BootsnAll Travel Community

Two of us will travelling around the world for three months Feb. to April 2008. We are starting to make more definite plans now. We are wondering what other people have done with digital photography while travelling this long. The choices I see available are numerous but not sure which would be best. Suggestions would be appreciated.
Should we/can we download pictures off the camera to a CD in most countries?
Should we/can we download pictures off the camera to a jump drive/memory stick in most countries?
Should we just take multiple very large memory cards for the camera to begin with and buy more if needed?
We may also take a 35mm camera as an alternative, but the majority of pictures would be digital.
What do you think out there in cyberspace?
Thanks.

There is no one simple answer for this. In part, it depends on how much photography you will be doing, how many pictures you can fit on your media cards, what do you want to do with the pictures while you are traveling and probably a myriad number of other considerations.

In general, unless you take very few pictures, I suspect you would not want to spend the money on the number of cards it would take to cover a three month trip. Also, if you want friends to see the pictures while you are traveling, you need to have a way to transfer from the cards to a website, or to email.

The general strategies are:
- take a laptop and download the media cards to it. I
would also get an external USB hard drive for
redundancy.

- Find Internet cafes that will let you read from a
media card and upload to one of the web gallery photo
sites.

- Take a stand alone cd burner that reads from cards
and burn CD's (make two copies for redundancy)

- Take a digital wallet that reads from media cards
(again, you need two for redundancy)

Personally, I use the first option. This allows me not only to store the pictures and free up my cards, but I can work on the pictures and email them out to friends and clients, as well as put them up on my website. In addition, I have the computer to keep up on the news and, most importantly, the daily comics :-).

Hope this helps some.

Mitch

I don't know where you're travelling, but in South America, I was able to use USB ports on computers in Internet cafes everywhere I went with almost no issues. So, it would be pretty easy to transfer photos to a USB jump drive. You could also upload your pictures to a website or burn your pictures to CD's in most places for less than $1. Maybe a combination of these would be the best option for you in case you lose your jump drive or some piece of equipment breaks.

Also, since your trip is so far away, I wouldn't worry too much yet about cameras and memory cards if you don't already own them. A year from now you'll get the same digital photography gear at a much lower price than now. That's especially true with memory cards, which seem to double in capacity for the same price every year.