How do you store photos when you travel?

[Fredo]

Folks,
The Wife and I will be off on an extended trip through Europe and the UK at sometime in the next 12 months.

Rather than cart a 17" laptop and my portable 1TB drive with us I am looking at how else I can store images, maintain contact with home (email/skype etc), and have web access whilst on the road. Maybe the lappie is the best solution?

Ipad 2 seems to cover the contact, web access, image viewing and basic editing side of things but what about the storage of what I expect to be 100's of images.
Multiple, smaller memory cards maybe? I dunno . . .

I'd be very interested to hear how you folk, who travel a bit, do this.

Fred

[Redbaron]

A couple of bigger sized SD cards would handle the storage conundrum (8GB around $32 from cheap chips, they sponsor the forum - bigger ones available too), as for the sharing I'd be looking for a place you trust (friends/relatives over there?) where you can log onto a site like facebook or flikr and upload them there. That or use internet cafe's - they aren't too expensive.
Personally I'd never carry an ipad / tablet / laptop when traveling unless I needed it for work. Just too bulky to be lugging around when for a few euros/pounds you can log on and upload your stuff that way.

Enjoy Europe, it's awesome

[kiwi]

Fred, do a search mate, been covered a few times latelyI wouldnt consider the Ipad for 100's of imagesA small laptop with an external HDD taht you can backup from C Drive and store seperately seems to be the goYou can also get direct card reader/storage devices lile the Epson P5000 but imho they are expensive and you still need two

[Fredo]

Fred, do a search mate, been covered a few times latelyI wouldnt consider the Ipad for 100's of imagesA small laptop with an external HDD taht you can backup from C Drive and store seperately seems to be the goYou can also get direct card reader/storage devices lile the Epson P5000 but imho they are expensive and you still need two

Thanks Mate.
Not heard from you in a while . .

[kiwi]

I've been around :-)

[Boo53]

Fredo

We use a hp netbook (small screen laptop) that cost about $200 new 4 years ago

A quick google suggests JB's have some around the $300 at the moment.

We have a very small (about 80x60x15mm) usb hard drive with 800mb capacity, and fits easily in the carry case of the computer.

It qualifies for carry on luggage so quite handy there as well (and if you purchase in the 30 days before you go you can get the GST back at the airport on the way out.

Remember though that a 10"screen is not great for any serious pp, but does give you a chance to have a look & do some basics if you need to.

If you're getting something like this make sure it has wifi (I assumed they all would have but just looking at the JB page again maybe not) makes connecting to the internet at hotels etc; a lot easier

We've used that on several trips to the shaky states and also trips in Aus that have involved flights.

I did take a 14"screen laptop on a back packing trip to Mexico about 4 years ago & it wasn't all that more trouble than the 10

[13ulletz]

i'd take a small 10" netbook and a portable hard drive. not an external hard drive as they still require to be plugged into the wall.
I think JB sell 1tb portables for just over $100 or if power isn't a problem then you can get 2tb for $100 and the netbook for just over $300 depending on the specs. Dont take an ipad, space will be an issue let alone being able to dump your photos on it. If you wanted a tablet maybe the asus or acer ones as they have usb ports however ive never tried copying from one medium to another via the tablet.

I havnt done a 'travelling' trip but have had holidays overseas in just one location and look my laptop with no problems.

Depending on how 'special' the photos are might want to keep a backup on another drive if your travelling. i would. but thats just being particular.
you could get a netbook with a big hard drive and just copy to both.

[Boo53]

i'd take a small 10" netbook and a portable hard drive. not an external hard drive

.

Yes, my poor terminology. Ours is a portable 800mb, given to me by one of my sons as a present last christmas, we also have a 300mb that we bought at the same time as the netbook. Haggled JB down to, what was at the time, a good price on that

[Fredo]

John & HB,
Thanks for this.
That is what I am leaning toward. I carry a portable 1TB with me daily for work and personal use.
It is that basic editing and storage that I would want to do on the road rather come back home and have 1,000 photos to go through.
The ipad doesn't have a USB port or SD card slot so probably isn't much use to me.
I do like the tablets format though so perhaps an Android powered device might be okay?

Thanks again.

Fred

[camerasnoop]

Anything smaller than 1TB is going to be too small if you're shooting lots of RAW files Fredo. If you take a laptop/notepad with you, the easiest solution is an external hard drive and a big internal HDD. Use the external as your back-up and put it in your wife's luggage separate to the laptop. The value of your backup is directly proportional to the cost of getting the photos in the first place. If you're going to all these exotic locations on a regular basis, who cares about losing the photos. If not, then make sure they're safe.

One thing I will say is that in some of these European countries, electricity supply is not always reliable as far as voltage and spiking is concerned. In some cases, the hotels you'll stay in were built when wiring was a new art, and electricity was the work of the devil. :D

[MarkChap]

Fredo, best I can work out with tablets, the Android ones, even though they have a USB port, you cannot takes files from the tablet and store them onto an external drive of any sort (hard drive or USB stick) the port allows you to see what is on the drive and that is all.

[Fredo]

Anything smaller than 1TB is going to be too small if you're shooting lots of RAW files Fredo. If you take a laptop/notepad with you, the easiest solution is an external hard drive and a big internal HDD. Use the external as your back-up and put it in your wife's luggage separate to the laptop. The value of your backup is directly proportional to the cost of getting the photos in the first place. If you're going to all these exotic locations on a regular basis, who cares about losing the photos. If not, then make sure they're safe.

One thing I will say is that in some of these European countries, electricity supply is not always reliable as far as voltage and spiking is concerned. In some cases, the hotels you'll stay in were built when wiring was a new art, and electricity was the work of the devil. :D

Thanks Snoop . .it was the bulk of it all that I was hoping to get away from but it is looking like a small (full featured type) lappie might be the best way to go after all or multiple CF cards.

Thanks again mate.

[Fredo]

Fredo, best I can work out with tablets, the Android ones, even though they have a USB port, you cannot takes files from the tablet and store them onto an external drive of any sort (hard drive or USB stick) the port allows you to see what is on the drive and that is all.

Well thats a pain Mark. So really, these tablet style devices are a viewing device not an alternative to a PC? Broadly speaking thats is.
Cheers fred

[brownie]

My wife and I both purchased small and cheap notepads for our trip away. I would download the days photos to my notepad and check the images. I also had a passport sized USB drive that I saved the images to as well. Coupled with 2 x 32GB SD cards for the camera I had triple insurance against loosing images due to hardware failure.

An added advantage of the notepads was the wireless network connection that was handy for emailing, finding restaurants when arriving in a new town, google maps for route planning, etc.

The small size of the notepads allowed me to carry both of them in the laptop carry section of the Lowepro camera backpack which never left my side.

[Boo53]

If you're going to be doing any pp I would suggest a small usb mouse, trying to do it with a touchpad is painful

[J.davis]

We have been to Europe three times in the last two years, and a few other places.
What I took was a Asus netbook with lightroom on it and shot in RAW, never ran out of space, but am still editing the last trip as I write.
The netbook allowed us to chat with the relies back home, check and adjust bank accounts, and, send the odd edited photo home or the the forum.
I shot with a D300 and took three Cf cards but only used and recycled one. Downloaded every afternoon to the folder of the day.
The main thing I took and never left the camera was the GPS unit (from china on ebay). now I know where I was when I took that picture.
The first trip was a bus trip the next two where boats on the Rhine and Danube - different place every day.
Enjoy your trip and hope my advice helps.

[Analog6]

As you already have an iPad which will do the communicating part for you, I'd suggest a media storage device (there are lots of brands). I have the Vosonic VP8870 (http://www.vosonic.com/product.php?PA=feature&kind=1&id_1=16), but they are also made by Epson, Canon and other 3rd party companies. I have one with a 250Gb HDD and you dfownload the cards straight inot it. Powered by electricity or rechargeable battery. One charge lasts about 3 x 16Gb almost full card downloads.

[coolie21]

Last trip to Europe (1 month) was the first time I had travelled without the laptop. I took my iPad and a Hyperdrive. (http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-iPad-Hard-Drive-s/183.htm) My wife appreciated that I didn't spend all our time together processing photographs, but I did do a few on the iPad with Snapseed (http://www.niksoftware.com/snapseed/usa/index.php?view=intro/main.shtml) so that I could email them or blog them. The original raw files were safely backed up to the hyperdrive.

[Fredo]

We have been to Europe three times in the last two years, and a few other places.
What I took was a Asus netbook with lightroom on it and shot in RAW, never ran out of space, but am still editing the last trip as I write.
The netbook allowed us to chat with the relies back home, check and adjust bank accounts, and, send the odd edited photo home or the the forum.
I shot with a D300 and took three Cf cards but only used and recycled one. Downloaded every afternoon to the folder of the day.
The main thing I took and never left the camera was the GPS unit (from china on ebay). now I know where I was when I took that picture.
The first trip was a bus trip the next two where boats on the Rhine and Danube - different place every day.
Enjoy your trip and hope my advice helps.

Well that is exctly what we are doing John!! Bus all around Europe.
And the netbook idea is what I am leaning toward too.
Wouldn't have thought of a GPS device.
Thanks
Fred

[J.davis]

Sitting next to a window allowed the GPS to function on the run.

[JM Tran]

Hi Fred, theres a very good chance that you will be traveling by train around Europe as it is more efficient and cheaper than flying - the majority of carriages even in the economy class - will have power points in the arm rests or cafeteria carriage to be able to charge your laptop and power any portable storage devices if need be. If I was traveling through remote areas such as Mongolia or Pacific etc I'd be more worried about storage abilities, but external drives and extra memories are very easy to find and affordable. It is still the only continent where I have always felt safe with data storage and security really.

[sniper1969]

Hi,

For what it's worth - We travelled through Italy earlier this year and I was paranoid about losing any images, so I took two separate external HDD's along plus backed up to the Macbook Air!
Probably a bit of overkill but I wasn't going to risk losing any images!
The external HDDs are relatively cheap and compact/lightweight.

My $0.02.