Memory space for holiday..

[Arjay12345]

Hello

I'm going on a three week holiday to India and expect to take lots on snaps. I'm going with 2 x 8gb cards, but am concerned I may run out of space if I decide to click away in Raw.

Anyone think of any smart way round (without buying more cards)? Any cheap/small gadgets around that let me transfer content from my cards so I can delete and use afresh?

Thanks
Arjay

[fletch]

How big are the files from your camera? 16gb of memory is quite a lot.

Depending on how far over 16gb you go you may be better of just buying more memory than trying to find a device to download your cards to. The decent devices I have seen (such as the ones from Epsom) are all very expensive and I wouldn't trust my photos to a cheap device.

Sandisk 4 gb cards can be picked up for less than $20 these days and it is often better to a few smaller cards than one or two large ones.

Worst comes to the worst you can by cards in India

[BEGM83]

Why not go through the days shots and delete the ones you dont want to keep?
16gb of photos is a lot to trawl through at the end of a trip!

[chalkie7]

16gb is NOT alot of space if you have a high end DSLR shooting in RAW. I had a 3 week holiday in Sri Lanka and Maldives earlier this year and used 32gb quite easily, and that was with my 400d, not my 5d mkII. I would definitely consider buying / borrowing more cards...on a trip such as yours, you don't want to run out.

[fletch]

If using a regluar 10-12 mp consumer DSLR the 16GB will hold approximately 1600 RAW files. Unless you are shooting events such as weddings and the like I find it very hard to believe that you would shoot that many exposures in 3 weeks of travelling. Travel/Holiday/Landscape shots require more planning and though that a scatter gun approach, if you find yourself shooting that much it may pay to step out from behind the viewfinder and look at what you are snapping rather than just holding down the motor wind.

[Quo Fan]

Originally Posted by fletch

If using a regluar 10-12 mp consumer DSLR the 16GB will hold approximately 1600 RAW files. Unless you are shooting events such as weddings and the like I find it very hard to believe that you would shoot that many exposures in 3 weeks of travelling. Travel/Holiday/Landscape shots require more planning and though that a scatter gun approach, if you find yourself shooting that much it may pay to step out from behind the viewfinder and look at what you are snapping rather than just holding down the motor wind.

I shot over 1200 in a week in California. I can easily see shooting over 5000 in 3 weeks.

Memory cards are cheap. A storage device should run you a couple of hundred US. Get more cards.

I have a Hyperdrive with 40gig of space. Devices and prices can be found here.

[fletch]

Originally Posted by Quo Fan

I shot over 1200 in a week in California. I can easily see shooting over 5000 in 3 weeks.

Assuming you are awake for 16 hours a day taking 5000 images in 3 weeks means on average you are taking a photo once every 4 mins.

If you assume that you can only be in a sitaution where you could take a photo for 8 hours a day (which is a high estimate) once you discount when you are eating and travelling etc that becomes One photo every 2 mins. That is a huge amount of photos.

If you assume that once back home that it takes 2 mins a photo to decide whether to keep or delete, whether to upload online or print for the album or to do futher editing then it will take you 167 hours of editing without all of the detailed work on the photos you actually pick. 167 hours. That is over 20 working days or a four week full time job.

Do you still think taking 5000 photos on a 3 week vacation is a good idea?

[WPCatfish]

If someone has one available, you could borrow a laptop or netbook (if you're not already bringing one) and save to the hard drive.

[Arjay12345]

Ok, this is my reality experience: I recently spent 4 evenings at a festival, each night around 3 hours. Each night I clicked approx 250 photos. As Raw was new to me, I chose to record JPG versions of my pics along with the Raws (not small Raws). I shoot with a 50D.

When I downloaded onto my PC, all of the pics took up a total of around 10gb of space.

Yes, there were duplicates in there as some were portraits and in order to combat eye blinks, I triggered twice on some shots. But then I rightly had to take rapid shots for HDR compositions and some ghost shots that I wanted to layer within PS. But all in all, I don't think I was needlessly trigger happy.

I expect to have periods when I will be more eager to take pics than others during the holiday; I don't expect to be sleeping with my camera in hand on standby, just in case.

Sounds like my true options are to:
1 - Buy a couple more cards
2 - Save JPGs in smaller sizes or even not at all (if I trust my PS skills on the Raws per another thread I've posted on this forum)
3 - Save Raws in smaller S1 or S2 sizes
4 - Take my netbook along (yet another contraption my wife won't forgive me for) and transfer as i go

Agree?

P.S. I hate deleting pics without having seen them on a bigger screen than just a camera LCD - so easy to miss true delights..

[OsmosisStudios]

Sorry Fletch, you know I like you, but Im gonna disagree here. 12GB for 3 weeks, especially in a place like India, isn't going to be enough. Not by a longshot.