Digital Camera Advice for Europe
 

I have 2 memory cards for my digital camera. I'm wondering if some of the internet cafes or hotels have the progrms that allow you to download your photos to send home. Should we bring our own CDs to have the photos downloaded in the shops or is that not necessary?

Most camera shops will do it for $5-$10, including media. Make sure the CD is readable before you erase your memory.

I don't think I'd count on an internet cafe or hotel to provide the service, but you should be able to find a drug store or photo shop that has the equipment to do it.

One caution about using photo shops or 7-Eleven type stores: I've gotten decent CDs from them, but if you have used the video feature on the camera, the video may not copy to CD or may cause confusion for the clerk who is helping you (a challenge if you aren't fluent in the language there).

If you are likely to use the video feature, you might be better off just buying more memory so you won't have to make CDs at all.

We have a Sony cybershot camera, and we brought a reader card with a USB port and it plugged into any computer.

The only trouble we had were that the computers are in French in France so we had trouble navigating the NERO burning ROM program, but found someone to help us. In Rome, they did it for us for about $5.

We went to Internet cafe's across Europe -- Paris, Rome and Istanbul, and burned CDs in all of them of our pictures so far, checked them to make sure the pictures were showing on the CD, and erased our disks. The only downside was that we did lose some pictures of Michelangelo's David that we shot in Florence. SO double check your pictures and make sure it's all on there before you erase.

This time, when we go we bought an iPod Photo -- so we'll download our pictures right onto the iPod and offload them onto our home computer when we get home.

Happy travels,

Jules

Hi ming,

You can buy a 256MB CF card for $30 at www.amazon.com.

That plus the ones you have should be good for about 1000 pix to save.

You won't have to bother with photoshops while travelling.

((I))

Ira,

That's ok for snapshots or photos you are going to share on the web. However, you won't get anywhere near 1000 if you take the photos in a high resolution that would allow for enlarging or cropping.

You can buy a 256mb CF card at eCost.com for $7.94

And another one for $9.

I took 130 photos using a Sony Cybershot at highest resolution and used up my entire 256 mb chip - which worked out perfectly for an eight day trip. On the very last day I got the "memory full" message. Chip was very cheap but I don't remember the exact cost. I'd just buy another memory chip.

Sounds like another memory card is the way to go then for a 3 week trip for trigger happy folks like us.

Might suggest experimenting with some black & white snaps for something different. We were in Budapest recently and took some b&w's of the Parliament building which were amazing compared to the color ones. Have fun!

I always take color pictures at the maximum resolution my camera can attain.

That way, I can make monochrome prints from color images if I want to - the most primitive photo editing software can do this - but not the reverse.

(I did the same thing when I shot film. Printing b/w from a color negative gives a interesting depth to the grayscale.)

There were photo shops in France that would download your card to one of their cd's. The problem with me is that I had a 1 gb card and the cd's only hold 750 mb so they said they couldn't do it. I don't know why they couldn't have just put it onto 2 cds, but they couldn't.

I just have several memory cards. You can get a 1 gb card at Sam's Club for $75. If you factor in that you don't have to buy film and are developing only the good pictures, they really pay for themselves.

I found a wonderful memory card holder that I highly recommend. It is called the Gepe Card Safe Extreme. It is shock-proof and water-proof and keeps all your cards securely stored in once place:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...249&is=REG