transferring digital photos while on vacation

[eeyoreforever]

I have the best way to store your digtal files from your camera.. A ipod, yes that right's a ipod! I use my ipod to store my digtal files from my Canon A95, what you need to do is buy the camera adaptor from the Apple store (cost is $29.00) plug the camera into the ipod camera adaptor and once your at home you can download them to you CPU.

I was thinking of doing this on our next trip. I have a Canon A95 also. How fast (or slow) is the process of downloading the pics to the iPod? Doesn't really matter-I am just curious.

Also, the first time you hook your iPod back into iTunes, will it not take the pictures off of your iPod since they are not in iTunes? We are still new at this, but I thought thats what happens if you take a song out of iTunes, it makes your iPod match whats in iTunes. That was sure wordy, I hope you know what I'm trying to say.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

IT's very very slow. A full 1 Gb card took about 30 minutes. During that time you gotta pray the battery on both your camera and iPod don't run out because if one of them run out either you'll have to re-do it all over again or if you're unlucky, mess-up your CF card data.

 

[LordAthens]

I wouldn't say is very very slow, but it's certainly not speedy.. I just transfered 768 megs from a Lexar Pro 40x WA CF card to my iPod 5g in 17 minutes.

For what it's worth and a LOT of people don't know this, the iPod can read DIRECTLY from a regular USB card reader. IE, you don't need to waste your digital cam batteries. Just plug in the camera adapter, plug in your card reader, slap in your memory card and it will pull the files. I usually carry (4) 1GB cards so I simply take out the full card from my camera, slap it in the card reader and throw it back in the back and put a new card in the camera, zero down time. The above time was using a old Dazzle 6-in-1 card reader, USB 1.1. I'll go dig my 2.0 reader out of my camera bag and repeat the test to see if the iPod can actually read at USB 2.0 speeds.

 

[brack]

You could carry a laptop but I prefer to have many CF cards on hand for my Rebel.

 

[manning]

Spinning HD can/will fail at anytime. Get them on CD ASAP!!

 

[Kelly Grannell]

Spinning HD can/will fail at anytime. Get them on CD ASAP!!

Same goes with optical media.

The best way, so far, is storing the data to a dedicated external HDD just for photos and use it for nothing else, don't even turn it on other than for retreiving and saving photos.

 

[manning]

Same goes with optical media.

The best way, so far, is storing the data to a dedicated external HDD just for photos and use it for nothing else, don't even turn it on other than for retreiving and saving photos.

I would recommend that you also backup to CD format. ALL hard drives will eventually fail. The problem is you don't know when. I had one fail one month out of the box. Luckily I had CD backup and didn't have to go thru an expensive procedure to recover.

CD's are cheap and making several copies would be a good idea.

If you are staying with HHD only then consider two, possibly a raid 1 setup.

 

[WillCAD]

Although this thread started as a discussion of short-term storage (from the camera while at WDW to home), it has also branched off into the related topic of long-term archival storage. Both are fascinating and very important topics!

ANY media can fail. Or be damaged, or lost, or stolen, or go out of date - even paper prints. Sure, some photos can survive for decades, but let's face it: paper prints can be ruined by tearing, by humidity, by heat, by exposure to light, by spilling coffee on them, and even by the acidity of other papers if you store them in a cheap album or in old shoeboxes.

ANY medium that you choose to store your photos long-term will eventually need maintenance or replacement. I store my photos on multiple hard drives (home, laptop, work, web, and my parents computer), plus I have CD or DVD backups of them. But those hard drives will eventually be replaced, so I will have to migrate my photos to the replacements. My CD and DVD backup media will only last so long, and I will have to migrate my photos from them to a replacement. And at some point, CDs and DVDs will become obsolete, like floppy disks, so I will have to migrate my photos to some new storage media like holographic discs or chips.

Then there is the topic of file format obsolescence. The JPG and TIF formats we use today may be replaced in the future by some new format, just as the old BMP and PCX formats from the late 80s and early 90s have been replaced. When that happens, all of the old pics will have to be converted to new formats, or else new software will not be able to read them.

There have already been a few threads here on the DIS delving into this topic, but it's so important that IMHO a continueing discussion is really useful to everyone.

 

[manning]

Although this thread started as a discussion of short-term storage (from the camera while at WDW to home), it has also branched off into the related topic of long-term archival storage. Both are fascinating and very important topics!

ANY media can fail. Or be damaged, or lost, or stolen, or go out of date - even paper prints. Sure, some photos can survive for decades, but let's face it: paper prints can be ruined by tearing, by humidity, by heat, by exposure to light, by spilling coffee on them, and even by the acidity of other papers if you store them in a cheap album or in old shoeboxes.

ANY medium that you choose to store your photos long-term will eventually need maintenance or replacement. I store my photos on multiple hard drives (home, laptop, work, web, and my parents computer), plus I have CD or DVD backups of them. But those hard drives will eventually be replaced, so I will have to migrate my photos to the replacements. My CD and DVD backup media will only last so long, and I will have to migrate my photos from them to a replacement. And at some point, CDs and DVDs will become obsolete, like floppy disks, so I will have to migrate my photos to some new storage media like holographic discs or chips.

Then there is the topic of file format obsolescence. The JPG and TIF formats we use today may be replaced in the future by some new format, just as the old BMP and PCX formats from the late 80s and early 90s have been replaced. When that happens, all of the old pics will have to be converted to new formats, or else new software will not be able to read them.

There have already been a few threads here on the DIS delving into this topic, but it's so important that IMHO a continueing discussion is really useful to everyone.

Your right on target!!

 

[Groucho]

I just saw this thread...

HDDs are by far the LEAST reliable storage method, especially 2.5" laptop hard drives. I work for a very large PC outsourcing company and have supported hundreds of laptops, and failed hard drives are by far the most common problem. Some are better than others but their very nature makes them fragile. Even if they appear to be working, you may have bad sectors that you're not noticing - which may have corrupted some of your irreplacable photo. Unless you run a full diagnostic - available from the HD manufacturer (Seagate has SeaTools, Western Digital has DLG, IBM/Hitachi have DFT, Maxtor has PowerMax, etc) - you don't know for sure if your hard drive is good. This doesn't mean that your 2.5" HDD is guaranteed to fail - but it's a lot more likely to fail than any other storage medium.

Transferring from a photo memory card to a USB thumbdrive seems strange as memory cards are the same price or cheaper per meg than a thumbdrive, and physically smaller. buy.com often has 512m photo memory cards for $20 and I've seen 1g ones for as cheap as $40 (usually $45-50.) A 512m USB drive will usually go for closer to $25... only once or twice have I seen one for $20.

Transferring to a USB hard drive is an interesting idea, but still not ideal. I brought a laptop and transferred the pics to it - though I admit that I didn't burn a CD until I was back home.

Burning a CD is the absolute safest way to go. If you're worried about the CD failing, burn a couple and put them in separate places. If you have a laptop with a CD burner, you've got the best possible scenario as you can put them on the HD and burn a CD (costing all of a dime or so) so you'll have them in multiple locations. If you're worried about long-term reliability, just remember that you'll probably re-burn all your CDs to DVDs before long (I'm doing that now as blank DVDs are cheaper per meg than CDs) and I'll probably redo everything again when BluRay/HD-DVD is cheap! You can also burn an extra disc and hide it away in your fireproof safe along with your passport, birth certificate, etc. They won't take up much room...

Really, though, memory cards have gotten so cheap that the easiest thing to do is just buy a few big ones and burn CDs/DVDs when you get home.

 

[Groucho]

One other note... the other reason that CDs/DVDs are so nice is because they're so darn cheap.

Here's a comparison, using "good" prices.

DVD (spindle of 100 for $40, 4.5g each)... 9 cents/gig
CD (spindle of 100 for $15, 700m each)...21 cents/gig
External 2.5" USB2 hard drive (40g, $85)... $2.13/gig
Memory card... $40/gig
USB hard drive... $45/gig