Anyone using portable image storage?

I got a used (but basically unused) Canon M80 for a great price about a year ago. They were hideously expensive when they came out brand new, but could probably be had much cheaper now that 80Gb isn't THAT much more than some cards can carry. It is basically built to the same standard as the semi-pro Canon cameras with a magnesium chassis, and was perfect for me at the time because the button layout is very similiar to what you will find on the back on a Canon SLR, and it uses the same battery and charger as my 50D. For travelling however, while it is tough and reliable, it is not particularly small or light. It is big enough that next time I would consider if it would be better to carry a small netbook computer instead given added functionality of such a device, particularly where you can use it with WiFi at hotels, etc.

 

Two words - i pad

Seriously. With the card connector, it works great to view and weed out the non-keepers. Small, light, and great battery life.

Also, can use it to check your email, facebook, etc, and as a kindle reader, currency converter, travel itinerary organizer, iPod, etc. I have to say, its probably one of the single best travel aids ever.

 

Hi -

I seriously considered the iPad for a while, but there are some serious disadvantages:

1) No way to back up those photos that are on the iPad whilst on the road, only when you dock, as you cannot connect external storage (USB) to the iPad;

2) Price: for a 64GB iPad with UMTS, ouch. You can get an EP2 with the kit zoom for that price! Add to that roaming costs whilst overseas, and double ouch. Seriously...

Instead, consider a simple basic Netbook - they go for less than $300 - running Windows XP (for simplicity, rather than a Linux) and at least one external HD. Keep a backup copy on the external HD and you're set. Put the backup either in your luggage or personal belongings bag. You can put IrfanView on the Netbook and have a good viewing/very basic editing software as well (and it's free). Total costs, around $500, but that's also including a ruggidized 500 GB (I have one from WD that has been tossed around quite a bit, no problems...). Make sure that the backup travels in a different bag than your camera so that if something is stolen, you've at least got the backups...nothing worse than having your camera bag stolen, outside of having your camera bag AND all of your pictures, including the backups, stolen!

JohnF

 

Check out the Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA, the review is here:

Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA

 

I used an Epson P5000. I think it was 40 or 80gb, cannot remember now as they do different sizes, and it has a superb 4 inch screen. You can delete images, create named files, and some other functions. The price when new was crazy, about the same as an ipad. Have sold it now.

 

@JohnF - I agree about the price of the wifi+3G models, I would only recommend the wifi only. There are plenty of places to get on a wifi network just about everywhere I have been in the world (admittedly, I haven't been to india yet, will be going in February)

As to your point 1, you are leaving out the options of cloud storage using one of the many apps out there like dropbox. In the end, if these pictures are SO valuable to you as to need a double backup, I don't see why you would carry them on you - cloud storage is the only way to go at that point. For me personally, for "vacation" photos, I don't think I would need a super-bulletproof double backup. I would be upset if the pictures were lost, but it wouldn't mean the trip was wasted

 

Does anybody know if any of these devices (other than the expensive Colorspace UDMA) will do incremental backups? In other words, rather than copying an entire card every time, just copying what's been added to that card since the last backup?

 

I second that. Took a 64GB model to China and it worked wonderfully.

 

I've been thinking about this too actually. Usually when I was going away I was carrying my Asus Netbook (MacBook prior to getting that), which was fine but, on holidays, the laptop/netbook was pretty redundant beyond backup. I don't play games on them, don't have work to do when away and my Internet use doesn't often stretch beyond online check-in and check emails if/when I feel like it.

I got a 32gb iPad for Christmas and have had an iPhone for a couple of years so I have a fair collection of games/apps/music and movies I can put on it so it's become an obvious choice as a travel companion but then I was thinking that if I load it up with iTunes content then I'm still going to need somewhere to unload my memory cards and the idea of carrying about a netbook as well seemed a bit silly.

I bought the Camera connection kit and it does work very well but I'm still concerned that 32gb might not enough for EVERYTHING. I looked at the various portable solutions, but they are pretty expensive, not a huge amount lighter than a netbook and would then be another mains/power adapter to pack into luggage.

Overall, if you don't have anything a netbook is probably the best option bang/buck, but double check the power packs as I've seen one, albeit not a newer model, where the power lead was long/thick and in turn quite cumbersome to pack away. Personally, I'm going to just try an accumulate a few largish capacity SD cards (currently have 3x 8GB and 1x 4GB one in my camera bag with my GF-1) and perhaps back any important photos to my iPad and/or cloud space. I know it's not ideal but as has been said earlier, a few photos lost don't equal a bad holiday.

 

Hi!!

I saw some posts on other forums about archos products.

They have a lot of models small screen large screen, android os or windows os.
Take a look!! You will probably find something much cheaper than a ipad. For me I prefer keep the cash for a new lens than spending on a ipad hehe.

Jeb

 

I agree with small net book idea. they are cheap, it's a true computer, can be be used to backup images off a card. It can have an external HD plugged in... like the Iomaga E-Go 500g (under $80.00) that are made for rough handling.

 

if you want ultra portable you can use the ipad camera kit on an ipod touch 350 you get a 64 gb ipod that you can have some games on and extra storage that will fit in your pocket. To me unless you are looking for the large screen it is the best bet.

 

I would go with the iPad.....it is a versatile appliance. So many uses.

SD card to iPad......find a hotspot and upload (slowly but surely) to Dropbox or iDisk or your web gallery.

Great for editing/viewing.

Really high tech is the ShutterSnitch app and an Eye-fi card.....but that is probably overkill for you.

R

 

For the price of an 64gb iPod Touch you could get 260gb worth of sd cards and then just find a Internet cafe periodically and dump them online.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that the iPad or iPod Touch is a bad idea. It's just, as has been mentioned before, you could be there for a long time uploading at a hotspot baring in mind that each photo could be around 20mb (raw/jpeg).

Also, I don't know what kind of places you'll be staying in or travelling through but, equally on the trains, I'd be worried about the possibility of an iPad being a very big target for a thief.

 

Those suggesting the ipad, there's a possibly major flaw.

I know when you try and sync photos to it from your computer, it won't sync across more than 16Gb, no matter the size of ipad. Hard limit in software.

I'm not sure if this limit is present when copying from SD card however.

I could test it, but it would take me a while as I only have 4Gb SD cards so would be a fair bit of to-and-froing to try it out.

 

I'd not heard of that problem before but did a quick google and there it is! Although it's not a sync problem, the device simply won't allow you to put more than 16gb of photos onto it, which I'm guessing would carry across to the camera kit.

Apparently its something to do with the thumbnail/file indexing and working memory (ram equivalent?) limitations which I'm guessing would does make sense as there's quite a few times I've used apps (HP iPrint & djay notably) and been thrown a "not enough memory to perform" message, even when I've only had 2 or 3 other apps open in the background.

I've never had a problem on my iPhone 3GS or 4 but, occasionally, safari would crash on my 3G and it would be sorted by closing down stuff lurking in the background and freeing up memory.

 

I found out about it trying to sync only 8Gb of photos (about 11k photos after the scaling down to 2MP that's done for synced pics), it would crash and restart after each sync.

Annoying software bug, can't wait for it to get fixed. It's not a HW limitation, it's a limitation of how they've implemented it.

 

I've only had my iPad since Christmas day and when I set it up I was using my laptop rather than main computer so I'm probably not anywhere reaching any limits yet. I've only got about 300 photo files on so far, about 240 jpegs from my Canon 500D which were synced in iTunes and 50ish jpegs (and raw, maybe?) which I pulled from my GF1 when playing with the camera kit.

Have there been any official comments about making it a bug fix? The thread I was reading on apple forums started in June with the last post was in September, and there was no signs of it being sorted.

I know what you mean by it's an implementation problem rather than hardware, but is it that they've only allowed the iPad 256/260mb of runtime memory to utilise?

Currently, for example, I've got;
105MB free (which drops to 78MB when I load back to safari!)
50MB used by iOS
14MB Actively in use by other apps (RAM)
8MB Inactively in use by apps.

This is more a question with some figures I think are related rather than me stating I know exactly what I'm talking about and here's the evidence!