Backing up photos when travelling

[jzzdhillon]

Hi all,

Not sure if this topic has been raised before...but here it goes....

Is it possisble to backup my memory cards if I'm not taking my laptop when travelling?

Obviously looking for a portable solution that can i easily take overseas with me. Maybe a dumb question, but can an external hard drive be used to do this or are there specific products for this type of requirement.

Thanks

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day jaz

There are 1/2 dozen devices that are available to you - and at varying prices as well
Most of the big-players have at least one model on the market
Some time ago in either AP magazine or Camera magazine I saw a review of them, costing between $200 & $800, varying storage capacities, varying battery power, most had a small screen to view & either print or delete etc etc

So they are around ... you'll have to do some chasing & find what suits your style of travel

Hope this helps a bit
Regards, Phil

[kiwi]

Jaz, there a various devices that allow you to insert a card and load those photos directly into a hard drive, Epson has one (P-5000) and there are other devices you can buy off ebay etc

On the other hand, memory cards are so cheap these days, you can buy more, and maybe while travelling every so often pop into a camear store etc and backup the cards to a CD and send that home.

[JM Tran]

here are some solutions for backing up travel photos

-copy onto portable drive as mentioned
-copy onto laptop or netbook
-a photo store will be able to burn your files onto a DVD for you, keep cards at 4GB for ease of burning
-use a camera with 2 card slots for back up onto the other card

[Lesley Bray]

Jazz - I travel a lot and cannot always take my laptop. I use an Epson P-5000 - it's suits my needs perfectly - I shoot in Large Raw, so my photo files are large, and I download them from my card onto the Epson. Besides storing my photos in the Epson, I can review them on the screen and delete any that I don't need - it has a larger screen than the back of my camera.
When I get home I transfer them from the Epson to my PC. Can also be used for storing music and video but I haven't used it in this way.
When I purchased mine, there was also a Canon available, but I chose the Epson because it could read any Raw photo and the Canon could only read Canon Raw.
Hope this helps

Lesley

[para]

I use a epsom p6000 highly recommended

[ameerat42]

Well, this is wot I usually do/have done/did, and may do again. Buy some DVDs. Find a computer (sometimes at a rel's, or at an I cafe). Back up - that means BACK UP, and use another card for the next shots. But, that was for a couple of trips no longer than 6 weeks. Am.

[mikec]

I looked into this a while ago and found a laptop was the best answer for me. But if I was going to do it on the cheap I'd make sure I have all 4GB memory cards and have a few say 3 to 4 and then just visit a camera store every now and then and just get them to dump the card to a DVD for you. Light weight and not very expensive.

If you are worried about losing the DVD get 2 copies made and mail one home or something.

[Avalon]

I travelled o/seas for 3 months and found that shooting large RAW files I couldn't back up enough photos onto DVD's. My solution was to buy an external HD and back up to that when I could get access to a computer. Nowadays I also have a small netbook computer that travels with me. Much smaller and lighter than a laptop.

[Papou]

used to take my laptop with me whilst the Missus volunteered to carry my laptop around for me, but then she refused so went n bought me a netbook from Dick Smiths.
1 gig ram , 350 gig hard drive and fits snugly into one of the pockets of my backpack.
Has a slot for SD cards or whatever card you use.
So for the New Zealand holiday its what i shall be using only upside will be i wont be able to do some nightly edits to my Photos so will have to find something else to keep me amussed.......

And will stress it was the cheapest option for me to..can use it to send emails to the kids while i'm away as well as a host of simmilar uses i could have had , had i ttaken the laptop bar offcourse Photoshoping as previous mentioned.

[clickclick]

Yes my dad has something like your looking for.. sorry but not sure exactly what its called! I will ask him before he heads overseas. He shoots lots of RAW and plenty of big files. He tried a fair few options & did the laptop thing for a bit but got onto this little external like hard drive thing. Hes got a few big cards for the camera so he loads them on @ the end of each day pretty sure. From what i remember, its like a mini computer with little screen so you can view it all in a 'windows like' system but its just for storing photos when your travelling.