Photo Bank by Smartdisk

[mark_jacoby___raleigh__nc]

I just bought a portable storage device: Photo Bank made by Smartdisk. It is a

40gig handheld. You insert your memory card in a slot and press the Go button

and it will copy your image files. I like the idea of having an instant back-

up without having to have a laptop. It is small enough to wear on your belt.

 

In theory when your card is full, you pop it in the device and let it download

while you continue shooting with a fresh card. It does not erase your cards so

you walk away from a wedding with two complete copies of the wedding.

 

I bought it for $100 and have tested it at home and it seems to work fine.

Anyone have any hands on experience with this?<div></div>

[jessica_smith9]

Thanks for the mini review. I'll put this on my wish list!

[kiva]

Mark, where did you buy it for $100?

[rickvandenberg]

B&H - search "photobank" or "smartdisk". 149.95, less a $50 mail-in rebate.

[kiva]

Thanks Richard, that's a good price.

 

I did read a couple of reviews here if anyone is interested:

http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=18843778/id_type=masterid

[steve.elliott]

Another one to consider (perhaps more for holidays/vacations) is the Epson P-2000. It has a stunning 3.8 inch screen which is great when you can review your shots and create an album of the complete holiday which spans several cards.

 

But the Photo Bank seems ideal for a wedding because it's small and cheap. The screen is not so important for weddings because you haven't the time to look at the screen.

[picturesque]

If by hands on experience with this, you mean downloading at weddings to a portable hard drive, I do this with my Wolverine 60 gig unit. It is on my belt at all times and I download as soon as I can take a moment to put my just shot card into it. It works as I continue shooting. I don't reuse my cards so it's just extra security and it does make me feel better.

[mark_jacoby___raleigh__nc]

Thanks for the lnk to the reviews William. I hope the battery life will be good enough to allow a dozen 1 gig cards to download. If so it will work fine for a wedding. I'll have to test downlaoding a full card to see how long it takes.

 

By the way I bought it on sale at Office Max.

[kiva]

That's the concern I spotted too Mark.

 

Let us know via this thread what your experience is with the downloading and how long the battery lasts. That's really important ... if it were to run out of battery during a long wedding that just complicates the whole process a bit.

 

I'll check out the Wolverine ... but, I'm a Buckeye at heart so will be hard pressed to purchase a Wolverine. (snickers inserted here).

 

GO BUCKS!

[d_gillespie]

My brother has been working with one and he is not able to get more than 6 full 1Gb cards to transfer before batteries go South. Also the transfer time is slower than expected. 1 card can take 20 minutes. I might have to wait as this has to be in the R&D lab at other companies. The lack of file review is also a problem, not knowing what transfered really doesn't address the clean and reuse thoughts. I wouldn't erase if I couldn't confirm a successful transfer. I think the Epson may be my choice, if Santa is reading this thread.

[wedding-photography-denver]

I use the SmartDisk flashtrax for this exact purpose. It also has screen for visual confirmation of the files veracity.

 

I keep it on either my own belt, or the belt of an assistant. Works well as the redundant backup on site.

[kapaniris]

I have a similar kind of unit called a digimate. It works great <b>however</b> I had one instance where the hard drive had become corrupted & needed a reformat to get operational again. <p>

Just bear in mind, a battery powered hard drive that's portable & more likely to be bumped or damaged should not contain your only copy of files.

[jenseay]

For these hard drives with screens on them, can you view Raw files, or just Jpegs?

 

Jen

[jenseay]

Never mind! I went on the B&H website and got my answer. These are so cool...I want one!

 

Jen

[w.smith]

The specs are great if the battery life is too. But what 'scared' me when I held it in the store

was that it's 3 times the size AND weight of an iPod! It's a brick!

 

Now, if only I could get an iPod to read CF cards off a card reader, instead of connected to

the camera...

[steve.elliott]

"For these hard drives with screens on them, can you view Raw files, or just Jpegs?"

 

You can view both Jpeg and RAW on the Epson P-2000 (you can't zoom in on RAW though).