katzen

We are leaving on our trip in a little over a week. I'm sitting here looking at my laptop and digital camera wondering if I have everything I need to take with me in order for them to work properly.

Let me begin by telling you what I have:

Laptop: Dell Latitude X1 (very small, light laptop). Has a wireless card and the power cord has input 100-240v and the output is 19v. We are using the laptop for picture downloading as well as journaling. I take TONS of pictures...

Digital Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT, the battery charger is a CB-2LT, input 100-240v and ouput is 8.4v.

Digital Camera: Kodak Easy Share CX7530 (point and shoot). Battery charger input is 120-60v and output is 2.8v. We have a 512 GB for this camera.

**we will also be downloading Skype and using this to communicate with family and friends and bought the earclip headset to use with our laptop**

Now, in order for the above to work properly ... we've bought:

SIMA Ultimate International Adapter (at Best Buy) ... which has 2 (two prong) and 1 (three prong) plug adapters. We are thinking we may need to buy one more set. I believe we need to buy a converter for our Kodak Easy Share since the battery is only 120-60v.

After all that (thanks for reading this long post) ... are we overlooking anything ... or is there something that maybe you all experienced that we need to keep an eye out for?

Or do we seem set to go with Electronics??

Thank you again for reading this long post!!

Robespierre

I don't know what "120-60v" means, although I suspect it's 120 volts at 60 Hertz. For this device, you will need a small transformer (NOT a converter).

One adapter is enough for all your devices. Plug the adapter in the wall socket, plug a good ol' US extension cord into the adapter, and plug your devices into the outlets on the cord.

As long as the total amps of your chargers etc. doesn't exceed the rating of the cord, you'll be perfectly safe. If it does, you should get another adapter and cord and plug them into a different outlet.

rkkwan

Are you using the optional Kodak 3V A/C adapter, part #8441826, for you 7530? I can't find info online, but I can't believe it is not 100-240V. Or are you using some 3rd party charger?

rkkwan

Or are you using some 3rd party AA-sized rechargeable batteries? If so, just buy another charger that takes 100-240V. Using an external transformer/converter is often problematic, and adds another thing you need to bring.

katzen

Thank you Robespierre and Rkkwan!! Very helpful information ... what a great idea about the extension cord!!

Thank you for correcting me on the "120-60v" ... it is 120v-60hertz.

Rkkwan, thank you for point out about the battery charger on the Kodak .. it is a 3rd party charger .. Energizer (rechargeable batteries). My husband got this for me a few years ago for xmas and I never even thought to consider that it was a 3rd party charger!! I think our solution is to purchase another battery charger that is 100v-240hertz.

I was also thinking of taking a back-up battery for the Cannon ... someone on another site mentioned the sterlingtek batteries ($15 or so) ... I'm not sure that I need this .... If I were to go over to Europe with only 1 battery for the Canon and it failed for some reason ... is it easy to find batteries for cameras or is a hassle (and I should look into the sterlingtek batteries).

Thank you for all of your help. You've both been a great help with this!!

ira

Hi K,

I highly recommend bringing a second battery pack.

There is nothing quite so frustrating as walking around with a dead camera.

Robespierre

...unless it's lining up the shot of a lifetime and having nothing happen when you push the button!

walkinaround

agree with others...at least 2 batteries for a camera is a must. they don't last long.

leonberger

I'll leave the re-charging angle to others, but I'm concerned about your memory cards. I don't see a mention of a memory card for the Canon and I see one 512 card for the Kodak.

How long will you be gone, and how many pictures do you take?

We just returned from a slightly-less-than three-week trip to England/Scotland. We filled a 4 GB card, a 1 GB card, and part of a second 1 GB card for our Nikon D70. We also filled two 1 GB cards and a 512 card and part of another 1 GB card with our Pentax S4i.

So, the memory card you listed for your Kodak wouldn't cut it for me. Just consider how many pictures you'll take.

I know you're planning to download to your laptop, but what if you run out of memory in the middle of the day?

Just a few thoughts.

Gayle

katzen

Thanks everyone ... we've decided to purchase the sterlingtek battery ... does anyone have experience with this particular battery?

leonberger, I forgot to add in my original post what memory cards we were taking for the Canon.... we are taking a 2GB and a 1 GB ... hopefully this is enough

I unfortunately just realized that our laptop only has about 40GB of memory left .. it's my work laptop ... so I think we may be taking a small external hard/flash drive as well ... what an ordeal this is turning into!!!

Thank you again for evryones help!!

katzen

I was obvious clueless ... It seems Sterlingtec is the web site that has the batteries. Sterlingtek has batteries that are equivalent to the Canon batteries. I've attached the below link. It's only 14.99 compared to the retail value of $60 something .. Does anyone have experience with this company or type of battery ... I'd like to know how reliable it is .. wondering if I should just order another Canon battery?

http://sterlingtek.stores.yahoo.net/canbeqba80.html

katzen

Update:
Ok, I think we are squared away. I hope. I feel like I'm taking more electronic stuff than clothes with me on this trip!

We went to Best Buy last night and bought the DigiPower Rechargeable Battery (Canon NB-2L) for our Rebel XT. We also bought the Kodak rechargeable battery pack for our Kodak Easy Share CX7530 that has 100v-240hertz.

We also bought another Smartdisk Firelite 40GB portable hard drive to take with us for picture storing.

so now we have a laptop (although it's small), (2) portable hard drives (small and light) and the battery chargers. My husband said he won't mind carrying them around in his backpack.

I told him I should have stuck with my film rebel camera and we wouldn't have to take anything else!

Does anyone have experience with the Smartdisk Firelite Portable hard drives?

Thanks!

Robespierre

I don't get what these portable hard drives are for. Couldn't you just as well back up the laptop and delete a bunch of junk?

You should have a backup anyway, you know. Hard drives do fail, and laptop computers can be dropped, lost, or stolen.

katzen

the laptop is my work laptop and unfortunately doesn't have that much memory on there. I think my husband said theres only about 35Gb of memory on the laptop ... so that is why we opted for the external hard drive (for saving more pictures). Our other option was to purchase more memory for the laptop .. but I don't think my work place would pay for additiona memory knowing that it was for downloading pictures.

We plan on taking tons of pictures (I took over 900 on a 9 day trip to Hawaii last summer) .. with my film camera. Of course I'll have the option of deleting ones I don't like .. but we'll be in Europe for 25 days so I'm concerned we won't have enough space to save all the pictures .. and I didn't want to buy 6 2GB memory cards.

Robespierre

A gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. You have thirty-five thousand megabytes free space on your laptop, and you're afraid you're going to run out?

My Fuji P&S can put four hundred nine 1600x1200 pixel images on a 256mb card. At this resolution, your laptop has enough hard disk remaining to store 57,260 of those images.

I still don't get it.

lifelist

Robespierre - If you shoot in raw mode with the Rebel XT, each pic is something like 8 megs, so that'll take up a lot more space.

Katzen - Are you bringing a card reader for transferring pictures? Or, are you using the cables to directly connect cameras to laptop? I'd recommend taking a card reader since it can be used for either camera.

Also, have you made sure you have all the necessary software on your laptop to transfer and view your pictures? I once took a trip with my brand new Canon 5D, and forgot to upgrade my version of Photoshop to handle the files and didn't bother loading the Canon software onto my laptop. Consequently, I couldn't view any of my photos during the trip.

Robespierre

Okay, so there's only room for 4,480 pictures if they only shoot in raw mode.

They'll be in Europe for 25 days. Times 24 hours is 600 hours. If they take an average of 7 pictures per hour around the clock, they won't fill up the laptop.

And by the way, with a single 2gb card, one can unload a day's pictures (128 raw images) onto CDs or DVDs every night. And not use any hard disk space at all.

I still don't get it.

p.s. to katzen: see if one of your cameras' USB cables makes the memory of both cameras visible to the laptop as external disk drives. If so, you don't need to carry any readers, just one cable - and do a "disk"-to-disk copy.

katzen

Robespierre, it seems my husband and I miscalculated. We are just getting into the whole camera, laptop, downloading picture thing and aren't very familiar with any of it. It seems we only need to take 1 of the 40GB external hard drives .. and from what you are saying ... we can store roughly 5,000 pictures (8mp each) on the 40GB external hard drive ... as well as what we can save on our laptop.

Lifelist, we are using the cables. We downloaded the Canon software this past weekend on our laptop. Once we are home we will move all the pictures to our Mac, which has photoshop elements.

Thanks for your help!!

Robespierre

Okay, since I'm asking impertintent questions, here's another: if you plan to archive the images onto optical media when you get home, why don't you just save them to CDs while you're traveling? Then you don't have to schlep any external drives.

Robespierre

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