If you guys don't mind me piggy-backing onto this thread, I have another digital camera question.

I've just bought an Olympus mjU410, and it has a movie function which if I read the instruction correctly (for once) allows me to record up to 50 minutes on one 256MB xD card at the lower-res setting. My question is, would a camera shop be able to offload the movie content onto a CD so that I can free up the card while travelling?

Neil - there are many places in most European cities that will download the contents of your media card to a CD. Some are camera shops and some are internet cafes. This summer I saw the prices range from about €5-10 per CD burned.

Then again, a 256MB card goes for as little as $19 these days, if you look around...

a chrager, with the appropriate adapter would be the one thing I would have loved to take on my last two trips to Europe. thank god for digital cameras. i took lots of storage and just deleted the shots i didnt want at the end of the day to make more room.
Realistically, what you add in weight is minimal. What you add in convenience is much greater. Particularly in spain, if you are away from the big cities you will often have no choice but to buy other batteries, not all of them last very long as i sadly found out in at least one place.

however, for security purposes im wondering if its better to carry the charger and extra batteries in your carry on or in checked luggage? anyone?

Neil_Oz

Only way I have been able to download video from my Olympus has been via my video editing software. Perhaps -- and I am WAY over my head here -- the cd would capture all of the data and when you get home you could use video editing software to capture to your hard drive.

Should you find a definitive answer, please post. I leave the 15th for two weeks in Scotland and Ireland, and I'd love to know what I was doing, for a change....

JimF, thanks - I'll keep asking and if I can get any sense out of anyone I'll let you know. I asked a local photo shop this morning but their response wasn't much different to yours. I'm leaving for China in two weeks and it would have to be a pretty straightforward operation to survive the communication barriers there. (metic, thanks also - the last time I priced xD cards here they were way more than US$19, but I may have been looking in the wrong place.)