Wow!!! That is a super idea....will give that a try.

I have expressed concerns about this for many years now. I like to point out the fact that there are negatives from the civil war, for instance, carefully stored in Washington, D.C. A historian can take nothing more than a 10x lupe and a light table and retrieve millions of bits of information from these images. What type of buttons did the Union soldiers use on their uniforms? What kind of cheap whiskey was Grant drinking? What type of firearms, knives, cooking utensils, saddles and on and on and on. I ask all of you............
One hundred and fifty years from now, hopefully one can still look at those carefully stored negatives with a magnifier, do you really think anyone will be able to retrieve any thing from your DVD? They may not even know what they are?
My father shot 8mm Kodachrome movies in the 1950s...they are family treasures...sure would like to get them digitized...what a pain...
I going to take a wild guess...at the snowball rate of technology...150 years from now, digital will be looked on much as the cavemen are today.....

An old trick gets that way from being a good, useful trick in the fist place.....

I agree...first of all, my external hard drives are only plugged in when I am using them. Also they are always....ALWAYS...plugged into a very fine APC surge arrest unit. As soon as I add files or use files from the HD I take it off line and unplug it. I've never had a problem. Also I try to keep all my files in AT LEAST TWO SEPARATE STORAGE UNITS. Common sense goes a long way.

I meant to say the outside corner where two walls from a 90 degree angle. Think night exposures, etc.

Also, I've made a number of nice shots using the camera vertically with a pod pressed into a corner of two walls.

I sometimes shoot large sports arenas...numerous times I've used either my trusty hand towel or in more recent times my "Pod." I've shot with a 5DII, battery grip and various lenses sometimes making one second exposures at high f-stops. You can get places up high that are a true pain to attempt using a tripod for...lay your bean bag on a rail or seat back, TAKE A DEEP BREATH, and squeeeeeeeeze one off. Shoot three or four, you can count on at least one that is every bit as tacky sharp as the tripod would have been. Trick is to make the camera "one with the solid object" and keep pressure on it while you shoot. Done it many times...works well. You can make the shot and be done with it while you would still be fiddling with the tripod....

I use a Western Digital "my passport" when I do location work. It holds 500 gb. I also use Western Digital 1 tb external hard drives in the studio for backup storage. There may be better brands but I started with WD after reading some online reviews and I've never had a any type of problem. I stand in awe of the tiny "my passport" what a great solution. If it is a really, really important job I wait till I am "unwound" in my hotel room, dump my RAW files from cards to my laptop, to my WD "my passport" and then to 8 gb thumb drives. I then keep these all separated...i.e., the thumb drives are often just carried home in my pants pocket. I suppose this is overkill............but I've never lost a file!!!

If you are a serious pro....shoot nothing but RAW...buy Phase One...use moniter calibration...control the known universe...

As a Navy photographer in sunny southeast asia (read hot, sticky, sweaty) in the late '60s...I have always carried a small hand towel in my bag...often around my neck. It keeps straps from eating your neck. Sometimes it's very nice to wipe the perspiration from your face and head so it doesn't end up on your lens or viewfinder. IT ALSO MAKES A WONDERFUL TRIPOD. The towel can be molded into a hand rail, chair back, rock just about anything. Someone now makes a small bean bag with a quarter twenty built in...they don't cost much and work well. (wish I had thought of it...)

Early on I used CD's then moved to DVD's. I now only burn disk to give clients a "Proof Sheet." My storage has evolved to 1TB external hard drives. They are a much better deal...save time and space and there is no comparison when looking for something you shot five years ago...
I'm strictly MAC (as all photographers should be...), when you hit the radioactive "burn" button, a window should come up at which time you can choose what speed to burn at (within the limitations of the disk you are using.) I generally choose a somewhat slower speed. This is perhaps stupid...me photographer not computer tech.............

Cindy...You can make wonerful images with any of the cameras and lenses mentioned so far. I am an old pro and own both sensors. If you do much wide work the small sensor is worthless. As for the 24-105 lens...I also own one...It is a very nice piece of glass but fairly slow at f4. It truly all depends on what you plan to photograph. I can tell you the best all around combo in my opinion is the 5DII paired with the 24-70 2.8L.
A wonderful all purpose bag would contain the 5DII, 24-70 2.8L and the 70-200 2.8L. As my college prof used to mumble....ya want a little wider...ya want a little closer...Hey, ya got legs don't ya?

I am an antique photojournalist. I was dragged into digital kicking and screaming. Now I wouldn't return to film for any amount of money. I own several Canon cameras including a EOS 1Ds II and a 5D mk II. I absolutely love the 5DII with a battery grip BG-E6...you will never run out of power...If I could only own one lens it would certainly be the 24-70 L 2.8...
You only live once... buy a 5DII and the 24-70...you may never need or want anything else.