Help needed with 10D data storage/transfer for trip

Hello,

 

I am new to the EOS 10D as well as photography in general and I am

getting ready for my 1st trip with the camera and only have one 512mb

cflash card. I shoot everything in RAW and am limited to ~80 images

at the moment and am taking a trip to the Canadian Grand Prix in a

few weeks. I plan on taking a lot more than 80 pictures and cannot

see purchasing a handful of cards and was thinking of an alternate

way to store or even off-load my images while at the race so I can

use the card again. Does anyone have experience or advice using the

10D in RAW mode and off-loading images? If so what are you using and

how? A friend who shoots with a Nikon mentioned a battery powered HD

with an internal flash reader that will offload the pictures, but I

have no idea what he is referring to and with the 10D I have had no

success simply copying the data off as a RAW file, even to the HD in

my desktop. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Norman

Norman,

 

I have something called a �digital wallet� made by a company that is now out of business. It is basically a laptop hard drive inside an enclosure with a CF card reader and a battery. I bought it because I travel quite extensively, and am sometimes away from electricity for a week or more at a time. It will let me store about 12000 raw frames.

 

Like everything else photographic, you have to ask yourself what your priorities are, as there are always tradeoffs. If you are planning on never being that far away from a power source, then a laptop is the way to go. It will not only store the photos, but allow you to view them critically while you are still on site.

 

If you plan on being away from a power source, and thus need something like a digital wallet, there are several good options available from Adorama, BH Photo, and maybe even Henry�s (in Toronto). I suggest getting something with either a firewire or USB2 connection. USB 1.1 will drive you batty. When I got home from my first trip it took 11 hours to transfer the images by USB 1.1. Now, with firewire, Windows XP sees the digital wallet as just another hard drive, so I do my first cut (ie, deleting the non-keepers) right on the drive.

 

Either way you go, you need a second CF card. Maybe not another 512 (although that would be nice) but something to fill the time gap while you are loading the images from the first card onto your laptop/digial wallet/whatever.

 

And here we all thought that going digital was going to save us money on film�.

Here read this, I thought this was pretty interesting. I'm sure your trip isnt as complex but heres an option.

<br>

<br>

 

<url>http://www.photo.net/learn/wilderness/</url>

www.mydigitaldiscount.com

 

I got the Image Tank G1.5 40GB, downloads a 256MB card in about 3 1/2 minutes

Hi,

 

Get an X's drive pro (search ebay and find the ebay name usbetc, or something like that - they are based in canada and the us)

 

You download a cf directly into the battery powered unit (its 6 in 1), it works as a external hdd which is sweet, and is an mp3 too!

 

I very recently got one with toshiba 40gb hdd for 371.00 CAN $ including shipping from BC to Alberta.

What ever you do, never waste time transferring files directly from the camera to the computer. It is wayyyy too slow. For the computer, use an inexpensive card reader - much much faster transfer than from the camera.<p>There are a number of portable storage solutions with built-in card readers and power supplies, like portable harddrive devices, or the self-contained CF-to-CD burners (I use the Apacer Disc Steno CP100 and love it). Some of these storage devices have LCD screens to preview images or allow you to connect the unit to a TV to preview images, but this preview feature will not work on RAW files since RAW requires special software for previewing or conversion to something like jpg or tiff.<p><i>"I have had no success simply copying the data off as a RAW file, even to the HD in my desktop."</i><p>What is the problem you experience when putting RAW files on your desktop HD? A file is a file, and RAW files transfer exactly like jpg files. Do you mean that they transfer but cannot be previewed? That will be the case unless you use the appropriate RAW-compatible software to either convert or preview them. Since you shoot everything in RAW, how are you working with the files if you can't copy them to your computer?<p><a href="http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english/product_html/disc_stone_cp200.asp">Click here for info on the Apacer Disc Steno CP200.</a><p><a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=search&Q=&ci=3369">Click here for B&H's list of "Stand Alone Data Storage" devices.</a>

Find a place that will rent you an ultralight laptop for the trip. I looked into all those digital wallets and decided they are too new and novel right now and therefore overpriced - one day, but not today. The iPod solution (Belkin's digital media reader for iPod is by all accounts too slow to read the contents of a 1G CF before the batteries expire!) isn't there yet. If you have the laptop you can view your pictures when you're not at the event and possibly even put them on optical media right away. Who knows, your accommodation might even be wired for internet.

I hope don't get pounded for this, but.....

 

If you are not in the business to take and sell these photos, why not just use "high quality" jpeg and enjoy your pictures of the GP. Unless you want to rework them or print poster sized prints, will it matter to you? You should be able to get a couple of hundred pics on a 512mb cflash.

In short there are 3 schools of thought, download every night to a lap top left in the Hotel safe (this is NOT your car trunk), download to a digital wallet as needed during the day, download during the day to the cp200 or cp100 (CD burners). The bad side, the laptop is a prime theft item, is bulky, still needs to be backup to CD's nightly (if you make a living at this), the digital wallets if dropped are history, the CD burners require you to bring a whole stack of CD's with you.

 

Note belkin is releasing a USB bridge device $70 that will connect a CF card reader to a USB hard drive or CD burner in early June. Rob Galbrith's site had a VERY positive review on it.

 

Best of luck.

 

Gerry

I really appreciate everyone taking the time to help me out with this and I look forward to sharring my photos of the trip as soon as I get back. Thanks again.

 

Sincerely, Norman.

Use a 4gb microdrive. You can get one with the muvo2 trick (cheaper than buying a drive): buy a muvo2 mp3 player and take out the 4gb microdrive CFII, and plug it in your camera, that'll give you room for 8*80= 640 images !! enough ?

 

Poul

I'm going the Apacer CP200 route. After looking at what's available, that seemed to be the best answer for me. Mine is scheduled for delivery tomorrow.

 

I have enough CF cards to last a day. At night, I'll burn the CDs and put them in the hotel safe. This solves a couple of problems for me. I don't have to carry a laptop, which is a pain. Secondly, I'll already have my CDs made when I get home. That way, I can just pop the CDs in the computer, look at the RAW files and convert only the ones I like.

 

Phil