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Posts Tagged ‘photographers’

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Photographers Thoughts on Our USB Sticks and Boxes

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Although we’ve been supplying customised USB memory sticks for over a decade it’s only really in the last year that we’ve seen the uptake by professional photographers move from a trickle to a steady stream. But, if the reaction we’ve had in the last couple of weeks is anything to go by then it looks like the secret is finally out!

At USB2U we’ve worked hard over the past few months to make sure that the USB package we offer to professional photographers includes a wide range of top quality, high-performance USB sticks coupled with a growing range of custom gift box options and finishes.  Understandably photographers want to be able to stamp their own personality on any USB stick they order and that’s what we aim to  do – give them something that is, as far as we can make it, unique to them.

Here are just a few comments from Professional Photographers that we’ve supplied USB sticks to in the last couple of weeks:

Steven Brooks Photographer:  “When I finally decided to move away from dvd disks to a stick I really dod not know where to look. I asked a photographer chum what she uses and she recommended usb2u.co.uk to me. From the moment Karen took my order the whole process could not have been made easier and with regular updates of progress, designs emailed promptly, any tweaks to the design were made quickly, all the things you want when ordering a new product”

Christine Wehrmeier Photography: “Beautiful product backed by excellent service. I am absolutely delighted with my branded USBs. My logo has quite fine and intricate lines as it is a hand drawn design, but the quality and precision of the laser engraving is stunning. Delivery was quick and easy and friends and clients alike are super impressed. The best branded product I have! Thank you so much!!!!! I will be ordering more for sure.

mariannechuaphotography.co.uk “Sooo… I’d officially like to unveil my weird/just right for me new USB package! I will be loading client’s images onto these wooden USB sticks and wrapping them up in my personalised cotton fabric like sweeties, tied with bits of knitting wool. Each one will come customised with hand stamped tags from newspapers from the date of your wedding, and also a tag with your names handwritten on them! Simple, eco-friendly and weird”

Smudgedphoto “Quick, Tailored Customer Experience. Brilliant service from the start through to the finish. Understood what I wanted from my USB’s and matched it perfectly. Happy to listen to changes to get them just right and then once finalised lightning quick production and delivery. Will definitely be coming back in the future.

If you’re a professional photographer and you’re considering taking the plunge and buying some customised USB memory sticks then give us a call and we’ll talk you through the options. Send us your artwork and we’ll mock up ideas and print or engrave samples for you – we don’t charge anything for this service. You only pay if you place an order and then you only pay for the USB sticks and boxes you order. We don’t charge for mock-ups and samples.

 

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Photographers Thoughts on Our USB Sticks and Boxes

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Cheap and Fast USB Sticks – A Mutually Exclusive Statement

Friday, April 26th, 2013

If you’re looking to buy high performance USB memory sticks with fast read/write speeds then you’re best not to buy them from a company supplying promotional USB sticks.

The reason is simple – the vast majority of promotional USB sticks that are purchased are typically given away as part of a sales and marketing initiative of some description. As a “giveaway” the primary requirement is not speed and performance but value for money coupled with a product that looks good and can show off the brand that is printed on it.

Performance and speed comes at a premium and in the highly competitive promotional USB market most prices that are banded around will be for “standard promotional grade” USB sticks. What this means is that if you’re lucky you’ll get a Grade A (new and non-recycled) product that has read/write speeds of around 3MB -6MB per second. If you’re unlucky you could easily end up with sticks that look good on the outside but contain Grade B (re-cycled) components – these will be slow, they may be masked (the memory size is faked) and they are likely to have a short lifespan (the number of read/write cycles they’ll support will be small).

Forget any ideas of getting the sort of performance you’d normally associate with good quality high performance branded USB sticks you’d pick up in the high street – whatever anyone says unless you specify high performance chips and you’re willing to pay a premium (albeit often a small premium) then the USB sticks you’ll get from most companies selling “promotional” USB sticks will perform commensurate with this definition.

To be fair a decent promotional USB stick from a reputable supplier will be fine for most everyday needs. Problems only really occur when whoever buys then or uses them wants to transfer lots of large files onto them or wants to run large high quality video files from them – large files or multi-tiered data with complex file structures will challenge a promotional USB, often to the point of breaking – it won’t physically break but the data loaded onto it will either fail or corrupt.

For certain industries, professional photographers for example, speed, performance and a reasonable lifespan (backed by a decent warranty) are an absolute must. If these are attributes you want from your printed USB sticks then be very clear to tell your supplier what you plan to use them for and follow their advice. When and if they recommend you spend a little more money to buy an upgraded product remember that they are not doing it to squeeze a few extra pennies out of you they are doing it because they want the product they supply to work and for you to be happy and come back and buy again!

At USB2U we always recommend that professional photographers and videographers buy upgraded, high-performance USB sticks.

USB2U - A Trusted Supplier of Promotional USB Memory Sticks

USB2U - A Trusted Supplier of Promotional USB Memory Sticks

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Cheap and Fast USB Sticks – A Mutually Exclusive Statement

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Professional Photographers Don’t Get Duped buying USB Sticks

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

Professional Photographers if you’re buying USB memory sticks to load your client portfolios on then please be careful because we’re getting a growing number of panicky phone calls from photographers who have purchased USB sticks direct from China only to find when they try to use them that they aren’t quite what they expected!

The most common problem is the supply of “masked” USB sticks – that is a USB sticks that has been sold with say 1GB of memory but in reality it only has 256MB of real memory. The hard part is spotting the problem because the sticks will be labelled as 1GB, they’ll be invoiced as 1GB and when you plug them into any PC and inspect the “properties” of the drive it will suggest it’s a 1GB.
The only way to tell if you’ve been duped and sold “masked” USB sticks is to plug one of them in and copy data a large amount of data, ideally data up to the threshold of 1GB.

On screen it will look as though everything is copying but the real test comes when you take the USB flash drive out (remembering to safely eject it first!) and then plug it back in again – if it’s a legitimate 1GB drive the data you copied will be there but if it’s a “masked” drive the data won’t be there!

The problem can’t be fixed. If you have purchased USB flash drives for your photography business and you’re experiencing these problems then you’ve been duped and you’re not getting what you paid for. Your only recourse is to go back the supplier you purchased them from and sort it out – not so easy if you’ve bought them from some obscure factory in China!

To protect yourself we strongly suggest that you:

  1. Buy from a reputable supplier that has been around for a while and ideally check with other photographers and see what experiences they have had – checkout 2rd party review sites like TrustPilot, see what’s being said on Twitter and other Social Networks. 5 minutes spent doing a bit of homework could save you a whole world of grief!
  2. Don’t 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 it might be an early indication that you’re heading for trouble.
  3. Get a warranty and make sure it’s at least 12 months (ideally 5 years). Also be clear on how the supplier will fulfil its obligations under the terms of the warranty should you have problems.
  4. Do your own checks when you take delivery of your USB memory sticks – 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.

If you do discover that you’ve been duped and you need USB sticks in a hurry then at USB2U we’re happy to try and help and rush out some alternatives that are guaranteed to work. It’s a shame 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.

USB2U Wooden USB Memory Sticks

USB2U Wooden USB Memory Sticks

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Professional Photographers Don’t Get Duped buying USB Sticks

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Professional Photographers Choose Wooden USB Flash Drives

Thursday, November 29th, 2012

The last 12 months has seen a large increase in sale of printed and engraved USB flash drives to the Professional and Wedding Photography sector. For many it’s just a natural evolution from CD’s and DVD’s, for others USB flash drives offer a better and more professional way to present their clients work and for some it’s a new revenue stream opportunity.

Clearly these reasons are not mutually exclusive nor are they the whole story of why professional photographers have now decided it’s time to embrace USB sticks but the do represent what we’re told are the primary reasons for the move:

  1. CD’s and DVD’s have pretty much had their day and all of a sudden feel “old and traditional” in the same way that vinyl felt dated when people moved to cassettes/CD’s. New generation laptops and Ultra books (which combined account for around 70% of all PC’s purchased) are increasingly shipping without a built in CD or DVD player. Sales of CD’s are now easily outstripped by downloads and games and PC software is cheaper to buy if you don’t want a CD. Whilst CD’s and DVD’s aren’t dead yet we’re not far away from reading them their last rites!

    Rapid take up of tablets like the iPad and Nexus (that ship with no USB port) could cause a similar problem for USB sticks at some time in the future but for now they seem to have taken over as the de facto way to save, store and carry personal data around.

  2. Printed and engraved sticks don’t have the same restrictions on their form factor as CD’s and DVD’s (they don’t have to be flat round pieces of polycarbonate plastic) so they come in a wide range of styles, designs and shapes and are manufactured from materials like wood, metal, plastic, leather and PVC. Pretty much all of these can be personalised, printed or engraved and pretty much all of them look (and feel) better and more professional than a CD or DVD with a printed label affixed to them.
  3. People will pay a premium for a well-designed, well packaged USB stick and this is particularly true when they are pre-loaded with the wedding or portrait portfolio.
Professional Photographers Wooden USB Sticks

Professional Photographers Wooden USB Sticks

The challenge for Professional Photographers when considering USB flash drives for the first time is which type of drive from the hundreds on offer will best suit their business, their personality and will appeal to their clients. Equally important is the type of packaging or gift box to choose to compliment the drive (well-chosen gift boxes lift the overall perceptions of quality and value). Finally consideration should be given to the performance of the drive – this is an often overlooked area but if standard “promotional drives” are chosen there is a real risk that the drives will be slow and will struggle to handle large files.

Wedding Photographers USB Sticks

Wedding Photographers USB Sticks

One option, when narrowing down which style/type of USB flash drive to buy, is to look at what works for other photographers and use this as a guide.  A particularly popular option is a wooden USB flash drive – these are typically engraved or printed with the photographer’s logo and supplied in a black gift box which again is printed or engraved. Photographers seem to be choosing this option because they look fantastic, they’re warm and tactile, the have an “eco” edge to them and of course they’re not the sort of thing you can pick up a PC World or Fry’s!

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Professional Photographers Choose Wooden USB Flash Drives

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Why we recommend Professional Photographers buy High Performance USB Memory Sticks

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

One of the big trends in the professional photography sector is the move to supply customer portfolios on USB memory sticks. Typically the memory sticks are printed or engraved with the photographers’ logo/brand although occasionally the sticks are personalised with their clients’ details.

A good example of this is where the sticks are personalised with details of a wedding and then photos, video clips, details of the service and the speeches are then pre-loaded onto the sticks before being sent to the wedding guests as a memento of the day.

Whilst some professional photographers still prefer to use CD’s and DVD’s the move to use USB memory sticks has been hastened by the recent drop in the price of customised USB sticks, the availability of higher storage capacity sticks and the relative ease of finding local suppliers of customised sticks. Coupled with this CD’s and DVD’s are falling out of fashion, many of the latest laptops and ultra-thin notebooks are sold without a CD/DVD reader and frankly, no matter how well you print a CD they don’t really enhance the overall value of the brand printed on them.

Custom USB flash drives on the other hand can help photographers differentiate their service, improve their image, enhance their professionalism and provide a new revenue stream.  However for this statement to be true it is important that photographers ensure they buy USB sticks that are fit for purpose – externally (apart from the aesthetics of the different casing options; leather, wood, metal, plastic etc.) all USB sticks are pretty much the same. They have a standard USB connector on one end and the internal flash memory and controller is housed inside a case and it’s the case that is printed or engraved.

The real challenge when buying custom USB sticks is to make sure that the components that are inside the case (the flash memory and the controller chip and the capacitor) are good enough to support the use that photographers will put them to. If they are not up to the job then it can take hours to load images onto them (because the read/write speeds they support will be slow) and images loaded onto them can “fragment” – see the example shown here:

Distorted Image From a Low Quality USB Memory Stick

Distorted Image From a Low Quality USB Memory Stick

Bear in mind that most companies selling custom or printed USB flash drives are providing them to the promotional sector where “cheap” is the fundamental requirement. Typically promotional drives are bought in the thousands with an expectation that they’ll be thrown away or rarely used once given out – let’s face it a corporate sales brochure that are stored on a USB drive are  not as important as Wedding photos. Whilst the drives are still Grade A the internal components are right at the bottom end of the performance spec – If you think of it in camera terms these are like Grade A disposable cameras that you can buy for a couple of pound when what might be needed is a decent Digital SLR Nikon or Canon.

Of course if USB sticks are only going to be used to market your services then standard promotional grade versions might be fine but, if you’re entrusting them to carry important portfolios from events that can never be repeated and have a huge emotional significance then it’s worth making sure that you buy better quality sticks.

Our advice is to ask question not only about the Grade of the flash but the manufacturer of the flash memory (ideally chose a Samsung or Hynix memory and not an OEM look alike). Ask if better quality controller chips can be supplied as well and finally get details on the read/write speeds of the drives and any warranty that comes with the drives. Do remember though that warranties only get you replacement drives they won’t help deal with unhappy customers whose images are corrupted.

Finally choose a supplier with a proven track record, get views from other photographers than have bought from them, check out their Twitter feeds to see what other photographers are saying about them, check 3rd party review sites – 10 minutes homework before you buy could save hours or days of grief if you end up with the wrong product from a supplier that does not care once they have your order.

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Why we recommend Professional Photographers buy High Performance USB Memory Sticks

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Photographers Love Black Flip Boxes for their USB Sticks

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

If you’re a professional photographer and you’re thinking of buying some USB memory sticks printed with your logo or name on then you’re in good company! Given the number of enquiries we are getting at the moment it seems like the initial trickle of photographers abandoning CD’s and DVD’s in favour of more stylish and professional looking USB sticks has become a torrent.

The rush to USB sticks has been fuelled partly by the recent dramatic fall in the price of the larger 8GB and 16GB sticks (some of these have dropped in price by 50% and more over the past few months) and partly by increased competition in the professional photography market.

Photographers Choice of USB Memory Sticks

Photographers Choice of USB Memory Sticks

If you’re a professional photographer and you want to stand out from the crowd then a good quality and well packaged printed USB memory stick can really help. Not only do they look professional but they’re a great way to promote your name/brand, they’ll inevitably get passed around giving you plenty of exposure and of course you’ll be able to generate an additional revenue stream by selling them.

Whilst USB sticks on their own look good they look even better when made available in a custom branded gift box. The most popular option with photographers at the moment is our Black Flip Box with a custom black foam insert to match the chosen design of flash drive. The box can be printed (as shown) or we can engrave (etch) the lid as well which looks stunning.

The black boxes seem to work particularly well with our range of metal and wood flash drives. The overall package of a metal or wooden flash drive in a black gift box just looks classy and expensive. Even the best packaged CD or DVD is going to look dated alongside any of these options.

USB Sticks and Boxes for Professional Photographers

USB Sticks and Boxes for Professional Photographers

We carry lots of the USB flash drives in stock (including the wooden) options and we can print or engrave these and supply them in less than 24hrs if you’re in a hurry. We also carry lots of different packaging options (black boxes, tin boxes, magnetic clasp boxes and plain white cardboard boxes) many of which we can also brand and supply with your preferred USB sticks – just call us for details.

Of course, whilst supplying your images in this way will undoubtedly lift your profile and add to the overall professionalism of the service you offer there is no substitute for experience, natural flair and your ability behind a lens. Fantastic USB sticks might help you drive more sales and generate more revenue but it’s the quality of the photographs that will keep customers coming back for more.

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Photographers Love Black Flip Boxes for their USB Sticks

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Recent Trends In the Use Of Promotional USB Flash Drives

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

Everyone’s favourite little storage solution, the USB flash drive, has been with us for over 10 years and its popularity doesn’t look like faltering. Part of the reason for its continued popularity is because manufacturers continue to innovate and introduce new shapes, styles and designs and people continue to find new ways to use them.

Originally USB flash drives were primarily used as personal storage devices; replacements for floppy diskettes, CD’s and more recently DVD’s. The emphasis was on personal storage with most purchases being made by the individual for their own use. The drives were used to store and carry personal files (school and work files) and would typically be nothing more exotic that standard Microsoft office files.

Over the past few years dramatic price falls combined with significant increases in the amount of storage on a “typical” USB flash drive has seen a marked shift in the purchase and usage patterns of the USB drives. Some of the more interesting recent trends include:

Professional Photographers use USB flash drives to distribute client portfolios – the move away from 35mm film to digital image capture has given photographers the opportunity to give their clients not just printed photos but digital copies (files) of the photographs on some form of storage medium. Many photographers that originally used CD’s and DVD’s have now switched to USB flash drives. The move has been driven by a realisation that the drives look more professional, they can be sold in printed gift boxes and engraved or printed with the photographers’ logo and contact details.

Births, Marriages and Deaths celebrated on a USB flash drive – today people’s lives are charted and recorded digitally. Digital 3-D and 4-D images captured during pregnancy scans are now sold on USB sticks, births and marriages are photographed and the resulting images stored of USB flash drives and then distributed amongst family and friends. USB sticks are increasingly being used by the bride and groom as wedding favours (pre-loaded with the story of their relationship) and we’ve even seen USB sticks distributed a funerals (pre-loaded with photographs, scrapbooks, music and video clips) to help the mourners celebrate the life of the deceased.

USB Business Cards

USB Business Cards

Traditional paper business cards replaced by USB Business cards – rather than continue to hand out paper business cards some companies are now opting to hand out USB business cards. These are the same shape and size as traditional paper cards albeit they’re a little fatter at 2mm thick, but the real benefit of these cards is that they can be pre-loaded with the company’s brochures, presentations, audio files, media files, press releases etc. Not only are they a great innovation but they are a real talking point and by pre-loading them with relevant media they are really cost effective.

Printed Brochures and Catalogues distributed on a USB flash drive – Companies that have historically printed glossy brochures and then distributed them in the post are now increasingly using USB flash drives pre-loaded with electronic copies of the brochure. Not only are the drives more popular with the recipients but they are much cheaper to post.

Flash Drives take the Promotional Gift market by storm – millions of USB flash drives are given away by schools, universities and businesses every year. They are typically pre-printed with a logo, loaded up with data and then given away. The intent is to deliver information on the company, its products and service, to build brand awareness and loyalty and to give the recipient something that has a high perceived value – a printed USB flash drive ticks all of these boxes.

With printed USB flash drives now available from under £2 per unit and with speeds and memory sizes improving all the time it looks as though the future of the humble USB memory sticks is assured for a few more years yet. When the adoption of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (which delivers a X 10 increase in data transfer speeds) starts to gather pace expect further innovation to underpin continued sales and new directions of use.

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Recent Trends In the Use Of Promotional USB Flash Drives

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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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