BootsnAll Travel Community

For my upcoming RTW trip, I will need to buy a new digital camera but wonder what I should look for as I like to keep a travel log with pictures. Most cameras / card readers that I know require downloading software onto the PC to copy the pictures, but I don't want to clutter up every internet cafe full with software. Does anybody has an idea what type of card / card reader works best, so I can choose the camera based on the ease of using it on the road? Thanks!! Beate

I've got a USB pen drive that takes XD cards - you plug it into a machine (you may need admin permissions) and it registers its self as a removable hard drive - it's great - have only tried it with XP though...

Your camera may use a different memory card ? - just ask in a camera-shop they should be able to help you.

Thanks, I'll check into it. But I probably can't count on WindowsXP being loaded onto a PC in Guatemala... :-) The camera store staff around here couldn't answer my question either (they don't get enough vacation to travel abroad :-)

You can check this thread.

There maybe other helpful hints in the photography thread.

I just skimmed the other thread and I don't think this was mentioned:

Though you can't count on being able to burn cds in icafes, if you're somewhere that's big enough to have an icafe, presumably it's big enough to have a photoshop. And LOTS of photoshops (even in random backwoods towns) will burn your photos to a cd for you for $5 or less. Bring a few blank cds with you and you're all set (a cd holds 700MB, just in case you didn't know). I'd rather spend the $5 and let someone else do it than waste $5 mucking around in the internet cafe with my camera - I'd rather spend my time in cafes posting oh-so-valuable-knowledge on boots :P The only place I've been that I would be wary of this option is Australia, some places there charge an arm and a leg to burn photos!

Also, some icafes have a card reader they lend out, or will copy your pics onto a central server comp so you can upload/burn/store/otherwise access them.

More directly to the original question, I have a SanDisk card reader (don't know what model but it looks like a computer mouse) and it doesn't require a software driver, Win98,2000 and XP all autmoatically recognize it as a removable drive.

As far as I knew, when I went travelling, my Camdera required software to upload etc but in all the internet cafe's I went to I just plugged it in and it acted like another drive so you simply drag photos around or import them to a web page directly from the aux (ie your camera) drive. No software required!

Tracy also has a good point about just burning to CD, there were a good number of places I came across where they would do this for you and like she says it can be a lot easier/quicker/cheaper than trying to do it yourself.

Your best bet is to just see whats available and if you come across somewhere good get things done tehre and then wait till you find another good cafe and repeat until your trip ends...

Photography is a basic part of my gig. I'm shooting everywhere and never have much of a problem. The simplest thing to do is just have a camera that uses an SD card, but you could also use CF card or Sony MemStick.

You probably don't want to directly connect your camera to the PC by a USB cable. The computer may or may not recognize it, and it isn't good for the cam. All PC's should have a USB port. You can get a USB card reader. Again, the simplest is SD cards because the readers are cheap and small. You can get a multi-format card reader but will be larger and cost more. Plug the card reader into the USB port and stick your memory card into it.

One caveat!! The only trouble you might have is older PC's that only have a USB 1.0 port, if your card reader is a newer USB 2.0 device. 1.0 is old but still easy to find. It is slower so transfers will take longer. On the upside, a 1.0 card reader will be very cheap. I just saw one at Wolf Camera marked down to $8.00 that came with a free 64 meg memory card. They were trying to get rid of it on clearance. Stick with 1.0 USB card reader and you should be fine.

There's always a chance you'll have problems with a computer, but finding one that works with this shouldn't be hard. I've done it nearly everywhere. Make sure your images are small files for the web though, or a bigger problem will be the slow internet speeds you're more likely to find.

BTW Guatemala isn't all that bad. Its a good idea to save most of your internet work for certain places you'll pass through. Like Guatemala City or Antigua. Shouldn't have any troubles in the more frequented places. Lago de Atitlan has plenty of modern PC's but finding a good connection for large image uploads is a bit shaky.

Christian

One more quick note. Don't let a salesman tell you that the 2.0 card readers are backwards compatable and will always work with a 1.0 port. It's true in theory but not always in practice. Newer devices may still need drivers that an older PC doesn't have loaded, and might not be able to find online easily. 1.0 is just slow but will work with almost anything most of the time.

For archiving images on the road, you can spend a little more to get yourself a portable drive of some kind. Hell you can use your iPod if you have one. Or any other USB compliant external drive casing. I use small laptop drives in standard USB cases. They can fit in my pocket. Price of a case is maybe $25. Hard drive price depends on size. Anyway just transfer your original images from your card/reader accross the PC and over to your portable hard drive/iPod/iRiver/whatever. Its a little extra cost if you don't already have something like this but its the best way to archive your data on the road. You dont really want to spend the time and money for a cafe to burn you a CD and then maybe it breaks or is a cheap CD that oxidizes (CD rot) quickly in muggy weather. The only other way is archiving online, but again you have to have stable and quick internet speeds plus the online storage somewhere to do it. Or just take a lot of memory cards with you. But I think that's a bad idea, and costly.

Christian

Maybe you could buy a 100GB portable hard drive and download your photos to that every night. You could then hit up an internet cafe in a big city once in a whil an do a major update. You could also edit and email some of the photos to yourself for use in later articles.

quote:

Originally posted by Nick:
Maybe you could buy a 100GB portable hard drive and download your photos to that every night. You could then hit up an internet cafe in a big city once in a whil an do a major update. You could also edit and email some of the photos to yourself for use in later articles.

I use an iPod Photo 60gb to download my photos direct from my camera. However I back my photos up whenever I can with Flickr, just in case the iPod goes on it's own little adventure without me.

I use a camera that takes SD and MS cards (Konica Minolta, G600) and I have a card reader that will plug into any computer and be reconised as a removerable drive (windows 98 and XP has worked out here). I can also plug the iPod into any computer with the same effect (although it takes a little longer for the computer to deal with it, and sometimes it just doesn't but it's workable).

Thanks for all the tips, I'll check out the different suggestions. My concern was not so much the back-up of the data as I figured (and I might be wrong), that loading them onto a picture share web site (e.g. nikonet, kodak, livejournal.com) will automatically take care of that, as the step on getting them there in the first place. I want to add pictures to the trip reports that I'm posting online and from what I read from all the replies, buying a camera with the most commonly used card type, together with a card reader that can deal with older windows version (without downloading software to install), and getting a few extra cards, might be my best way to go. Thanks everybody!

If you're talking about upping those images online as a form of archived backup, one other thing to keep in mind is the resolution you shoot in. Normally web images would be compressed. That is, the resolution is resized and re-saved with JPG compression to minimize file size. You could always just shoot in medium or low res so your images are small to begin with, but that's not a good image for archived purposes. Web images look good at low res and can still fill the screen, but not if you want to print the same file larger than a few square inches. If you can, its best to archive your shots locally to a portable hard drive, iPod or similar. Then when youre at the Internet Cafe almost all PC's will have some kind of s/w that decreases the image size and resaves the image with JPG compression.

Some of these cafes will have very slow internet speeds and it will be a pain to upload to web sites if your images are very large. You could of course just bring extra memory cards (or a few larger sized ones), but they do fill up quickly and in the end a portable storage solution is usually much cheaper. It would be better than not getting your images uploaded if they're too large for the cafe's bandwidth, or keeping lower res web images as your only archives.

Christian

As an aside I'll tell you what I do that's really cool.

I'm a photographer and a bit of a tech geek so actually I have several options I use from the small gear I carry. But the coolest thing that works for me is my PocketPC/Tri-Band phone. That's right, I have a PocketPC that's also a phone, and in Asia it's easy to get cheap "always on" internet connectivity through your GSM-enabled cellular device.

So when I get the perfect shot on my digital camera, I simply transfer it over to my PocketPC, then I run an image editing application (on the PPC) to retouch if necessary, reduce image size and resolution, save as a small JPG that still looks great, and via my cellular connection I can login to a site and upload that image anywhere. On the fly, all within minutes, and without having to find or pay for an Internet Cafe anywhere. I can do it while on the beach or riding a train.

Asia isn't the only continent that offers this type of cellular internet. It's all over Europe and some parts of Central and South America. I know some people don't like carrying a phone when travelling, but sometimes it really does pay to be connected. Consider: it's like having an internet connection on your side at all times. Hell you can turn the phone off if you don't wanna use it, but having it available when and if you need it is no different than looking for an Internet Cafe when you're travelling. Nobody wants to be out of touch that bad.

Christian

quote:

Originally posted by Monkey:
I use an iPod Photo 60gb to download my photos direct from my camera. However I back my photos up whenever I can with Flickr, just in case the iPod goes on it's own little adventure without me.

I have the exact same iPod. I have uploaded lots of photos on it, from my PC. I have never used it on the road. Is there a way to transfer photos from my iPod to a PC? I didn't know that was possible. I would love to learn more.

quote:

For my upcoming RTW trip, I will need to buy a new digital camera but wonder what I should look for as I like to keep a travel log with pictures

I went with the Pentax Optio WP. It's a great little camera. It's compact as hell, it's waterproof so you can take under water and get it wet and it can take quite the beating. It's easy to use and has load of extra features for a decent price.

As for storing pictures just get a card reader or a flash drive. Unless you are planning on being in the bush for your whole trip you can easily take it to any camera shop and have them burn the pictures on a CD for you.

Tracy Ann is dead right; I was able to take my camera into any camera shop in Asia and have them put it on a CD for about $4US. Two suggestions if you do this though;

1) Always check to see if the CD works - take it out of the computer, and put it back in and see if your pictures/movies all load up.

2) Get two copies of the CD's and keep them in different places (day pack/back pack etc.). If you are gone for a long time, send one of the CD's home.

When choosing a digital camera, you don't have to get a small one. I got myself a Casio Exlim before I went (actually, while I was in Japan...much cheaper there) which is a wee camera. Turns out, that small cameras pick up movements in your hand more than normal cameras; thus a lot of your pictures can come out a bit blurry; especially when in low light. If you get a small camera, get a tripod.

I think what RyanRedHat said about getting a waterroof camera is dead on also...you will see what he means when you are in SE Asia!

I ran into the camera storage issue when I was traveling last summer and I never found a really good solution for backing up my photos. Towards the end of my several month long trip, if I had to pick one thing that I absolutely could not loose it would have been my camera memory card. It was the only thing that I condsidered priceless. I would have gladly given up my passport or all of my cash to hold onto my camera.

Backing up photos to the internet is hard because it takes a long time if you have a lot of pictures. With flickr you can upload the photos at full resolution very easily, but they are not so easily retrievable. You have to download them one at a time which is no good if you have thousands of photos. An ipod or cds would be convenient, but I would be afraid of them getting lost or stolen and would much rather have everything backed up in a place separate from my person. The best solution I could find: I ended up just continuously e-mailing photos to a gmail account 10MB at a time each time I was at a place that had internet access.