BootsnAll Travel Community

I will be taking a long trip (6-8 months) and lots of digital photos. I don't want to keep the shots with me for fear of losing them on some bus in Africa. What is the best way to send them home as I go on my way? Is simply emailing them back safe, or would a service like Shutterfly or PhotoAccess be better?

I've sendt digital photos home from an internet cafe. It worked, but I had to watch the
filesize because some mailservers denies messages over a sertain size. That makes the whole
prosess a bit tedious if you have a lot of pictures. You can make a CD in some internett
cafes. You can then send that CD home if you trust the postal service to do its job
properly, and not break the CD or loose it.

I haven't tried Shutterfly or PhotoAccess or any other service of that sort, so I really
couldn't say whats best.

Have a nice trip.

Emailing them or uploading them is a good idea, but if you are like me, you'll have lots of hi-res shots that make this a bit impratical unless you get an ultra high speed connection somewhere.

Most modern (read: digitally equipped) labs can also cut CDs. Have them transferred to CD-ROM. If they are not to expensive, keep one and mail a copy home.

Also on the market are portable storage devices that use laptop hard-drives ranging from 5-50 Gig.
Starting at about US$200, you'd have to shoot a lot of pics to fill one of these. Some names: X-Drive, Image Tank, DigiBin and Digital Wallet.

quote:

Originally posted by rodeime:
Emailing them or uploading them is a good idea, but if you are like me, you'll have lots of hi-res shots that make this a bit impratical unless you get an ultra high speed connection somewhere.

Most modern (read: digitally equipped) labs can also cut CDs. Have them transferred to CD-ROM. If they are not to expensive, keep one and mail a copy home.

Also on the market are portable storage devices that use laptop hard-drives ranging from 5-50 Gig.
Starting at about US$200, you'd have to shoot a lot of pics to fill one of these. Some names: X-Drive, Image Tank, DigiBin and Digital Wallet.

any recommendations for the hard drive? and how much extra bulk are they, with adaptors and all? oh...i need a portable hard drive thats compatible with my sd cards. i dont want to buy a ton of them, but want to upload them as i fill them up.

thanks.

Keeping them on the web is probably the easiest and best way to keep them. Haven't tried shutterfly or photoaccess. On my last trip, I just abused my unlimited web space at my former university. I still have that space, but am more wary of abusing it since I'm no longer a student. Also, I've since become a big fan of flickr, and will be using that on my upcoming trip. Sending any volume of photos by email is likely to cause overflowing mailbox trouble, unless you're sending to a gmail account, and even then, if you're a prolific photo taker, it could be a problem.

My raving reviews of flickr can be found elsewhere on this site.

you can also use and ipod with a camera adapter to store photos

About uploading them, I´ve used shutterfly some timenow and works perfectly, but as rodeime said, you´ll need to find a place with ULTRA high speed conection, or else a lot of patience cause you´ll be there at the computer for hour....
the good thing is that shutterfly lets you upload pictures without size or storage limit!! that means lots of pictures and without loosing any quality.

And about the hard disk, option that I´m gonna use on my next trip (10 month long), they are very good , very small and light. most of them are made of aluminium and are durable. I´m gonna buy one made by Airis. They have hard disks from 40, 60, 80 and 100 Gb. They have them with or without cardreader, that depends if you think you´ll have computer access averytime you want or not (I´m buying the one with cardreader (CR from now on)just to be sure I don´t run out of space in my memory card and I don´t have a computer near me). The normal one gets its power thru the USB interface. The other one with CR as well, but it has also an adapter and you can plug it to normal current. By the way its 110-240v that means you can plug it everywhere in the world , you´ll only need the right plug or adapter.
The thing is that you have to take care of it with your life, cause all your pictures are gonna be store there and a lost will be complete if it happens. Also a hard hit can erase all the archives as with any hard disk. For that I´m gonna keep mine in an aluminium box away from the sand, humidity (Silica Gel) and hits.
You can and probably should make safe copy on CD and keep one and the other send it home.
Well at least that´s what I´m gonna do,
I hope I was of any help and don´t doubt in asking again
Buen viaje!!!

flikr is a great site, but not the answer if your shooting several hundred high res shots a day. i plan on burning sets of cd's when possible and mailing one while keeping the other. in regards to photo stoarage, i think an i pod would serve you well if you consider your memories worth the investment. i certainly do. it costs about the same as any storage device on the market and has a lot of other cool uses and features, and its small. i also suggest using a "pelican" case just big enough to fit your cd's and storage device in. theyre a bit bulky in your pack, but indestructable and worth the space to insure the survival of your memories.

hey Rob, what´s a "pelican" case? And where do you find them??

go to pelican.com

the "micro case series" is what i use. theyre small and durable. water tight and they float. it will fit an ipod, but not the cd's. i use a hardcover cd wallet for my cd's.

how do you store pictures on an ipod without a computer to drag the files off the card to the ipod? I have an old ipod i dont use but can find a use...its a 20 gig older one could that still work what would i have to do to switch it to hard drive mode and how do you put pictures on it? thanks...this would be great if it worked find a nice use for it laying around the house...i just wasnt working out for me as far as music i think the hard drive feature would be fine...

Not sure an older model would work for you. Apple sells an accessory designed to connect the ipod directly to the camera, but the requirements list an Ipod Photo or more recent model. (Essentially, they started shipping the photo software when they upgraded to a colour screen, so if yours is black and white, you may be out of luck).

I've been doing a little research on this myself and found a few more options. The one I'm leaning towards is a Vosonic VP6230 mp3 player. It has a harddrive with slots for different types of memory cards on the side. Just plug them in and transfer. It also has a view screen and video capability. Not near as pretty as an Ipod or quite as small, but cheaper (~$300 for 60 gig) and don't need to buy extra adapters. I've only found it one place in the US that sells them (http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.35/.f). A company called Wolverine has the same unit in the US, but with a bright red case instead of silver. Theirs is available on Amazon and others, but is about $50 more.

I like to snap off a few shots to make sure I get what I want. 60 gig will easily let me do that and take videos as well. Uploading onto the web would leave me too dependent on the interent connection.

Another place to look for more options and reviews is.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1023&page=1
It is a digital camera and accessories site. That link takes you to the storage and media forum.

Cheers!
Brian

Cool cases (Pelican ones) I might get one for my hard disk, thanks

see the funny thing is that i have an iriver 20 gig i think that you can store photos on it...but I didnt know i could transfer them without a computer...do you think i could...it has a full color screen and yea it has a section on photos but what would i need to get or find out if this transferring was possible...if it comes down to it i'll just buy something new that willbe better than bringing my laptop.

That would be perfect Eppyboy, laptops are great but a pain in the ... too. too expensive, fragile and HEAVY.

Buy a portable hard disk with inbuilt card reader. Mine is able to read several diff types of cards. All I need to do is to slot in the card, press a button and it will download all the files in the card to the disk.

Saves on the number of cards you'll bring, even on a short trip cos you never know how many shots you gonna take, and especially useful if you using a more expensive card like memory sticks or XD

Hey everyone, i've been looking into this for my asia trip later this year when i know i'll be taking lots of shots, my solution is that i'm going to take a portable CD burner, burn 2 CD's, send one back to my P's place and keep one on me. And, just becuase i don't wanna risk losing any of my pic's, i have a iriver 40gig mp3 player which i'm taking 20 gigs worth of music on and saving the rest of the space for photos. The iriver is set-up to use as a separate hard drive, drag and drop style, so i'll have to be near a computer to back up onto it.
The CD burner is an Ezimagic, it's a little bit chunkier then the aspacer model but a lot cheaper, still runs on AA's as well.
Peace and love, Danny J

I have a Compact Drive PD70x. It's a portable hard drive that reads CF Cards and SD Cards (and a couple otheres) directly, then copies it to the built in hardrive. There is no way to view your pics, but for pure storage you can't be it. It's small, light, and relatively durable.

I picked up mine for just over $200 with a 40gb drive. Here's the link: PD70x w/40gb drive