Advice on image viewing options while camping

[Big Ren]

Hi all

Quick background. I love camping and fishing in SE Queensland, I also love photography but need to find a solution to a small dilemma.

I am in the process of upgrading my Canon 350D to a 7D.

My issue is that I would like to be able to find an easy solution to downloading and viewing photos on a reasonably sized screen (not a 3 inch camera LCD screen) while we are away.

I have plenty of power (2KW Honda genny, 600w inverter, 105amp AGM second battery with Anderson plug and 2 cig plug connections). I also have a 2TB external hard drive.

Is there an easy way of viewing photos on a media player or something similar without having to bring my work laptop along on a trip? Is there a good media player or similar device to buy?

I want to be able to download my photos each day and be able to show fellow campers in our group without all of us having to cram around a 3 in LCD screen on the camera.

Can this work without me having to download images from camera to my work laptop?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Paul

[Tannin]

Get a netbook. Perfect answer for you. Cheap, excellent battery life, small and light, talks to external hard drives just fine. Screen is smallish, but if you wanted a full-size notebook you'd take one with you.

[Big Ren]

Perfect. Thank you Tony. I just did not want to take a largish work lap top on camping trips. I'll do some research. Cheers again.

Paul

[I @ M]

Just been through the same process here of looking into small form storage / viewing of images while travelling and ended up with a netbook as Tony suggested ^^ .

Reasons.

For.

Small and light, even when packed into an inexpensive bag with mains / generator supply lead and charger they take up hardly any room and weigh next to nothing.

Most seem to be 250gb hard drives, if you don't bloat the machine with other programs it leaves a lot of storage for photos for short trips away or holidays.

"full" sized keyboard for renaming tagging images in a basic cataloguing / editing program. In our case I loaded Nikon View NX 2 and it hums along very speedily.

Internet and email availability.

Relatively cheap.

Against.

The screen is not up to serious editing and is a bit blue but I haven't investigated screen colour adjustability yet.

Summary.

After a bit of research and reading reviews a current model machine with dual core atom processor, 1 gb RAM ( easily upgradeable if necessary ) 250gb hard drive and windoze 7 starter edition can be bought quite a bit under $400.00 from reputable dealers in Australia.
The big retails chains were not the cheapest prices and once we found the model to do the job staticice turned up better prices from smaller stores.

[Big Ren]

Awesome advice as well Andrew. Thanks so much for that. Your confirmation about a Netbook, as well as Tony's, has steered me in a good direction. Can the camera usb cord (the one you would normally connect to the home PC when downloading) plug directly into a Netbook or do I simply insert the CF card?

Cheers and many thanks to all

Paul

[I @ M]

You should have no problems just plugging the camera in via the usb cord or by using an external usb card reader as they all seem to have one or two usb ports.
Some of the models have inbuilt card readers but all the ones I saw were only up to SD cards.

[ameerat42]

Ditto to the Netbook and ditto to I@M's last comment, but it'll be slOH!w with the 7D's biggish files. (Do both all the time, though not with a 7D.)
Am.
PS: Depending upon the Netbook brand, it may only have an SD slot, like mine, an Asus.

[I @ M]

Here you go Paul, size comparison with a 600mml bottle and an image open in View NX2

[Big Ren]

Thanks Andrew and thanks Am. I have an external card reader as well so that might be the way to go. As for slow loading of 7D files, shouldn't really be a problem as if I am camping, I have all day

Cheers
Paul

[J.davis]

I use an ASUS EEE netbook for my trips - Downloads a days photos with a card reader while you have a beer.
I loaded Elements 7 as an editor and catalogue.
Works a treat.