Photo storage in the field.

[Lobo]

I'm going to China in July and it has dawned on me that there there is no way that I can afford to buy as many memory cards as I think I'll need. I'm obviously going to need some form of portable digital storage device that I can download my images too. I don't fancy the idea of a laptop and I don't have a small fortune to spend. I'm going for three weeks so I'm going to need a reasonable amount of storage and it would be nice if it had some form of visual verification that the images had transfered over from my CF cards. I'm new to this so what are such devices called and who makes them? Do they run off of mains or batteries or both?

[Dusty]

There are lots of devices that can act as a storage medium, but all that I know require a computer to transfer the photos over. A $200 netbook would work, but it would also have a small storage capacity. You could get a small netbook, or a cheapie old laptop, and an external hard drive to store the photos. That will be a little cheaper than lots of high speed CF cards.

Dusty

[Lobo]

Thanks, guys. I've now got a clearer picture of what I'm looking for.

[artington]

The Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA is supposed to be excellent - I've just ordered one for myself

http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperDrive-CO ... A-s/64.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Note there is a small bug which has been rectified with a firmware release http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essay ... otes.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; )

[David Kilpatrick]

I use the HD80 -

http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperDrive-HD80-s/2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is excellent and cost next to nothing, I normally plug it in rather than use batteries but they are there just in case. I carry an ASUS EeePC as well for internet and writing when travelling, and it's easy to check and doublecheck the uploads using that.

David

[bakubo]

You can get 4gb CF cards for under $15, 8gb CF cards under $20, and 16gb CF cards under $30. I used to always use a psd (portable storage device) when I traveled abroad, but since last spring I just carry enough cards. At the moment I have 28gb worth and before the next big trip I will probably add another 16gb card since that will give me lots of insurance. I shoot cRAW with my A700 and even 28gb is more than I need on a 2-3 month trip abroad. Of course, if you are shooting RAW with an A900 then you need to consider the much larger files. After several years of shooting digital when I travel I am glad to finally be able to use small solid-state memory cards (since the price has finally come down so much).

[Winston]

I prefer a laptop loaded with Lightroom and a USB backup drive. When forced to travel light, I use a HyperDrive which I backup to the USB drive.

Am I paranoid? You betcha!

[David Kilpatrick]

We took 2 x 16GB plus 1x 8GB (MS in the A900), 1 x 2GB (MS in the A700), 1 extra 4GB and 3 further 2GB CFs for one week in Mexico. I filled my 16GB completely, archived it to the Hyperdrive, then filed it away and used the 4GB. I filled that up, then switched to the 8GB Memory Stick for the last day and did not really notice the slower performance at all. Shirley did not fill her 16GB, on the last day I archived it to the Hyperdrive and stored it away and gave her a 2GB. I also archived the 4GB from my camera on the Hyperdrive, but I did not archive the Memory Stick.

All the cards were fully readable on return so the Hyperdrive was not used to transfer any files in the end, but it was there as a backup. It will stay with these files on until our next trip, just as a kind of additional archive. The cards are only being wiped once I have checked all the files are readable. I used PhotoMechanic to change all the raw file shooting times by -6 hours as we forgot to set the new time on the cameras.

David

[braeside]

David,
Were you shooting RAW or cRAW and did you also take JPG in combination with the RAW/cRAW?

I'm trying to get a travel kit together for my A900 and hope to have enough CF cards that I don't have to wipe any of them, I also have a portable storage device, a Vosonic VP2160 with 80GB hard drive. Asus EeePC is used to transfer just new files on the CF card each night to the Vosonic - rather than keep backing up the same files multiple times.

I was planning to just shoot cRAW, the only problem being that I cannot view them on the Asus, but to be honest it would be painful on the small screen, not to mention slow.

How did the travel tripod work out? Did you bother to carry it around all the time or just keep it for nights and low light stuff indoors? - I saw the airport shot on the moving pavement, - excellent.

I'm still trying to work out what bags to take, I have a large canvas Safrotto shoulder bag that takes everything on the aircraft, but I am not humping that around with me everywhere.
The best day bag I have found is actually one of my father's old photobags from years ago, a rectangular shoulder bag that is padded nylon with a zipped top and internal dividers and 3 external pockets, I can get the A900, CZ24-70 17-35, 28-105, 70-300G and 3600 flash plus batteries and lens cleaning stuff in this. (Normally I wouldn't take all that on one trip as the weight on the shoulder is a concern).

Edit: I forget to mention - I always leave the camera on UTC and adjust the timezone on import to Aperture.

[David Kilpatrick]

I shot RAW not cRAW and no JPEGs, for economy. On the last day I switched to cRAW as space ran short, and also we had done the main shots. The Gitzo 6X carbon fibre pod was exceptionally useful, I took some night and moonlight shots round the timeshare resort as well as the travelator shots in Manchester. However, tripods were banned on all Mayan heritage sites and also in the most attractive cenote limestone cave system we visited. This was just annoying, I know why they do not allow them (a party of 20 people is common and they have limited time). But our party was just four of us with no pressure. I was able to make 30 second exposures using my camera bag as a bean bag, resting the camera on rocks, then later using guardrail posts as a support - all would have been better with the trodpipe, and if anything it took my longer messing around. The guide was not happy, he could see I was making high quality time exposure shots on a large camera but since I was not using a tripod, he could not complain.

For anyone visiting Yucatan - an underwater camera is the No 1 requirement, preferably a serious quality compact housing and high end compact G9 or whatever. Shirley will not snorkel (and I don't like these modern snorkels, I grew up with full face masks and the kind with a looped end and a ping pong ball - not a plain old tube stuck in your mouth!) but the cave system snorkeling is by far the most photogenic attraction in a thousands of square miles of dead flat, featureless, green 'jungle' (about as 'jungle' as the bottom of my garden left unweeded). Yucatan is a place without landscapes. It has beach scenes with cliffs, it has cenote caves and sinkholes, and it has Maya monuments but at the best all you get is a slight undulation to mile after mile of the same small scrubby trees covered in creepers, and a few mangrove swamps near the coast. Even the towns are amongst the most unphotogenic I've ever visited. And the distances are huge, matched by extreme toll-road fees (drive to Cichen Itza from Cancun on the fast road and it's £20 each way in tolls for a car, for about 75km of dual carriageway).

The TomTom satnav was invaluable, we bought the condensed US/Mexico map and really needed the fully detailed Mexico, but it's expensive and we are likely to do some US touring in the next 18 months.

We use GIMP on the Asus, I have not checked for raw decoders for the A900 yet but it was able to view the A700 stuff last year.

David

[bakubo]

I was planning to just shoot cRAW, the only problem being that I cannot view them on the Asus, but to be honest it would be painful on the small screen, not to mention slow.

I don't know about the A900 cRAW files, but the free Faststone program works fine on my Asus EeePC 900HA (WinXP) to view my A700 cRAW files.

[braeside]

I'm running Linux on my EeePC. I will look at GIMP, it could be handy if it does A900 RAW or cRAW.

[01af]

I prefer using Raw over cRaw---for space economy reasons! If you think that's paradox then just try converting the ARW files to DNG.

An ARW Raw file from the Sony A900 is approx. 37 MB and will convert to a 22 MB compressed DNG file.

An ARW cRaw file from the Sony A900 is 25 MB and will convert to a 25 MB compressed DNG file ... in fact, the DNGs usually are a couple of hundred bytes larger than the ARW cRaw files!

I understand that the DNG derived from a cRaw file needs to incorporate an additional look-up table in order to decode the cRaw compression. But that doesn't explain why a DNG from a cRaw is larger by three megabytes than a DNG from a Raw (25 MB vs 22 MB). The look-up table should be just a few kilobytes, not three megabytes. So I really wonder why DNGs from cRaws are so much bigger than DNGs from Raws. They should be the same size, or larger by only a few kilobytes. Obviously, the lossless DNG compression algorithm is more efficient than the lossy cRaw compression method---but only when applied to the uncompressed Raw format.

So when I am not on limited memory card space then I prefer the ARW Raw format. It uses more space on the memory card but less space in the archives eventually.

-- Olaf

[Lobo]

I'm a little confused guys. I'm trying to work out what size portable storage device to take with me on a three week trip to China (for the total eclipse and touring). I'm using an A700 and shooting in Raw. I emailed a company about a 200 Gb device, but they say that on average I should be able to get 8000 images on a 120 Gb device. A 4 Gb CF gives me approximately 200 images and a 120 Gb device will take 30 of those; so, I make that 6000 images. This works out at 285 images a day. If I take a trip into London or as I sometimes do, to Brand's Hatch, I'll easily shoot 200 images! As I'm going to a place that I would consider somewhat exotic and might not get a chance to visit again I figure I could easily exceed this amount!

The question is, is my maths wrong; I'm still tying to get my head around some digital concepts, so maybe I'm missing something. Am I being a little too obsessive in my photography? When I used film I used to take 60 rolls of it for a months holiday in the Philippines; I'd sometimes shoot up to 3 rolls a day, other days only one - but seldom less. Digital tends to encourage one to experiment more because there is no wastage involved if something doesn't work - technically or otherwise. My estimate at present is up to 400 images a day; that's 8400 images or 168 Gbs (?) - so is a device of between 160 ~ 200 Gbs about right?

[Greg Beetham]

I wouldn't stress out over it myself, I'd just get a 200Gb device and as many CF cards as I could, and enjoy the holiday. One could easily get too involved with photography and forget about really appreciating the surroundings properly....then again, there is the possibility that while observing things visually one could become distracted and forget to take a photo of something unique, so there is a balance too be found I'd say...it's just a matter of finding it.
Greg