Management issues

Also known as - so now that I'm taking real photos, how the hell do I manage them?

The downside of having a real camera and lens is that all of a sudden, I'm taking a lot of very bad photos - and I can't tell this until after I've uploaded them to my computer.

What I've been doing up until this point is uploading everything to my photo manager on my machine (f-spot) and then uploading everything to whatever gallery it belongs in on SmugMug. I've been keeping my taken photos on my phone, as a backup. With larger files - this process is going to become unworkable. It will just take too long to import the photos to my machine. Not to mention running out of harddrive space, and laptop harddrives aren't that cheap to upgrade, either. I do have a network 2tb drive that can be used for backup purposes.

I guess this post has three major questions:
- How do I streamline the process of getting my photos off my camera and in the appropriate gallery on SmugMug?
- How do I set up automatic backup for good and mediocre photos (but not the really bad ones) from my not-always-on ubuntu laptop to my smb store? Clearly this relies on me sorting the photos first. That, or synchronisation of deletion of useless images. Either would suit.
- How do I make posting my 365project photo easier?

A few points:
- I like having my photos organised by year/month/date on my filesystem. It makes it a lot easier to figure out what I have and haven't uploaded, and also much easier to locate a particular photo, usually. I have many more days than I have subjects, you see. Also, it happens automatically - subjective sorting takes time, and whilst I do that for SmugMug, doing it twice would suck.
- I don't like manually organising files into folders. It is annoying, time wasting, and bugs me. This also explains the current state of my music collection.
- I don't mind tagging photos. It's simple enough to do in f-spot, although does not seem to be preserved on upload to SmugMug, which is annoying. Tagging things twice bugs me, although it may be useful metadata for a backup solution.
- I have limited HDD space, and living in .au, limited upload capacity. Aside from taking lower quality photos (which I am considering), how do I automate post-processing into a smaller size for upload, as well as keeping the larger size for backup in the network store?
- How do I streamline all this, especially with respect to my 365project? In an ideal world, I'd run a script with the path to the photo, and the following things would occur:
- the photo would be tagged '365project' on my laptop and SmugMug;
- the photo filename would be added to a spreadsheet (or other tracker) of days and dates for my 365project;
- the photo would be added to my project on 365project.com
- the sharelink for medium size embeddable from smugmug would be output.
- Extra bonus points: the blogger post would be entirely constructed and posted - possibly including a file of title, bonus surrounding text, and hashtags as a commandline parameter.
- And this would probably be a good time to trigger the photo backup, as I'll have been through the photos to pick one out, and there will probably be fresh photos on the system.
- Some notes here: blogger, 365project can both get posts via email; the tracker spreadsheet should ideally live in my dropbox.
- It would also be nice to have some form of easier method of uploading to SmugMug in general - the built-in in f-spot doesn't appear to work. Any tips on getting that working would be great.

Okay, power's about to get cut here; energex is upgrading some cables. I'll post this, and think some more.

To DSLR or not to DSLR

I've been posting a lot of photographs lately, with this 365project thing. And I'm really coming hard up against the limitations of my mobile phone camera. Whilst not as bad as some, I can't adjust focus, or do much of anything else, really, and I'd like to start exploring the techniques of capture a bit more.

At present, I have a chance at a secondhand Canon 450D, which I know has been taken care of well. I am seriously considering it. I know it'll tie me to Canon lenses For The Rest Of Time(TM), but from what I've figured out poking around the net, it's pretty much Nikon or Canon, and at the levels I'm likely to go to, much of a muchness. I'm very very tempted to go with the Canon body available, as well, it's available.

Due to financial constraints, I'll probably go with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens to start off with, although I'd really prefer a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM. Still, I figure I can always upgrade eventually, once I exhaust the possibilities, or get good enough so that it's actually an issue. I also have no idea where to source these things aside from random internet purchases (since brick-and-mortar are a ripoff). I could really do with some advice.

I'd also like a macro lens at some point, and for that I have NO idea whatsoever, yet.

Oh, camera bag and tripod. These would be nice. I am currently leaning towards crumpler for a camera bag, because I already have a crumpler bag which does me quite well. Tripod - I'd prefer something light and compact that still expands to a full size. I need recommendations, because my google-fu is weak in this respect, it seems. Advice on both bags and tripods would be great, if you've got some to share.

That's about it for now.