Storing Photos While Traveling
I am traveling to Europe for 3 weeks in April, and intend on taking LOTS of pictures. My memory card, though, will not hold all of these, and I am skeptical about toting my MacBook around Europe (and through many hostels).
Would buying extra memory cards do the trick? Could a cheap external hard drive be worth it? Any other advice?
Alayna
Edinburgh, United Kingdom 2/8/10
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Cards..They're lighter and less bother.
Have an Ipod? Apple sells a cable that connects to the camera and you can download right on it and drop them into Iphotos when you get home. I think it's about $30, and we use it all the time.
Cards are only "lighter and less bother" (and "so cheap") until you have a brick of them. Then they're heavy, expensive and a hassle.
Depends on your defnition of "LOTS of pictures", of course.
If you're really taking *lots* of photos, consider a hard drive-based photo storage device, Epson, Jobo, etc. Makes much more sense.
Jerry - Yes, I do have an iPod that I will be bringing with me. Do you have a specific name for that cable?
It also depends upon what capacity cards your camera will accept. We took a newish Canon this past summer and used an 8 GB memory card. My daughter took hundreds and hundreds of photos and we still had lots of room to spare on that one card.
If you have an older camera, it might pay to get a new one that accepts higher capacity memory cards. It likely will be lighter, too.
I can't imagine having enough memory cards to be heavy. I bought an extra card in Germany last spring and still have room on it. I'm just now getting the photos downloaded so I can clear it out. One 4G memory card will have plenty of room for a 3 week trip. Remember that you don't have to take pictures every single minute.I know of a couple who went to Italy for 10 days and took 5000 pictures between them. What they did in effect was see everything through a viewfinder. Take pictures during the day and erase those that are bad, boring or just plain mistakes at night. Keeps your memory free and helps avoid printing some really sad pictures when you get home.
I'm not sure I understand the memory card-brick comparison??? An SD memory card is about as big/thick as a thumb nail on a large hand.
I would suggest several smaller memory cards rather than one large one. If something were to go wrong with the one (or it gets lost) you would lose all of your pictures. If you use several smaller ones you would only lose part of them. And like other posters, I can't imagine the sheer number of cards that it would take to be "heavy" or a "brick". Any other storage system would be much more cumbersome and heavy.
I have a Canon SD1000 (bought in 2007). According to Canon's website, it will take SD cards, which now come in those larger sizes. My current card is only 2 GB, though, so I will definitely need at least one large-capacity card.
The hard drive would be an even bigger brick if it fails...or gets dropped or banged around....or stolen...
What is important to know, when you say "LOTS of pictures" is, whill they all be JPEG, or will you also shoot in RAW format? Cards are fine, if you shoot exclusively JPEG. Those who say a 4 or 8GB card will serve for a week or two are obviously shooting low-requirement JPEGs only. If you are a serious shooter who works with RAW photos, you will need a storage system beyond cards. For example, on my last 3-week Europe trip I took 50GB worth of cards. But I shot close to 100GB of photos. It takes a very large capacity IPOD to hold that many. If you need high capacity, a very good option is an Epson or Digital Foci portable hard drive. They are smaller than either a netbook or notebook and have capabilities far beyond photo storage. If you do not need 50-100GB of storage, cards will do, but I suggest that, for JPEGs only, you are better taking smaller capacity cards (1-4 GB) rather than the highest capacity. Cards do fail and get lost. Last year a young woman posted on helpline that she had lost her high-capacity card in Italy and lost two-weeks worth of pictures that were all on one card. How sad!
We use a canon sd800 that is older than yours and it will take 4gb cards - maybe even 8 though we have never tried. As a family we took 3000 photos in 4 weeks last summer on a small collection of 5-6 2&4gb cards no problem. Don't complicate you life with fancy solutions to a problem that doesn't really exist. We even took quite a few short video clips.
Alayna,
With the Canon SD-1000, you'll only be saving JPEG images so that will simplify things to some extent. I'd suggest taking 3-4 SD cards, perhaps 4GB each. That will provide lots of capacity.
It's a good idea to back up your photos in some way, and the others have suggested several ways this can be accomplished.
I'm not a big fan of using an IPod Classic (which has a hard drive) for photo backup, as I've had an unfortunate experience with that method (a bad experience which involved the loss of some great pictures).
The most reliable methods for backup would either be a Netbook or a dedicated photo storage device, such as those manufactured by Epson. If you'd prefer not to use either of those methods, you could always have DVD's burned at local computer or photo shops in whatever cities you visit.
Good luck and happy travels!
I hoard 4G SD cards and shoot in raw. It does the trick for me. I try to strike the balance between taking a lot of pics and experience the trip, too (hard one for me to learn, but I am working on it- and then just as soon as I think I am learning, I get mad at myself for missing pics I think I should have gotten!)
It's hard to imagine lugging hard drive/card reader/computer along just for pictures. And how often does a card fail -- once in eighteen zillion times maybe?