone knows that the graduation is about the photo taken holding the scroll and wearing the gowns.  Like the gowns, the photos can only be ordered through one company and they have an interesting price structure.

The photography company for the graduation sold the photos in packs.  The prices of the packs were a bit of a surprise because they were quite complicated.  There were packs with different sized images, packs with frames, packs with single photos, packs with family and single photos etc.  The only constant was that as the amount of photos and photo sizes went up so did the price of the pack.  There was one thing about their pricing that was easy to understand and made a lot of sense, for an additional cost you could have all of the photos that they took saved onto one USB flash drive or CD.

Along with CD’s the photography company was using branded USB flash drives to save the images and sell to graduates.  We are selling more and more branded flash drives to photographers as they move from CDs to USB memory sticks.  We are slightly biased but there are many reasons why USB flash drives are better than CDs.  For example, the device is more impressive, transfer speeds are much quicker, the branding is much more impressive and one of the biggest differences – the memory stick is re-usable.

Customers are more than likely going to copy the photos from the stick onto their computer and keep the flash drive for personal use, something which cannot happen with a CD.  The USB flash drive then acts as a marketing aid and a continual reminder of the photography company.

So for those companies and especially photographers out there wondering whether they should change from CDs to branded USB memory sticks we hope that you make the right decision and embrace the change.

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Graduation Photos sold on Branded USB Flash Drives

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Photographers Getting Burnt Buying Fake Flash Drives

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

We’re getting more and more calls from professional photographers who have purchased USB memory sticks from other suppliers (and occasionally direct from China) only to find when they use then that they have problems with them.

The problems typically come to light when the photographers load photos onto them from one PC and then they try to view the photos they’ve loaded on a different PC or Mac. More worrying is that their clients have problems viewing the photographs when they try to view them from the flash drive.

These problems normally occur when the supplied USB flash drives have been “masked” – that is a “B” grade flash memory chip with say only 256MB of storage has been made to look like a 1GB USB flash drive.

When these 1GB USB flash drives are connected to a PC and you view the properties of the drive it will list it as a 1GB drive, even when you copy nearly 1GB of data to the drive it will look as though it has transferred OK – the problems only begin when you take the drive out of the PC the data has been copied from and try and use it on another PC – all of a sudden “Hey Presto” the data you thought you’d originally loaded onto the drive has gone!!!!

Photographer USB Flash Drives

Photographer USB Flash Drives

This problem cannot be fixed. If you have purchased USB flash drives for your business and they are acting in this way then you’ve been duped and you’ve been sold a flash drive with less memory on it that you paid for. Unfortunately this appears to be happening more and more in the promotional USB market because most companies and photographers that buy them and supply them to their clients won’t check or think to check. Understandably once they have finished transferring the data to the USB flash drives they’ll typically remove them thinking their data or photographs are on the sticks!

At USB2U we’re happy to try and help and rush out some alternative USB flash drives that are guaranteed to work but typically these issues are only discovered at the last minute and if replacements are needed within a day or two you may have to compromise on colours, designs and sometimes print.

The only safe way to be sure you don’t get stung is to:

  1. Buy from a reputable supplier, ideally a supplier that understands the USB flash drive industry and is able to demonstrate they’ve been around for a while and that they supply other customers in your sector (it doesn’t hurt to ask for references either)
  2. Don’t just buy on price alone – if you’re being offered an “incredible deal” on branded USB memory sticks and other suppliers are suggesting they can’t get close to the price then its usually an early indication that you’re heading for trouble.
  3. Make sure you have at least 12 months warranty on any flash drives you buy and that you understand the replacement process.
  4. Buy locally so you have some recourse in the event of any problems. It’s much easier dealing with a supplier in your own country if things turn nasty and you need to resort to the courts to resolve any issues (hopefully it won’t get this far)
  5. Finally, do your own checks when you take delivery of your USB flash drives – load data onto a random sample (up to the limit of the memory you’ve paid for) and then try and read the data from another PC.
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Photographers Getting Burnt Buying Fake Flash Drives

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Increasing Number of Photographers Are Using USB Flash Drives

Monday, January 24th, 2011

It looks like 2011 is the year when photographers start to abandon CD’s and DVD’s and supply their clients with their wedding photographs and portfolios on branded USB flash drives.

Flash Drives - Wedding Photographers

Flash Drives - Wedding Photographers

The only surprise about this is that it has taken as long as it has for professional photographers to catch onto the benefits that well produced, boxed and branded USB flash drives can offer. Unlike standard CD’s or DVD’s flash drives are small and portable, they fit easily into a pocket or purse, they’re stylish and they’re less prone to breakage.

The latest generation of USB flash drives come in a wide range of different styles, finishes and colours and they can be supplied in a range of attractive boxes that compliment the flash drive. Above all the flash drives that are now being produced for photographers are working really well at generating repeat business and new orders. The reason is simple and its because the flash drives work as a great sales advocate on behalf of the photographers, they stimulate “chatter” and discussion, they provoke interest and they create a real “buzz” when handed out.

The falling prices for higher capacity USB drives coupled with smaller minimum order quantities and shorter lead times have all helped to accelerate the move towards branded USB drives.

In a world where anyone with access to a decent digital SLR camera thinks they are the next David Bailey it’s increasingly important for professional wedding photographers to differentiate themselves and to offer new and innovative services to their clients. USB flash drives are not a substitute for excellent photographic skills but they can help reinforce a photographers professional credentials and they provide a fantastic keepsake for their clients.

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Increasing Number of Photographers Are Using USB Flash Drives

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Branded USB Memory Sticks The Preferred Choice Of Photographers

Friday, August 20th, 2010

One of the biggest changes to the photography industry over the last few years has been the move away from film to digital photography. A market that was up until a few years ago almost exclusively film based is now almost exclusively digital based.

Most professional photographers and “snappers” alike will today use digital cameras or mobile phones to take their images and once taken the images are easy to store, enhance, share and it’s easy to produce print from them. For many the real joy of and benefit of digital photography is the ability to share their photo’s with family and friends by uploading them onto sites like Flickr and Facebook.

The immediacy of digital photography and the ability to take literally thousands of images for barely any incremental cost has turned us all into a nation of “snappers” and “posters” but when it comes to photo’s of that “special event”, family portrait or portfolio photo’s then we still, in the main, turn to Professional Photographers. The ability to take “fun” and personal “snapshots” is within the grasp of all of us but photography, good photography is still an art and a profession that by definition is best left to the professionals.

USB Photographers

USB Flash Drive - Photographers

Growing number of Professional photographers now not only supply their clients with hard copy prints of their photographs but they also supply them with a whole collection or portfolio of shots on some form of digital medium. For the last couple of years the digital medium of choice has been a CD or DVD because these carry large amounts of data (photo’s) and they do so relatively cheaply. The downside of CD’s and DVD’s is that they are not really considered a great “keepsake” and they do little to promote the Photographer’s business or create any form of recall –in short they do the job but they are just not great adverts for the Photographer’s business.

With the continued fall in the price of USB memory sticks allied to their proven use as a promotional product more and more Professional Photographers are now starting to use them to hand out to their client. The client’s photographs are pre-loaded on the USB memory stick and the USB memory stick is branded (printed) to carry the logo, contact details and typically the web address of the photographer.

Branded USB memory sticks unlike CD’s or DVD’s have great perceived value, they enhance the service offering from the photographer and they more importantly work as an on-going sales “billboard” which in turn should generate more business for the photographer.

Just as we’ve seen a significant shift in way in which we all take photographs its likely that we’re on the cusp of a change in the way in which professional photographers supply their images to their clients

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Branded USB Memory Sticks The Preferred Choice Of Photographers

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