How much storage for 3 weeks with 5mp camera

[ben_ramoul]

Hi,

 

 

  I'm going on vacation next month and I want advices on the storage

type/quantity I need. I'm going to Inda (lots of pictures to take!).

Do you recommand large number of 512mb CF cards and/or 1gb MD; or an

external hard drive.

 

 

  Also, has someone recommandations about the new portable CD writer?

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

       Ramoul

[ellis_vener_photography]

This question is the digital equivalent of "how long is a piece of string?" <P> If I

were going to India I'd take as many 512Mb flash cards as I could afford, a card

reader and a laptop with a large hard drive & a CD-R Burner. I'd probably spend a

couple of hours each

night downloading the day's take and then burning CD-R (not a CD-RW) disks to

back up

that day's downloaded images.

[beauh44]

Hi Ben, You might want to check out a product like:

 

http://www.xs-drive.com

 

Or a similar "digital wallet" solution. Adorama has something similar. I think something like this (holds 20gig) would make it through a month - but it'll depend on how much you shoot per day. It's small, light and runs on batteries. It also doubles as a card reader. Best wishes . . .

[Troll]

Film.

[coolpix5400]

Yes, but how much film?

[Robert DeCandido PhD]

Hello,

 

You can help your storage dilemna by shooting/saving the files as the finest jpegs (highest resolution) that your camera can handle. For the lower end (consumer) cameras like the G3/G5 or the Nikon 99x line, I have found that there is really very little difference between shooting/storing as a TIFF (about a 9mb file) and the highest quality jpeg your camera will allow you to go for (about a 1mb file). If you do the math you will see that maybe you can get by with just flash cards...

 

rdc

[jochen_van_de_perre]

I agree with Beau.

 

Last year, I went to Sri Lanka for two weeks. I have a 2Mp camera, which produces 1Mb shots in "JPEG fine" or 3 shots per Mb in "jpeg normal". The rest of my gear was: 4 sets of AA batteries, a battery loader (a slow one, needs 16 hours to load a set), and 4 SM cards of 64Mb.

 

Conclusions after the trip:

(1) Slow battery-loader is not good enough. Quite often, we had to save power by not using the LCD. (2) Four cards were juuuuust enough, but only because I shot in "normal" mode. (3) JPEG fine produces better results in PS.

 

This year, we're going to South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. A three week trip with lots more photographic opportunities than Sri Lanka. Since I want too shoot "fine" this time, I bought an X-drive with 40Gb disk. Been using it quite a lot since I got it. Wouldn't miss it for the world.

 

Oh... and I also got me a 1-hour charger! :-)

[Troll]

Take enough film for one (36 exp) roll per day. If you run short, you can always buy more locally, although it may be expensive.

[klix]

See my response in the Camera Equipment Forum... BTW, just a reminder -- it's a photo.net no-no to post the same question in multiple forums...

[cabophoto]

Robert, <br><br>

 

>>For the lower end (consumer) cameras like the G3/G5 or the Nikon <br>

>>99x line, I have found that there is really very little <br>

>>difference between shooting/storing as a TIFF (about a 9mb <br>

>>file) and the highest quality jpeg your camera will allow you <br>

>>to go for (about a 1mb file).<br><br> I find that I can get much better <br>results with my Canon G5 in RAW mode than in JPEG, mainly because I can tweak the white balance _after_ I took the picture. To answer the original question : I´d carry CF cards that hold at least a day´s pictures (about 300 for me; YMMV) and a Nixvue/Digital Wallet equivalent. <br><br>Carsten

[chip l.]

A great solution would be on the new CD-R portables (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/disc_steno.html).

 

Add to this the Delkin 640mb memory card to better take adavantage of storage capacity of the CD-r's.

[gsbhasin]

Ben,

<p>Ellis has the right answer.

<p>Try shooting street photography in JPEG.

<p>Please post ur experinces after ur trip.

<p>And if u need to ask anything more abt India please feel free to contact me.<p>Bon voyage,<br>Gurpreet

[__jon__]

>Take enough film for one (36 exp) roll per day. If you run short, you >can always buy more locally, although it may be expensive.

 

>-- Bill Mitchell Photo.net Hero, August 05, 2003; 10:29 A.M. Eastern

 

Why don't you keep your trap shut or answer the question?

 

Jon

[beauh44]

On follow-up Ben, I took my xs-drive to Yosemite and it worked great. Just make sure you have at least 2 CF cards. It took me about 8 minutes to dump the contents of a full card (512Mb) to the xs-drive. Meanwhile, I kept shooting with my other CF card. If buying adequate storage isn't a problem, I'd strongly suggest shooting in raw mode because if you slightly flub a shot (say, over or under-expose) you can correct it later using Canon's (or someone else's) raw converter. This is *very* handy and has saved my butt more than a few times. Good luck!

[brian_diaz]

In an effort not to say things like, "But Bill Mitchell, I can't figure out how to load 36 exp film into my 5mp camera. Should I use 24 exp instead?" let's try to squeeze some useful information out of an otherwise useless flame.

 

36 exposures/day. Well, it's digital, and you say you'll take lots of pictures, so we'll call it 50 shots per day. Maybe you'll take 75, go back to the hotel, and erase 25 that you know you'll never want to see again.

 

Okay, so 20 days at 50 exposures per day makes 1000 shots. If you're shooting jpgs (which may suit you), they'll probably be under 2 megs each, but we'll round up to be sure. That's a total of 2 gigs total space you'll need. If you're using RAW, make it 5 gigs. This of course is based on my estimations of what your camera produces. Your own math will be more precise.

 

4 512 cards is reasonable if you already have them (as is 2 1 gig cards, though I wouldn't recommend microdrives, especially for travel, as they are more suceptible to damage due to their moving parts). On the RAW side, 10 512 cards is too many, and you'll be better off finding a portable CD writer, like the one mentioned above. I haven't had the chance to use one yet, but $299 for the writer plus $2 for 10 discs sure beats $1000 for 5 1GB cards.

 

I hope this helps you break down your needs into clearer steps. And remember to show your work (math class and photo.net pun intended).

[leonard_richmond7]

Brian's right - do the math.

 

Having done a 2 1/2 week Eastern Europe trip last year, I know what works for me. At least 100 pictures a day, double what Brian said (yeah, that's after reviewing and deleting unwanted ones daily). And I'd do all RAW next time.

 

For a Canon digitial, that's 5 MB x 2100 pictures = 10.5 gigabytes (higher, for other than Canon). WAY too expensive for me to keep it all on CF cards. So either a hard disk digital wallet, or a portable CD writer.

 

When I did this in early 2002, only the hard disk digital wallet type was availabe, so that's what I did. Worked great. Now, I'd be tempted to use a portable CD writer, if only they were as small as the digital wallets! But they're not, so I'm anxious to see what you choose.

 

A 20 GB drive or a case full of blank CDR's will give you the freedom to shoot to your heart's content and come back with everything you want, rather than having to stay under the daily "quota" allowed by how much CF you take. It's terrible to have to delete a good picture to make room for a hopefully better picture, and it's a shame to spend your time making those decisions while travelling rather than later at leisure after you've returned.