When New Gear Creates New Challenges

As the holidays draw ever nearer, retailers are ramping up their discounts, trying everything they can to attract consumers before the close of the year. For many photographers, this represents a prime opportunity to upgrade their gear, whether they need front-end tools such as a new lens or camera body, or back-end items such as a new computer to speed up their workflow. Of course, with new gear, comes new challenges.

Such was my position recently, as I’ve noticed my six-year-old MacBook Pro getting sluggish and acting wonky over the past few months. When B&H Photo recently dropped the price of a Late-2016 model of the 15-inch MacBook Pro by $700, it was time to strike. The new laptop gave me upgrades in my display, processing speed, and memory (all of which are, obviously, crucial to a photographer). It also came with a new problem — migrating my photo catalog to the new machine. 

While my old laptop had two USB-A ports, an SD card port, an HDMI port, and a Thunderbolt port all built in, I unboxed the new rig to see four identical and rather strange-looking ports. A quick Google search revealed the identity of the new ports — USB-C. Unfortunately, I had failed to notice while shopping that Apple made the decision last year to ditch USB-A ports for USB-C, and thus, I quickly realized all of my computer accessories were suddenly inaccessible. I couldn’t connect my WD My Passport 4TB external hard drives. I couldn’t plug a memory card into the side of my laptop. And, when I downloaded Adobe Lightroom Classic (my preferred desktop catalog management system), I couldn’t access my old photos. 

My first thought was that I had to shell out a few more bucks to purchase some dongles that would adapt my old USB-A wires to the new computer. Of course, the salesperson at my local electronics store gave me the wrong adapter and I was once again left staring at my beautiful new computer with no photos on it. Given that my Lightroom catalog is over 200 MB, emailing it to myself wasn’t a viable option. I could have used a file sharing service such as Dropbox to migrate the catalog, but I still needed to be able to connect my external drives to the new computer because I don’t store my raw files locally. Instead, I store them all on two drives and in the cloud. 

Fortunately, even though I usually connected my drives directly to my computer via those now outdated USB-A slots (much to my wife’s chagrin as the wire clutter was a bit out of control), I had made sure to purchase wireless hard drives the last time I invested in memory storage. The task now became setting up my wireless hard drives on the new computer, moving the catalog onto the drives, and then importing it to the new computer. 

Wireless Drive Setup

Different drives will obviously have a different setup process, but Western Digital’s was fairly simple. First, I turned on the external drive, then connected my computer’s WiFi to the network generated by the drive. The network password was printed directly on the drive itself, making it easy to find. Next, I accessed the drive’s user interface by entering mypassport/UI into the address bar in Safari. From there, the website guided me through the setup process. Now, when I open the Finder, I see the wireless drive located on the left side. 

Migrating the Catalog

Moving to my old laptop, I connected my hard drive using the USB-A port. I then opened the Finder, and went to Pictures > Lightroom and selected the proper catalog. A simple drag and drop copied the catalog to the hard drive, which I then safely ejected. 

Importing the Catalog

On the new computer, I reconnected to the hard drive wirelessly and pulled the catalog into the Lightroom folder. From there, I opened Lightroom, clicked the “File” tab followed by “Open Catalog” and selected the proper catalog. Boom. All my photo previews, presets, collections and metadata were instantly accessible. 

Up and Running

In the end, the MacBook Pro's reliance on USB-C ports was a brief, yet frustrating, bump in the road. Ultimately, though, the result is that I have streamlined my workflow by having wireless access to my hard drives, which has the added benefit of reducing wire clutter in my office and making my wife just a bit happier. I may yet purchase a couple of dongles - particularly a USB-A hub with built-in SD and CF card readers - to speed up my workflow, but this time, I'll make sure to verify they work with my current equipment before purchasing.