Digital Wallet

Hello All. My question is this: What do you use on the road to store

your digital files?

I leaped into digital capture with the 20D. As you all know, you

don't get a memory card with the camera. So I bought one TWO GIG

card. Now to me 2GB is a lot of memory. I bought a ONE GIG drive in

1993 for about TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. Of course, I should have bought

two one gigger CF cards instead of one two gigger in case one fails.

Dumb Dora.

 

Memory and storage are like air speed and altitude in aircraft. Out

of airspeed, out of altitude, out of ideas.

 

I like to get all the information possible to import into Photoshop

so I mostly shoot in RAW.

 

If I travel with the 20D for an extended period, then I will need

some medium to store images beyond CF cards.

 

What do you use? And why?

I use CF and SD cards, when I go travel, I always take few CF cards, usually 2 2GBs, and 4 1GBs, 2 512MB SD cards, I shoot RAW also, I will delete some pictures at the end of the day, this works fine for me.

You know this is precisely the reason I am going to use my good old EOS55 for my coming overseas trip (from Japan). But then the problem is carrying film and sufficient batteries :(

 

To me, 20D or any DSLR is fine when you are closer to home.

image tank

I use an Apacer Disk Steno CD-burner. Its battery operated, has slots for the cf cards and burns CDs of my cf-cards without a computer. It works pretty reliable and I like having the physical CD as a backup of my pictures.

Johannes

Hi Doug,

 

Ended up with :

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/epsonp2000/

 

Only disadvantage:

- renames files that are coppied to the device (not really a problem for me since I will rename them anyway once they are on my PC)

But it also seems to shift the sequence a bit (first X pics of the CF card will be renamend and will be last on the album in the device.

Still have to figure if that is because I'm doing something wrong or so. Think it is something that needs to be updated by a newer firmware though.

 

- price (paid 520? for it, should be cheaper in the States though)

 

advantages :

- Has a CF and SD slot (CF type 1 and 2)

so do not need my camera for copying!

- USB 2.0 ports

- 40GB

- can display RAW files (Nikon, Canon,....)

 

But see that dreview review for more info.

 

Andy

i too got into digital with a 20D, and am like you, wondering about the mass storage concern on extended trips. You dont say travel to where.......but in my case it would always be near some sort of electric power....I'm done backpacking in the wilds ;o)

 

so the choice I seem to be settling in on is an entry level laptop....40GB drive, CD burner, and some expanded RAM capabilities just in case I get the urge to do some minor editting en route.

Yes.

 

On vacation, I tend to shoot 120 pics a day. With a 6mp camera, shooting RAW, that equates to about 850mb per day. An 8mp camera would require more space.

 

I bring my work laptop, equipped with CD burner, when I travel.

I download and burn disks nightly.

We have a RoadStor unit we use both in the office and when we are on location. It is inexpensive, a bit slow but burns discs all day long. You might consider buying some smaller memory cards, the smaller ones seem to be getting much less expensive.

 

Rick H.

Doug, I usually carry a digital wallet with 60GB of storage. I have four CF cards (1GB+512MB+256MB+256MB). So far they are barely enough.

 

Shooting RAW exclusively on my 20D, these 2GB of CF cards hold roughly 200 images. During bursts of action shooting, the digital wallet is invaluable in off-loading images and freeing up my CF cards for reuse. I typically shoot 300-500 shots in a day.

 

My first digital wallet was the ImageTank G2. It overheats easily and the battery was a joke. So now I only use it as an external disk when I can reach a power outlet.

 

I subsequently bought a Magic-Pro DC Partner. Its lithium battery is much stronger and lasts for days. Moreover, it recharges from the USB port off my PC so it is really convenient. It also accepts six kinds of cards: CF, MD, SD, MMC, MS, and SM. With this compact gizmo sitting now permanently in my camera bag, I am ready to shoot 6,000 images any time!

 

I am a miser when it comes to buying cards. They are expensive temporary storage used only to courier images to my PC where they reside permanently. As such I would only buy the absolute minimum. However, I think your decision to purchase 2GB is not wrong. These days if I were to buy another CF card, I would buy a 2GB one. You should definitely buy another 1GB or 2GB card just so that you can keep on shooting while waiting for images on the first 2GB card to be copied over onto a digital wallet.

 

During extended trips I will bring along my notebook PC if I can afford the weight. Otherwise, I always miss it in the evenings when I am dying to view my day shots and hopefully to work on a few.

 

Incidentally I no longer burn CDs for archive. CDs only last a few years anyway. These days I use two 120GB hard disks on my desktop PC for that purpose which cost US$80 a piece. Retrieval is much faster and I get to reuse the space when I delete the image. I would use 200GB ones had my motherboard been newer that can utilize those mega hard disks.

 

Gosh I love this digital age we are in and don't miss the dark old days of film at all!

Epson P2000. I think it is the only digital wallet that does what I want it to. That includes

very very good screen, raw support, interchangeable batteries, good interface, zoom in

support, slideshows, and more.

As I said, it has an amazing screen, the best I have seen on any device. It has over 200dpi,

and feels like holding a 3x5 print.

On a recent trip to the glaciers in Patagonia, I found the combination 20D + 2 1GB CF cards + a portable HD X'S Drive Pro VP3310 worked very well. I could take about 200 pictures a day and copy them to the HD at the hotel at night. The VP3310 has slots for all kinds of memory cards and mine has a 40GB drive (you can put bigger ones if you want, or replace them yourself, it takes laptop HD's). I came back with 11 GB of pictures. Unfortunately, some of them were unreadable when I got back home. I don't know the reason for this, maybe the X-rays at the airports or a defective hard drive? I sent the unit back and they replaced the HD.

 

Here's the link: http://www.xsdrive.com/xsdrivepro3310/

 

Juan

Juan (or anybody): any suggestions as to where to buy the Notebook Hard Disk?

 

Thanks.

Thanks to everyone for your answers. I bought another CF card - a one gigger. Boy those little buggers are expensive storage. Does anyone have any experience with <a href="http://web.mymediagear.com/Default.aspx?tabid=54">MediaGear's</a> line of portable hard disks. They are located in Santa Ana, CA near my home, so I may pop over and visit soon.

Has anyone used any of the SmartDisk FlashTrax devices?

I hear the Tripper is a pretty good device. Some complaints re battery life, but if you also get the AA adapter this solves the problem. You can also sharge the battery with an inverter in your car.

I have a MediaGear 40 gig and it has a very short battery life. And there is no way to know if your file transfer was successful unless you watch closely while it copies. I went out with it fully charged and using 1 gig cards the batteries ran out during the third transfer. So it really can only have two gigs transferred into it on batteries. And during the third transfer I had no way of knowing if it finished or not until I hooked it up to my pc, it won't let you see the contents of the drive on the display. The USB connection is 2.0 but I think internal connections from the memory slots to the hard drive must be 1.1. It takes a very long time to copy a gig. It would be ok on vacation where I could upload everything each night with it plugged in.

 

If I was going to buy another, I would probable buy the epson even though it cost twice as much.

I carry a 4 gb microdrive and offload my pictures to my laptop every day when I travel. I then backup the images onto DVDs at night. Clunky? Yes, but it works for me.

How long does it take to download a 1 gig card into the Epson P2000? Also, can you zoom into raw images, and if not, can you simply shoot jpg+raw and then easily navigate the jpgs to preview images zoomed?

 

Thanks for any assistance

 

Antony