Comments on: Help! How should I store photos while traveling?
CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland is going on vacation for a month, and he's lugging an SLR. What's the best way to keep pictures safe on the road?
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This blog sheds light on digital photography subjects such as cameras, photo editing, and Web sites. Shankland joined CNET News in 1998 after a five-year stint as a science writer. He's a lab rat who grew up in Los Alamos, N.M., and graduated from Harvard.
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We used it on our trip to Africa and it was great!
video ipod).
While it works, it may be of limited use for an Africa trip with
sporadic power access.
At least in my case, I found that transferring of data from a
relatively full 1Gb chip (Sandisk Ultra II) to the iPod used enough
power from the iPod so that little charge was left.
Thus, an iPod may not have enough power to transfer a 4Gig
chip. I guess all devices may suffer from such problems, but
clearly a device where a) you can swap batteries, and b) you can
charge it while downloading, would be important
considerations.
connector, to upload photos during a recent trip to Turkey. I didn't
test the set up before I left. What a mistake. I was only shooting
JPEG on a 1GB Flash Card with my Rebel XT and the transfer failed
every time. Either the camera or the iPod or both would run out of
charge before finishing the transfer. I spent hours attempting to
make the set up work, to no avail. I wouldn't use this method, if I
were you.
http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9803084-39.html
in Ireland, how many of those pictures do you want to keep
now? (Not how many are you keeping, but how many would you
cry over if they were lost?)
When I shot film, I would get about 1 great shot a roll, and
shoot a roll or two a day while on a trip to an inspiring place.
When I first went digital, I went nuts and shot hundreds, even
thousands, of frames a day. I still got one or two great frames a
day. I got maybe a hundred good, but usually redundant,
photos, and a huge number that just weren't up to snuff.
Over time, the 1-2 a day number started to drop. I came to
realize that in shooting everything I was losing my eye for great
composition.
I made a radical decision. and now shoot with just a 2GB card in
my Canon 5d, and a second in my pocket as a hardware spare,
not as extra space. 2GB gives me about 125 frames in RAW. I
think before I hit the shutter, frame the composition carefully,
and make it count. My photos have improved, and there are
other benefits. I spend a lot less time sorting through photos, I
need a lot less storage to save the take saving money), and I can
store all my photos multiple times on different computers and
hard drives so I'll never have to cry over a lost photo.
This applies to scenic shots, action has always and will always
mean more shots for the great picture. Even there though, I
believe shooting as if each frame costs cash leads to a better
take.
To actually answer your question, if I travel without a computer,
I backup my images onto my iPod with a cute little adapter
Apple used to sell. If you take a hard-drive based iPod with you,
(I have an 80GB model with 30 GB of video and audio, leaving
50GB free), this makes for a very light solution, if you can find
one on EBay.
Steve
I like the general line of your thinking though--think before you shoot. I've long believed that taking lots of pictures with a digital camera isn't "free" because of the time it takes to sort, edit, and back up data. And perhaps you're right about the keeper rate actually diminishing when you can take oodles per day. So maybe I should exercise a bit more discipline.
Thanks for the iPod adapter suggestion, too.
depending on how much they are worth, you may want to
consider mailing them home every few days. Moderately heavy insurance on the package may help insure their safe delivery.
And, if you ship them, you won't have to worry about possibly
losing your photos upon your return home.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13507_1-9873042-18.html
SD cards for the duration rather than try mailing them home. I sent
post card first class from Costa Rica in January 2007 and they
didn't arrive at their destinations until that September!
When my wife and I went on a trip to Africa and Europe a few years ago, we faced the same dilemma. What I did was buy a bunch of big CF flash cards (256MB was BIG back then) and just filled them up as we went. When we got home, I offloaded all the files to my PC and put all but a handful of the CF cards on ebay where I got about 75 cents on the dollar of what I paid for them new a month before the trip. So if you go this way, the cost of using multiple flash cards is really only the cost difference to sell off the extras when you are done.
If I had to do it over again though, I'd probably buy something like the Epson units. It's fantastic for a slide show and culling the bad photos instead of using the cramped LCD on the SLR.
I have also seen products that use a standalone CD burner to offload cards as well. They have just a small LCD text display and a few buttons (and they need AC to run I think), but they are pretty cost effective as I recall (much less than the epson). If you could find a DVD burner based product, you've got 4GB+ per disc for storage.
On final thought --- what about some of the new ultra portable PCs that are not much bigger than a hand held PDA? Certainly they are expensive but they have hard drives and decent size screens for editing the pictures and impromptu slide shows.
A multimedia player with a terrific 4.3" high res screen (800 x 480) and a 160Gb Hard-drive.
With an optional mini dock ($29) or battery dock ($41), you can connect & transfer pictures from your camera.
The UI will show your pictures nicely, as well as allow you to easily delete the ones you don't want.
After looking through many portable hard-drives, I am very happy with the Archos.
Oh, it also has WiFi and an optional browser ($20) plugin that'll allow you to check e-mail, view on-line videos like YouTube, etc. It can also stream music, pictures, video from any UPnP devices on your home network.
I primarily got it to watch movies & TV shows while flying, and connecting to the Internet, but it has a nice side function of being able to store my pictures.
once filled it up on a trip though I shoot conservatively. The
screen is fabulous, controls easy to use and it came in a
protective neoprene case. Battery drain is conservative, I usually
need to recharge once a week. Music playback is awkward and
response time with RAW files slow, these nits have supposedly
been improved on the newer models. Epson has two rebates on
the 40GB P-3000 right now listing at $299.99 on their web site.
Or, word was at PMA, if you buy an Epson 3800 you get a P-
2000 FREE!
switching between 2 CF cards allow you to load one and shot the other.Downloads at home USB easy as an external hard drive. you can find a MUCH better price either new or on ebay as many use it for one trip. Cheers! Damon
That should reduce your storage requirements and you can get by with a couple extra memory cards? If you're taking a shot that you think you'll be editing later, you can always switch to RAW and then switch back to JPG.
K
You might also consider double copies of your DVDs, and then ship those through mail to a buddy back home. Who knows when somebody will rob you at knifepoint? At least you'll have _some_ memories waiting at home, rather than providing the lucky thief with a 120gb portable HD.
can't view..but can copy.. was too slow for my needs..so i bought a laptop.
6 gb per hour ? ugh
That should be your most important consideration, IMO.
Just buy a couple of 32 GB CF cards...set you back $300~$350.
- 2 2GB SD cards
- 120 GB HyperDrive
The HyperDrive that I purchased does not let me view my photos. But at the time I had to spend significantly more to get that feature with the same amount of space. A year later, I have neither filled it up, nor run the battery down. I guess the device gets some charge when I connect it to my PC to download images. I use it any time I am out of town. It is also the easiest way to transfer photos to someone else's PC. (I always leave copies of photos I took of my sister's kids, but she doesn't have a way to read an SD card. I have not run up against any PC that doesn't recognize the drivers for this drive.)
It's quick and easy - I love it.
- 100 GB?
- by dargon19888 February 18, 2008 2:11 PM PST
- Ok, so you don't want to lug a laptop. But you're willing to lug an SLR and probably a couple of different lenses? A flash? (You don't want to rely on the built in flash.) Are you also going to carry a tripod? I mean if you're going to be serious about your photos, and you're talking about 100MB, then you need to consider your photo equipment. (And yes, I did carry a tripod in and out of the grand canyon while taking film pictures many moons ago.... ;-)
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (68 Comments)100GB should let you store about 1,000 photos in both jpg and native format, assuming you have either a 10MP or a 12MP camera. The question is, are you planning on taking and keeping 1,000 photos from your trip?
When I bought my D70, it was for a friend's wedding and safari in South Africa. I brought along my laptop so I could dump the images each night and then have my 512MB and 1GB cards ready for the next day. I could also edit and delete photos that I wasn't happy with. The laptop wasn't the best editing platform (not a fast enough processor or enough memory) but it allowed me to save my photos and our friend's photos.
I would suggest you bring along your laptop, blank cds or dvds if your laptop can burn them, and an external usb connected hard drive.
You may think of this as extra weight, but when you're going on a "once in a lifetime" trip, you're going to want to make sure you don't lose your photos.