Photo Database

[Darren Butterworth]

Hi - I have several hundred gig of aircraft images and would like to to create a searchable image database. I've got MS Access, but am not sure if it's appropriate or able to be used.
I'm willing to put the time in to catalogue them, have 6.5tb of data with several tb free, but am not sure where to start.
Can anyone please advise what you do or if there is some freeware or a program that would do it.

Thanks

Darren

[Bob C]

Hi Darren

I guess there may be freeware out there which you may be able to adapt but I have designed my own Databases which have suited my needs perfectly.

I first started noting regos/serials and taking slides (and later prints) in 1966 so my first Database comprised numerous notebooks and photo albums. I used various indexing and cross reference systems so was able to quickly find something.

This system sufficed for 30 years until 1996 when I bought my first computer, an Apple Mac which had the very good Claris Works Database so I transcribed all of my civil records to Claris but there was no Internet capability or provision to store images but it had excellent search and sort functions.

I kept separate DBs for Australian Civil Aviation, Australian Military and visiting foreign military aircraft, the latter numbering more than 2,000 entries due to the numerous visits of USN carriers to Perth.

The MAC had all of 15meg of RAM and a 500meg Hard Drive but easily coped with what I was doing !)

So when I purchased a Hewlett Packard PC in 2000, it came with a full suite of Microsoft Office products including the Access Database which I have used since then, designing an Australian Civil Aviation Database to suit my own needs. At present it has 1,472 records from Dash 8s upwards. I could have included a lot of other types but felt that I had to draw the line somewhere. I have a separate Database of visitors to Perth since 1988 and it has 2,015 separate entries at present.

Luckily for me, I had hard copies of all my MAC data so when it "died" on me one night in 2002 all was not lost. I had transcribed the civil data to the PC but had barely started with the military so I decided to leave that and just concentrate on civil from then on.

My Databases are not just photo catalogues but include all relevant data for each aircraft so have many fields, most of which are self explanatory ; those marked with an * will be explained in more detail later.

The fields are :

Type, Con No, Line No, First Flight, Delivered *, Rego, Lessor, Latest Operator, Status*, Comments, Previous registration (10 separate fields), Prints (3 separate fields)*, Hyperlink, Slide, Embedded Image *.

Further explanation :

Delivered - refers to the date of delivery to the latest operator. Earlier operators are shown under the heading Previous Registration which also includes the date of that registartion (if known).

Note : I use the date when the aircraft actually arrives in Australia and NOT CASA records as there are many occasions when aircraft are first registered months before actually arriving in Australia, and sometimes not at all

Status - either CURRENT or date struck off register. I generally use CASA records for that.

Prints - three separate fields showing the date and location of up to three prints I've taken ; ie 08 Oct 2010 - Perth W A.

Embedded image - I used to scan my prints as bits and was able to embed them on the Form page of the Database. However, about 2 years ago, we had problems with the PC and when it came back from the shop I was unable to use that function and various experts don't know why. Now, whenever I try to scan an image as a bit it comes out in a very small thumbnail wheras the previous embedded images were 12cm X 8cm.

I was able to print the Form page with all the aircraft's details and embedded image and it looked pretty good.

Now that has gone by the board unfortunately.

I hope the above is of some assistance.

Cheers

Bob

[Gareth Forwood]

Hi Darren,

I just recently made up a database using FileMaker Pro - you can download a trial version freeware. I made it for Mac, but it can be used on both Macs and PCs. I'll post some screenshots here tomorrow (I'm about to go out for the night). I should say that I designed it for the way I store and organise images in my hard drives so it would need a little tweaking for another computer, but I would be happy to help out there.

It displays image thumbnails and has a search function, and can be modified to store any range of data with each photo.

I know the pain of creating a whole new database, so I'll do my best to help out if I can

[Stephen Brown]

http://www.collectorz.com/photo/

I use this guys stuff for my Movie Collection Database, I was going to try the photo one out as well.

The software is really customizable so it should be able to fit anyones bill.

You can try it for free to see if it fits your needs.

[Darren Butterworth]

Thanks Guys

Bob - you've given me extra inspiration to pursue this hobby long term.

My wife, son Sam and I only moved to Sydney from Brisbane in 2006 and apart from when the A380 came to Brisbane in November 2005, we'd never plane spotted.

Gareth's met sam at the mound and knows his enthusiasm.

My son has Cerebral Palsy and once we moved here he developed an interest and because YSSY is so accomodating for spotters and it evolved from there. Now we live in Rockdale and the view of the airport was a buying factor and Sam (15) is extremely happy to sit at the dinner table and be able to see the runways.

We communicate with sign language or his communication book where we have two pages dedicated to aircraft so he can show aircraft and airlines he is talking about.

Scan10002.jpg

Scan10003.jpg

so thanks for sharing.

Darren

[Darren Butterworth]

Hey Gareth - Really appreciate your help. I'm going to download Filemaker Pro now and look forward to seeing what you've produced via the screenshots.

Darren

[Darren Butterworth]

Stephen - thanks for the link, I'll have a look at it now.

Darren

[Gareth Forwood]

As promised, here are some screenshots from my database. I have to say, while FileMaker is really versatile, it does make for a very steep learning curve. However, the forums they offer are really friendly and useful, so if you have any questions, no matter how stupid they may seem, you can always ask there!

Some basic features include a homepage with a constantly changing collection of random photos and random 'top rated' photos, the ability to search by any criteria (registration, aircraft manufacturer/make/model, airline, airport, country, date etc), auto-fill of aircraft and airport information (i.e. you enter the registration or airport code, and it looks up the remaining information from an inbuilt database). The main drawback is that the aircraft and airport database need to be manually created (I haven't been able to work out a way for it to look up internet-based resources). However, generating that database isn't too time-consuming with the use of the Jet Photos census - the information can be copied and pasted directly into excel for the relevant airlines of interest.

Adding new aircraft to the database isn't too time consuming, as the program will remember the last entered data - this means that if you have several photos from YSSY, you don't need to continually tell the software it was taken at YSSY until you need to change the airport. Also, any mistakes are easily correctable.

PM me if you are interested and I'll see if I can transfer it to PC and set it up to match your file organisation (I simply maintain the filename from the camera, with folders for each date, and add the suffix "_mod" if I've edited it - all the other information is stored in the database).

Homepage with useful links, and the random photos


Search results page for VH-OEJ


"View Photo" page for VH-OEJ

[Ryan Hothersall]

Gareth, that looks great.

I did not find the learning curve too steep for filemaker.