digital camera
 

i have a cannon sd750, and i own a 2 gb disc. i just bought a 8 gb flash drive tonight. last time i was in europe, i transfered my pictures to a disc whenever i got the chance at a local store that offered that service. however, since now i'm dealing with much larger files (better camera + video's), i'll need a new system. i have the idea of using an internet cafe, and a flash drive, and dumping my pic's/video's this way...does anybody have any tricks or other methods (bringing a laptop is not an option)...

You can buy an image tank for not much money, which will be 40 -80 Gb depending on the type - that will hold all the photos and films you could want. They come complete with a card reader. I have a Vosonics model without a screen to see the photos on - it acts just as a hard drive, but other models have a screen.
Or buy more memory cards - they are so cheap now that is probably the best way to go. Just remember to slide the switch on them to read only once they are full.

I agree with Hetismij - I bought a cheap image bank (Mine was just the case - I bought the hard drive separately and fitted it within a couple of seconds - childs play)

It goes with me everywhere on holiday. Mine is similar to the following link on Ebay (no affiliation, just the first one I found)

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6fc25q

I prefer just buying extra memory cards. They are durable, light, and (these days) inexpensive. Consider an image bank to back up your photos, but don't put all your eggs in one basket by having everything stored on one device.

If you decide to use an internet cafe to transfer your images to cd-rom, make two copies, and check them thoroughly before deleting or reformatting your memory cards.

If you go the extra flash
memory route be sure to format
the flash drives before you go... I bought an 8 gig before
a recent trip and only when I
was in Greece sis I discover the card wasn't compatible with the camera.

Luckily, I had both a laptop
and extra drives that were already formatted.

Rob

I also receommend you buy a few more cards for your camera.
What happens if your card gets full and you can't find an internet cafe? Regardless if what you do, it's a good idea to have a backup card.

You don't say where you are going, but when I was in central europe last year (prague, vienna and budapest) I had a hard time at internet cafes getting some of the computers to read a USB drive I had. In addition, none of the computers had available drives to read my camera's SD cards.

For the amount of money you'd spend in an internet cafe and having the cards transferred to CD's you could probably buy a few extra 2g. cards.
Personally, I prefer 1g cards. I think the lower the memory, the lower the risk if a card gets lost or damaged.

I don't know the specific media you use, but www.buy.com has some good deals on multi packs of 1g and 2g cards.

My preference is extra flash cards. I already have a 30G hard drive but I hardly ever use it. My last trip I took three 4G cards, my images were around 6G each (RAW w/JPEG) and I still had plenty of storage. And three 4G cards are much smaller and lighter than the portable hard drive. Watch for them to be on sale and stock up - I got those 4G cards for US49 each about a year ago.

Oops! Images were around 6M each, not 6G.

I LOVE my memory card safe. It keeps them organized and dry and drop-proof.

http://tinyurl.com/ywmasy

And here are Sandisk 2 gb cards just $15 each.

http://tinyurl.com/66emqo


I would just buy extra cards.


One other option is uploading them to the internet and downloading them when you get home. I wouldn't erase them from your memory cards if doing this, but it would give you a back up for your cards if you are that worried.

After my previous post, I was inspired to go buy more memory cards for myself (I'd borrowed a few on my last trip). I just bought a 4 pack of 1g cards on buy.com for $25.99 (w/free shipping). I travel with a lightweight laptop too, and back up my cards each night, but prefer to wait until I get home to delete the cards.

I would also buy more memory cards. The cost of a 2GB SD card will probably equal the cost of an hour in an internet cafe, not to mention the time spent downloading the photos from one medium to the other. As one poster said, buy.com usually has a sale of some sort with SD cards.

I also own the memory case that kelliebellie posted and a smaller, lighter one http://tinyurl.com/5w5jod. I like them both and find very useful in storing and organizing my SD cards.