How to Backup and Manage Your Photos When Traveling Without a Computer

Whether you are going to backpack in the wilderness or take a plane to an exotic destination, there is only so much weight you can carry with you.

So how do you backup and manage your photos without a computer?

Let’s have a look.

Leave the laptop behind

Traveling lightweight is an art difficult to master as it requires a change in mindset. The easiest way to shed some pounds from your luggage is to leave your laptop at home.

At first, it sounds like a crazy idea but, on second thought, it does make sense. “How can I manage my photos without a computer while traveling?” is, in fact, one of the seasonal questions that pop out here and there over the internet every time the holiday season approaches. It is the question I will try to answer in this article.

Smartphone and tablet

The obvious candidates to replace your laptop while traveling are your smartphone and tablet. With the exception of professional photographers on an assignment, most of the tasks we do while on vacation (mailing, social networking, photo sharing and blogging), can be done using any recent smartphone.

Some of the considerable advantages of smartphones and tablets over most laptops are fairly obvious; smaller size, less weight, better connectivity (gsm, 3g, 4g and gps networks and better battery life, just to name few. They are also easier to hide and keep safe and are typically sturdier than a laptop.

Until recent times, though, the chances of a mobile phone being able to fulfill the needs of the passionate photographer were pretty slim, as backup and raw image management (visualization and editing) capabilities were close to none. Luckily, nowadays there are a number of strategies and gadgets you can use to manage and backup your photos directly from your smartphone.

The “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” strategy

This is the number one strategy suggested on the Internet for how to backup photos while traveling without a computer. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, means you should have multiple SD cards and rotate them so that if one fails, you will still have some photos to show.

While this is a great advice you should always follow, you must understand this is not a backup strategy. Should you lose or damage one card, all of its content will be lost for good. The whole concept of backing up is that you have the same data stored in multiple places, so that if one set of data is lost, you can retrieve it from another source.

The “cloud” strategy

Another strategy often suggested is to upload your photos to the cloud. This strategy has some limitations, though. You must have access to an internet connection other than 3g/4g (you definitely don’t want to use your internet mobile connection for this) and you must have a reasonable amount of data to upload (not overly large), both because of the limited amount of data you may have on the cloud and because, usually, internet connections are much slower for upload than download.

Luckily, there are much more interesting solutions that can be successfully applied when it comes to backup and manage your photos on the go.

The “minimalistic” solution

Currently, many smartphones and tablets have only a fixed amount of internal storage, which is quite limited. But if you have the possibility of getting an Android-based smartphone with an internal micro SD expansion slot and an On-The-Go micro USB port (refer to the phone manual for this), then, by connecting your camera or a card reader to the phone via an OTG cable adapter, you can use an app to backup your photos on micro SD cards inside the phone.

As micro SD cards are cheap, small, light, rugged, and now available with high storing capacity, this is really the perfect solution for lightweight photographers who want to backup their work on the go with minimal gear involved.

Should your phone lack the micro SD slot, but features a OTG micro USB port, then you can still backup and manage your photo by using a USB hub to connect both your camera and storage device directly to the phone.

The “all-in-one” (and rather expensive) solution

If you do not have a OTG USB port on your phone, or prefer to use dedicated hardware, you can get devices such as the Western Digital My Passport Wireless in its basic or PRO version.

These devices allows for direct backup of your SD cards into their internal hard drive. Your images can be accessed from the phone via an ad-hoc wi-fi network. Some models can also act as power banks, allowing you to recharge mobile phones, compact cameras, and other USB devices.

While these systems are certainly good, their price is quite steep, particularly for the casual and amateur photographers who may be reluctant to invest at least $150 USD for a dedicated wireless hard drive.

The “Swiss-knife” solution

If you are on a budget, you should look at the FileHub family of compact and lightweight devices from RAVPower. They are a reputable company mostly known for their power banks.

The latest model of FileHub devices, the RavPower RP-WD03, can be purchased from Amazon for about $40 USD.

In terms of features, this device is similar to the already mentioned WD My Passport Wireless PRO. It has an SD card reader and USB2.0 port, it create its own wireless network while bridging existing wi-fi networks, and it’s an access point allowing you to share your internet connection with up to five devices.

What makes the RavPower RP-WD03 really interesting if you travel with just your phone, is its ability to act as a portable router, allowing you to turn any wired connection into wireless. Plus, it sports a 6000 mah battery, powerful enough to fully recharge your smartphone and compact camera.

Flexibility is the key

The main difference with respect to the wireless hard drive solution is that the FileHub devices have no internal storage, hence you also need to carry a portable hard drive or flash drive with you.

While this may seem like a drawback at first, it really is an advantage, as you can combine the RAVPower devices with different storage hardware. Thing you may already have like; the portable hard drive you usually take to work the rest of the year, that old unused drive you have sitting in your bottom desk drawer, or a flash drive (you can buy a 128GB pen drive on Amazon for about $30). You can even add a USB hub to connect more USB devices at once.

If you are traveling in a harsh environment, you will appreciate this freedom of choice even more, as you can ditch the somewhat fragile and cumbersome hard drives in favour of a more compact, lightweight and rugged flash drive. Have you ever washed your pants with a forgotten pen drive in your pocket to discover, later on, it still worked just fine?

Options

As for the WD wireless hard drives, a free dedicated app is available for iOS and Android to interact with the FileHub.

I found accessing the RavPower FileHub with the third party app File Browser allows me to not only backup the photos but to preview raw images as well.

Previewing Sony .arw raw files on the iPad, connected wirelessly to the RP-WD03, with the File Browser app (for iOS only).

Tip: In order to speed up the review process, you may want to shoot in RAW+JPG mode using a low/medium setting for the jpg quality. Plus, having your photos in jpg format also makes it easier to edit and share them on social media networks, a blog, etc., right from your phone.

Conclusion

To become a lightweight travel photographer is hard, but not impossible. I hope I have convinced you that it is possible, at least, to leave your laptop behind without regretting your decision. The next, and much harder step to take, will be to acknowledge the fact that you probably do not need to carry all your photographic equipment with you.

Disclaimer: The author is not associate in any way with Western Digital, RAVPower or any other company whose brand has been named in this article. They are simply products he uses personally, and recommends.