ARE YOU RUNNING out of storage space on location with lots of video files and high resolution raws? Or do you just want a fast way to store and then quickly access your images. If so, LaCie’s latest Rugged drive could be of interest.The stylish, orange-rubber shelled, portable drives from LaCie have been on film and stills sets for many years and they’re called ‘rugged’ because they’re designed to take the rough and tumble of a working production environment – wherever that might be!

The latest Rugged drive is the RAID Pro 4TB, designed by Neil Poulton (although to be honest, it looks very similar to preceding Rugged drives!). It offers up to 240 MB/s in RAID 0, the configuration designed for speed as it is writing to two drives simultaneously. However, for photographers and video producers who are concerned about having a digital backup, the RAID 1 configuration can be used instead. This halves the capacity of the drive down to around 2TB, but now you have two copies of your files so if one of the drives were to fail, all your work is safe and sound on the second drive.

Of course, both drives are in the one case, so if you lose the case, that’s a problem. Perhaps a second Rugged drive as a separate backup is an even better solution?

The Rugged RAID Pro 4TB has an integrated SD Card Reader, so you can quickly offload content using LaCie’s quick import toolkit. The portable drive also sports the latest USB-C connector and is compatible with both next-generation Thunderbolt 3 computers and backward compatible with USB 3.0.

Of course, the reason the Rugged drives are so popular is because they are shock, dust, crush and water resistant. And to put its money where its mouth is, LaCie includes a 3-Year Limited Warranty with Rescue Data Recovery Services.

For more information and pricing, visit www.lacie.com.au

Photograph by Douwe Dijkstra, Silver Award, 2016 Creative Flair Category

Do you like a challenge? Would you like to earn Bronze, Silver or Gold Awards? And would you like a helpful comment for each of your entries - a comment that could just trigger the start of a creative revolution in the way you photograph?

Douwe Dijkstra challenged himself back in 2016 in our Creative Category. While many photographers think about Photoshop and composites, Douwe used 'creative seeing' with this beautifully composed cityscape. Strong contrast, a great silhouette and a square frame all added up to a Silver Award. 

It really is wonderful looking back on the winning images from previous years - and you can do this at anytime on our competition website - www.betterphotographyphotocomp.com.

So, can you earn a Silver this year? Now is the time to find out! The extended period for entering the 2018 Better Photography Photo of the Year Award ends on Wednesday, 7 November 2018. Will your entry be part of the $17,000 prize pool? Enter now and visit www.betterphotographyphotocomp.com!