Hello All, In 2 months, my wife and I will set out on a 14 month bike tour through Scandanavia, Europe, SE Asia, NZ, Australia and ??? I've recently picked up a 2nd hand E-PL5 and 14-42 kit lens and hope to add a 40-150. My plan is to keep copies on the hard drive, an external HD and online. I haven't used any of the online sites in the past and I've been overwhelmed by the number of possibilities. I'm looking for a low cost (free) site to store (most) and display (some) photos that can be updated while we're on the road. At times, internet service will be spotty so my updates will be sporadic. With all the choices, which site would you recommend? Would a low cost site provide much benefit over a free site? Thanks, Jay
If it is just to show friends at home then agree Flickr is a good choice. Large free storage allowance and easy to use, but only stores JPG. If you want to store raw as a back up then you will need a LARGE data allowance as uploading Gb of pics can get expensive, especially overseas. Even just uploading high quality JPG can get expensive. Try to get hotels with free internet, also may take a while to upload depending on the speed of the data connection. Just had a look at some pics taken on a trip and 1 days worth of RAW files (180 pics) was 2Gb!. If you do want to back up RAW then maybe just use a cloud storage service.
A site like flickr might offer 1Tb of storage but you have to have both the time and an internet connection fast and reliable enough to backup all your images as you go. They also don't allow you to upload raw files. I spent 5.5 months on the road overseas last year with a couple of portable hard drives for storage.
google drive offers 100gb for 2$ a month. that is an incredible value. and it provides general storage - no rescaling , resampling , transmogrification
I have used both Dropbox and Pogoplug free services as simple online cloud backup with no problems. If you catch them at the right time, you get 50-100gb free. Not the best interface, but if all you are using is for backup, works fine.
There are a variety of cloud storage services that are good for sorting files. They aren't really suited for displaying images, but you if there are people back home you want to give access to the files, you can share folders easily. Or you could just pick those photos you want to share as jpegs and put them on flickr. Rather than buy a service, I've just signed up at several for free at various times. Box: https://www.box.com/pricing/ Dropbox: https://db.tt/xaEIr4jO (you get an extra 500mb for referring people) Onedrive: https://onedrive.live.com?invref=de29d9ab499542a1&invsrc=90 (you get an extra 500mb for referring people) Google Drive: https://www.google.com/drive/?authuser=0 If you have a Gmail account you should also already have 15GB on Google Drive. Amazon Cloud: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive (5GB free, and cheap plans for extra) Copy: https://copy.com?r=xbwo1R (referrals give both you and the other person 5GB free) They also have a neat feature where the space usage of shared folders is split between everyone sharing it
I'd agree that Flickr is a good bet for JPEGs because it is free and essentially limitless. It's easy to share from too. Google drive/ Microsoft OneDrive/ Dropbox etc. etc. are all good options for general storage. Google drive is probably best for sharing (via Google+, which is finally relatively simple to achieve), but if you just want to store stuff, they will all work fine. It may also be worth asking someone at home to download everything off them from time to time as an added backup. The best option may well be to upload lower resolution JPEGs (or whatever resolution seems to work best for the available bandwidth) of everything, and then have a separate cloud storage for the RAWs that you particularly want. On cycle trips in the past, I have made CDs/DVDs and mailed them home. Often internet cafes have the option of purchasing blank discs individually, but this option is getting less and less useful as internet connections improve and images sizes get larger. I'm not sure if you are going anywhere I've been, but there may be something helpful on my cycle touring site: http://www.tyretracks.org.uk Have a great trip.
