Travelling

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fox in the box

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Stuart
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I am going travelling for a few months, probably end of November to beginning of March and I have a couple of questions in relation to this.

Firstly, how should I store my photos I have taken? Personally I was thinking of keeping them on sd cards and burning to dvds as and when. I have 4 x 16gb cards and 4 x 8gb cards.

Also, I am not sure whether to shoot RAW or Jpeg. I haven't got much experience shooting RAW but I do like the flexibility this gives in post processing. However, I do realise that I'll get alot less photos on each card.

All input will be much appreciated as I am struggling to decide!!


Thanks

Stuart
 
fox in the box said:
I am going travelling for a few months, probably end of November to beginning of March and I have a couple of questions in relation to this.

Firstly, how should I store my photos I have taken? Personally I was thinking of keeping them on sd cards and burning to dvds as and when. I have 4 x 16gb cards and 4 x 8gb cards.

Also, I am not sure whether to shoot RAW or Jpeg. I haven't got much experience shooting RAW but I do like the flexibility this gives in post processing. However, I do realise that I'll get alot less photos on each card.

All input will be much appreciated as I am struggling to decide!!


Thanks

Stuart
Click to expand...

Hello Stuart :wave:

When i first started i shoot in RAW + Jpeg but that sometimes takes up more memory on the card that's why i shoot in RAW only on the picture i really like the most and for the rest on jpeg. Now i use my tablet to store all my files on the micro 32gb or my 32gb usb stick, I never carry more than 3 sd cards at 16gb just in case i mixed them up and over copy them,

BTW do you own a tablet?
 
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Hi Michael,

I don't own a tablet, but that is always an option. I'm not sure the butget will allow for an Ipad but potentially something that could be purchased in order to make things easier.

I am thinking of doing RAW+Jpeg as this will give me flexibility
 
An 7" tablet is soo cheap now. But i use a 10.1" to see all my pictures on and videos this make it easy to see than an camera 3" screen
 
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Another option is a cheap net book.
 
Thank you all for your input. I certainly hadn't thought about all these options!!

Michael, thanks for the link that will be very helpful and it is good to see the differences clearly stated.

I think it#ll either be a case of a tablet or keep on the memory card and dvd when available.
 
High quality 32 GB SD card is < £22 at Amazon.

Show me another storage medium that can store 100 GB for 70 quid. (DVDs can but not when you factor in the hardware to burn them). Plus fit in waterproof, crushproof case smaller than a deck of cards.

Plus you could sell them in the classifieds on your return for at least 50% of purchase.

At higher numbers (maybe 250GB), other storage media become cheaper but generally have lower reliability. And 1-200GB is an awful lot really.
 
Portable HD? They are pretty cheap. For my 3 month Asia trip I transferred from a card reader into a 500GB portable HD through a tablet w/ 2 usb ports.
 
fox in the box said:
Hi Michael,

I don't own a tablet, but that is always an option. I'm not sure the butget will allow for an Ipad but potentially something that could be purchased in order to make things easier.

I am thinking of doing RAW+Jpeg as this will give me flexibility
Click to expand...

Unless you have a need to transfer your shoots on the fly (like pros on site) there is no reason to shoot in raw + jpeg. The only thing you will be doing is wasting space. I do not understand what "flexibility" has to do with it. What exactly do you mean be this?
 
I'd get more memory cards and create a system to keep them secure and log the info on them. 16Gb cards are quite cheap, get decent ones like sandisk and they are hugely reliable.

If it were me, I'd number them, have a little log book that I'd write what was on them, i.e. Date range, places visited. I'd find a decent padded storage wallet and probably keep that in my luggage away from my camera bag, probably in a ziplock plastic bag as well.

After that I'd start looking at other storage medium, or perhaps ways to take some images and store them on line or blog them.
 
Whilst I was away I took two WD 1tb Passport Drives w/ Nomad cases but I had a laptop with me as well. First you need to work out your storage requirements. For example 3 months x 100 images a day (not a huge amount) = 9000 images x 20mb (my D7000 raw size) = 180gb. Therefore if you went with cards you would know you need at least 12 32gb cards (two cards w/ one as backup) or about £240. I needed the full 1tb for images and about 50hours of video and filled it. There was no way I could have brought 2tb of cards for less than the 200 I paid for my two hard drives.
 
Oh how things have changed.

When spent a year travelling in 1994/5 I took prepaid Fuji Sensia with me. shot six rolls then pacakged them up in two packs of three with alternate rolls and sent them back for processing. That way if a package got lost I did not loose a continuous 100 shots. Didn't get to see any of them until I got home.
 
Just get a fist full of memory cards, they're pretty cheap these days. Do you really want to go travelling with netbooks/laptops etc?
 
Thank you to everyone for their replys.

Shaylou, to be honest I haven't shot much RAW photography but the flexibility this gives by way of post processing is much more to my liking as more photo information is stored. However, I am aware the downside is less space on memory cards. Sorry, I might be wrong in my thinking and not really making much sense in what I say!!

Byker28i and Danny Two, I was leaning towards stocking up on memery cards and I have been buying 16gb Sandisk extreme.

Jacob, I will look into a passport drive but I am thinking about not going down the netbook/tablet route now so the option would be to load upto pc in an internet cafe and then load onto passport drive. However, can viruses be caught from pc this way? If so, then I would have to consider the netbook/tablet once again.

Apologies to anyone if this doesn't make sense or contradicting in anyway but I am confusing myself too!!!!
 
fox in the box said:
Thank you to everyone for their replys.

Shaylou, to be honest I haven't shot much RAW photography but the flexibility this gives by way of post processing is much more to my liking as more photo information is stored. However, I am aware the downside is less space on memory cards. Sorry, I might be wrong in my thinking and not really making much sense in what I say!!

Byker28i and Danny Two, I was leaning towards stocking up on memery cards and I have been buying 16gb Sandisk extreme.

Jacob, I will look into a passport drive but I am thinking about not going down the netbook/tablet route now so the option would be to load upto pc in an internet cafe and then load onto passport drive. However, can viruses be caught from pc this way? If so, then I would have to consider the netbook/tablet once again.

Apologies to anyone if this doesn't make sense or contradicting in anyway but I am confusing myself too!!!!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't do the Internet cafe route, they are riddled with viruses
 
If you were going for a couple of weeks then maybe a few cards would suffice, but if you're going for months then I would get a Netbook with a 500Gb internal HD, and an external 1Tb HD.

A Netbook would let you cull the duff images every few days, and the external HD is there as a backup to the Netbook.

It depends on how much photography you plan on doing, but I've got close to filling 40Gb of cards in a week on holiday. :shrug: That was virtually all I was doing though, and it was Venice. ;) :lol:
 
I guess it depends what sort of travelling. If you will have access to WiFi then I'd probably go for some sort of online storage, it's going to be slow and tedious, but if we are talking rucksack with your cards/drives/tablet in and it gets nicked its all away.
Failing that I'd copy to a Netbook, then to a fresh CF card and post the duplicate CF card home.

Depends, of course, how valuable to you the pictures will be.
 
Hi
I Spent 2 years on one trip, another year on a second trip and had tried different methods.
For me, what worked best was below

• Get 6 or so 8gb cards. That way if you lose one you don’t lose a large amount of photos.
• Get a decent card case as well
• Shoot jpeg. This had enough allowance for the editing I needed to do for day to day shots and general ‘street’ photography.
• If I was capturing sunsets. Historic sites, or something specific I would switch to RAW
• Each day / evening go through the photos on the camera and discard the obvious duplicates / naff shots.
• If you can’t burn them yourself onto DVD (I had macbook with me with lightroom) go to internet café and burn onto disk.
• Due to the time length I was traveling I did 2 copies. I kept one disk on me and posted the other home. When I got confirm that the disk had reached home I would re use the disk I kept on me for the next set and then keep another copy untile they reached home etc.
• I then changed to using wd 1tb hard drive. Kept a copy of everything on this and posted the disk home.
One of the best things about travelling is the amount of photo opportunities, which are a great visual treat, but don’t necessarily translate into a photo. I would sit in a bar every few evenings and go through on my camera the photos and delete quite a few. They just didn’t work when I reviewed them a little while after the actual event / capture.
BUT…most of all….HAVE FUN. Don’t be constantly looking for the next photo, or spend your travels looking through a lens. In most cases, the photo finds you whilst you are not expecting it. And remember a golden rule, find the light and you will find the photo!

Enjoy
 
I wouls and did buy myself a netbook for this very purpose - in fact, I'm using it now for convenience. As large an internal HDD as you can get and an external HDD for backup. 2 copies should be plenty for piece of mind - if possible, keep them seperate just in case someone decides they have more right to your stuff than you do.
 
Thanks to all for all the help/replies.

I know a tablet is lighter but a netbook might be the way forward for me. I am still looking into my options before taking the plunge!!

I am certainly going to invest in a memory card case so that I can easily store and not mix up my cards.

qpc1 I like the idea of jpeg's and RAW as and when. I hadn't actually considered that option.
 
where are you off to?

I was looking at your Kit and to be honest, i wouldnt bother taking all of it.

I would recommend
Decent bag
Nifty Fifty
10-20
and a zoom.
Small lightweight tripod
ND filter
Polarisers
electrical tape (comes in very handy)
Decend brush and blower (help withthe dirt / dust / sand)
Hyperfocal distance calculator (phone app)

Before you go practice with those lenses so you really get to grips with them.

I took a lot of kit but mainly used the 10-20 and 24-105L. you need to be agile for day to day yet have the right gear for those composed landscapes /beach / sunsets. I took a 430ex as well but rarely used it.

The 50 1.8 on the crop body is great for portraits and sallow DOF. Learn to use it as you probably find that its the lens you use the most as its lightweight and you can grab shots quick.

But most of all.......have fun and get involved. Learn the local language and engage with locals. Get up early to get the best light. I spent 5 days getting up a 5am in guatemala to get a shot of the sunrise behind a volcano. I was rewarded with this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23064358@N02/3629924954/in/set-72157619701073661/

Ignore the rest as these arent the best of the trip. These were put up to show friends at home.
 
Do not get a 2.5" HDD to backup your photos to.
For the last two years I did this....
First year, 9 days in, ~30GB the drive failed, claimed it wasn't formatted. I managed to use recovery software to get back ~80% of the photos without corruption.
This year, although I tested the drive (a new one, different make) prior to going, when I arrived and was going to make my first backup, it started clicking, and again could not see any contents.
Luckilly the first year I had a 32GB SD card and had some of the photos from the first year. This year, I came prepared with a 64GB SD to use.
I will be using a (more expensive) SSD in future (not SD, SSD).

Personally I use a tablet computer running windows 7, with photoshop, 12.1". It has a bluetooth keyboard, and if stood up, is as usable as a laptop (at 1.6GHz full whack, quad core, quite a powerful little beast).

Again, the tablet should be SSD not HDD. The removal of moving parts should make it more resilient.
 
JonathanRyan said:
High quality 32 GB SD card is < £22 at Amazon.

Show me another storage medium that can store 100 GB for 70 quid. (DVDs can but not when you factor in the hardware to burn them). Plus fit in waterproof, crushproof case smaller than a deck of cards.

Plus you could sell them in the classifieds on your return for at least 50% of purchase.

At higher numbers (maybe 250GB), other storage media become cheaper but generally have lower reliability. And 1-200GB is an awful lot really.
Click to expand...

What he said. Buy a load of SD cards and a decent case for them (peli make small cases, their 100x series).

Backing them up is a bigger issue - but again, more SD cards is probably a good solution.
 
Thanks qpc1, firstly an excellent set on your flickr. Love the volcano shot and well worth the early start!!

I have been thinking about the kit to take. I had decided that I was probably going to go with: 10-20, 18-200, nifty fifty and 28mm.

I have a small tripod that I will probably take and a 270 exII. I'm trying to travel 'light' but the more I think the more I add to the list.

I'm going to stick with the above at the moment - I might even take less when it comes to it.

Thanks to coldpenguin and itsdavedotnet. Plenty more to think about with photo storage.
 
coldpenguin said:
Do not get a 2.5" HDD to backup your photos to.
For the last two years I did this....
First year, 9 days in, ~30GB the drive failed, claimed it wasn't formatted. I managed to use recovery software to get back ~80% of the photos without corruption.
This year, although I tested the drive (a new one, different make) prior to going, when I arrived and was going to make my first backup, it started clicking, and again could not see any contents.
Luckilly the first year I had a 32GB SD card and had some of the photos from the first year. This year, I came prepared with a 64GB SD to use.
I will be using a (more expensive) SSD in future (not SD, SSD).

Personally I use a tablet computer running windows 7, with photoshop, 12.1". It has a bluetooth keyboard, and if stood up, is as usable as a laptop (at 1.6GHz full whack, quad core, quite a powerful little beast).

Again, the tablet should be SSD not HDD. The removal of moving parts should make it more resilient.
Click to expand...

I used two of these and two 1TB WD passport drives for 5 months and they got dropped/chucked into bags/smashed/wet/damp and everything else you wouldn't want to happen to your HDs and the drives performed flawlessly. SSD is an expensive option at the moment but I don't think it will be long until it becomes the norm
 
Sorry, I forgto to answer that question!! We're going to Thailand, Laos Vietnam and Cambodia. Depending on time and money we may well go elsewhere (Philippines and Indonesia).
 
Nice,
(although i was there in 1999 for 12 months) so probably welll changed by now.
Laos is fantastic. Lots of french colonial architecture, lots of Bhudist sights etcIf you get chance head down to Southern Laos (Si pan Don) and look for irrawaddy dolphins. When i was there it was hardcore trek by local bus and long boat. I was huddled next to a sack of rice and a pig for 6 hours....But the sight of an irrawaddy dolphin and her calf through the reeds at sunrise was worth it!! Get into the jungle as well. Any hilltop mission / outpost is worth it as you will be rewarded with some amazing views.

Vietnam is incredible. Hanoi is stunning, and get to the early morning fish market.The whole country is steeped in history and not all of it good. Get into the hill top villages and get up early for the mist.

Cambodia Ankor Waat will blow your mind. Pnhom Penn is interesting as well. Again, the early mornings and late evenings are well worth it as the light is soft and subtle.

Do some research and put the effort in. You will be rewarded with some amazing shots. Look for festivals / celebrations. Theres always something being celebrated somewhere.

Link up with other photographers and ditch the tourist trail and hire a car (if you feel comfortable with that) and go your own way. That way you are not tied to any schedule but still travelling in a group with like minded people.

Most of all...have fun and respect the locals and the local wildlife!!
 
The best solution is a pair of Hyperdrive Colorspace drives. The pair of them are smaller and lighter than a netbook and have a capacity large enough for the most prolific raw shooter. Their battery life is remarkable and the transfer speed from card to drive is faster than USB2.

The only downside is the price. But if you're going to be away from internet cafes for a few weeks and you're planning on shooting several thousand images but you're struggling to keep within weight limits then it's worth the cost.
 
Thanks gpc1. We have been fortunate enough to have done quite a bit of travelling in Thailand in 2004, again in 2009 and we went to Vietnam for 2.5 weeks in 2011.

We just felt the time is right to go and spend longer in the places we liked and to see lots more than we did previously. Hopefully the fact that we are not governed by time (where we have been previously when on holiday) will mean we can go off the beaten track.

The closer it gets the more I'm looking forward to it - I just want to get out there!!

Frank, thank you for the idea of a hyperdrive - I had never considered this but will certainly look into this option.
 
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