Show HN: Raw Image Storage for photographers using S3 and Glacier (opens in new tab)

If someone open-source, encrypted backups at that price, I would buy it in an instant. What I want is, basically, rdiff-backup on EncFS, but I haven't found a way to hack the two to work together.

There was a story on HN a few weeks ago by a photographer wanting this kind of service. I found the discussion very interesting.

Is this in any way inspired by that? Or is this a coincidence?

Couple of things...

First, I really dig the "Made with ♥ in Nashville, TN" footer. Way to have some pride. People need to pimp their non-SV residences more.

Second, I've been mulling over doing something like this. Since you're doing it already, please steal my idea. Make a connector for LightRoom and make it stupid simple to link a RAW with exported JPEGs.

I don't use Smugmug but what possible advantage does this have over Smugmug? Even their top tier plan with lots of features is only $300 a year. All their plans have unlimited storage. $300 a year would only cover 625GB at $0.04/GB.

If you're content with the 2048x2048 pixel limit for your stored photos, picasa is ulimited and free. (You do have to sign up for Google+; without it, the pixel limit for photos that don't count towards the quota is smaller.)

Looks good, I signed up. You only support photos?

I do IT support for a few working architectural photographers. Over the years I've thought about this too (at least, I've worked the numbers a few times). It's hard to make it work; they need a minimum of 8TB of storage for existing material, then growth by about 2.5TB yearly (to date, but most are about to start time-lapse video). Though, your cold storage approach is intriguing.

Napkin calculations:

  0.04  /GB * 1000 = 40.00 /month (curr) =  480.00/yr
            * 2000 =                     =  960.00/yr
            * 3000 =                     = 1440.00/yr

  0.004 /GB * 8000 = 32.00 /month (cold) =  344.00/yr + 48.00/yr/TB
                                                      + 100.00/yr/2TB
                                                      + 175.00/yr/3.5TB

  1 shoot = 25GB (stills only) or 50GB w a 30 sec TL (add 25GB)

  ~100 shoots /yr ==> 2.5TB/yr @ 25GB, 5TB/yr @ 50GB

[Aside, that's 5-12 mins to upload (25Mbp/s - 10Mbp/s, only 3 mins @ 50Mbp/s). So consider additional internet cost.]

Without frequently juggling current to cold, or doing yearly compounding calculations, I'd eyeball this at ~$1300/yr, with growth of $150/yr, each year.

One way to make this more attractive is to leverage the online storage to build other recurring-revenue generating services, but most photographers don't go for that type of thing. (In my experience, stock image sites, etc. are primarily the realm of hobbyists.)

You also have the trust/confidence problem. I suspect every photographer will want to maintain their own backup as well. So, they won't "save" money (even if online storage was less expensive, but I suspect it's not) because they still need to pay for local storage. Of course, for apples to apples, you need to factor in time to maintain those backups, either my hourly rate or their own; things like disk-testing, data juggling (downsizing 1TB -> 3TB drives, etc.). But again, it's still 'extra' cost, because they won't (IMO) switch to solely online storage.

A question:

Are you providing tools to allow photographers to leverage their online storage? E.g. Dropbox-like sharing with clients (even just contact sheets?), integration against online print services, store-fronts for image sales, etc.?

All that said, I'm interested in seeing your private beta though. I think this can work, one day. :)

We applied to YC with this idea last year. I wrote about it in the last thread on this topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021507

Overall, your two biggest challenges are going to be convincing people they need backups (they still don't know, we tried) and pricing. Currently, Backblaze gives me unlimited backups for $5/month or less. With nearly half a terabyte of photos, it's cheaper for me to back up everything with them than use a service like this, which doesn't back up the rest of my stuff.

That said, I hope you guys can find a way to make it work!

I found your pricing to be unclear. You say it starts from $0.04/GB, but is this for the cold storage or active storage. If I uploaded 50GB of photos to "cold storage" immediately, what would be the monthly cost? What if I then uploaded another 10GB into active storage, what would the monthly cost be for 50 cold and 10 active?

I've signed up though. Email is similar to username ;-)

I've been using the FastGlacier GUI client and paying $0.01/GB/mo. Of course Glacier pricing increases for retrieval, early deletion, etc. But there is only one middle-man (Amazon). On OSX, Arq looks like the best client.

"With our pay-as-you-go pricing, you pay a base rate" LOL