Mark2

Will be traveling to Italy soon, and I'm new to digital SLR cameras; m new camera uses CF cards. (When we visited in 2002, we returned with about 900 photos on film.) What precautions do I need to take, what dumb mistake might I make to lose my photos before we return? I don't have a laptop to bring with us, that won't happen. Any special precautions to take with memory cards? Is there a way that people use to back up or send photos home along the way? I bought two 4gig cards.

travelpig51

Just a thought from a non-professional but you may be better off with smaller gig cards. If anything does happen you don't lose as many pictures of your trip. Also, your camera will load faster if you don't have to cycle through as many pictures when you turn your camera on and off to save the battery life.
Remember as you travel to come out from behind the view finder and enjoy the sights with both eyes. You already have 900 pictures. Let your brain do the work.

toedtoes

Memory cards don't really fail that often. Your risk of the memory card failing is actually less than your undeveloped film being damaged.

Having said that, there are some options to help ensure your photos when you get home:

1. As Travelpig51 mentions, using smaller cards. If you take 7gb of photos on two 4gb cards, you will lose 3-4gb with one card going bad or getting lost. If you have four 2gb cards, then one card going bad or getting lost will only lose 1-2gb.

2. Pick up a Portable Storage Device (PSD). These are small devices with a harddrive and cardslots. You simply pop your card into the slot and upload the images onto the PSD Harddrive. When you get home, you download the images from the PSD to your computer. There are various options with PSDs - harddrive size, viewing capabilities (not all will let you look at the photos loaded onto the device), confirmation of successful upload (some don't verify that the files copied properly), and so on. Prices vary depending on many of these options. I have one, it's the Hyperdrive HD80. I've been quite happy with it, and with 160gb harddrive I never had to worry about running out of memory.

3. When you fill a card, don't store it with your camera. If someone grabs your camera bag, you'll lose all your photos also. Instead, move your card to a purse, suitcase, etc. That way, if someone grabs your camera bag, you still have the photos that you've already taken. This will also prevent you from accidentally formatting or erasing a filled card because you thought it hadn't been filled yet.

4. Make sure you empty all your cards before the trip. If you've got 500mb of photos from a party left on the card and you run out of space, you'll start erasing photos in a rush trying to make room - that greatly increases your chances of erasing a new photo by accident.

Xray machines, etc. won't hurt the memory cards or the camera, so don't worry there.

Look at your camera manual and check to see how many photos you can get with 8gb of memory. It will just be a rough estimate, but will give you an idea if you'll want to pick up some extra memory before the trip. Use your prior photo count to figure it out - make sure to add some buffer since most folks will take more photos with digital cameras than they do with film.

Enjoy the camera and the trip!!

thursdaysd

Another option besides a PSD is having CDs made - either an Internet cafe or a photo shop will do that. On a long trip I had double CDs made and mailed one home, but for a short trip that's overkill.

Mark2

All very good suggestions, thank you very much!

Bert4545

Vacation photos - help me not lose my photo's, please!
I'm a pedant. What made you type "photos" the first time (correct), but "photo's" the second time (wrong)?
However, you did get "lose" right, which is a rare blessing.

netmartin

All great suggestions, especially the PSD. I have taken to storing all my pictures on them, one for each trip. Gather them all on a key ring and all your pictures are in one place. Just don't forget to label them. Before I made this discovery I filled up my 128MB chip on one day in D.C. and found that it was very easy to download all pics to a CD everyday and have my camera clear for the next day. (Bought a 4GB chip when I got home) Sometimes finding a place to make a CD just becomes part of the trip, like finding something to treat sunburn in Germany...did that once, great experience. (Ask for apres ski)

ShelliDawn

Another vote for a PSD or even a netbook, a small laptop (generally about a 7 inch screen size) that has limited processing power but internet access and reasonably large hard drives. Of course you can download your photos to it (and view them on the screen). If I didn`t already have something that served most of the same functions, I would get one.

Instead a few years ago I got a personal media player (PMP), an Archos, which has an 80G hard drive and a 7 inch touch-screen. It also has wi-fi, but the browser on it (Opera) makes it pretty useless for that. However, I can download music and movies to it to enjoy on long plane rides as well as store and view my photos.

toedtoes

Netmartin - do you mean a flashdrive?

A flashdrive is very small and does not have a harddrive. In order to move photos from the memory card to the flashdrive, you have to have a computer to facilitate the transfer. It is definitely small enough to travel around with conveniently, but you still have to have access to a computer at regular intervals.

PSDs are too big to fit onto a keychain, as they have an actual harddrive inside of them. They will allow you to add items to them directly from a memory card without a computer. Once on the PSD, some models will allow you to view the photos on the PSD's screen (like an iPod will), others do not have a viewing screen. As you travel, you simply pop your memory card into the PSD's slot and hit a button to transfer the images. Once the images are transferred (you can do this anywhere - even in the middle of the desert, etc.), you put the memory card back into the camera and erase the images and start over. The only time you need to access a computer is when you get home and upload your photos from the PSD to the computer to share, print, modify, etc.

Carrabella

We had trouble when DH removed the chip from our Fuji Digital and placed it directly into the computer. It just refused to open, and cost us a packet to get the file restored, so we could see and print our last holiday photos. Seems it's safer to leave the chip in the camera and use the adapter. Not sure how many cameras this applies to, or why.

karameli

Bert, you must be super-fun at parties! I'm guessing that what you'd call a "typo." It sometimes happens when you're typing quickly in a forum that doesn't really matter.

Bert4545

Hey, I admitted I was a pedant. I don't see how you can accidentally hit the apostrophe key while typing an 'o' or an 's'. The rest of Mark2's post was practically fault-free [just a typo when he typed just 'm' for 'my'] I really am curious as to why or how someone who is obviously quite literate can type the same word twice on the same line in two different ways. I just wish people would preview their posts before submitting. It is quite annoying to read the same mistakes over and over again. Some posts are so bad it would not be worth mentioning, but, as I said, Mark2 was near perfect.
I hate parties.