Anyone found an effective way of storing their digital photos whilst on the run.. without having to hump around a laptop - I asked Palm if I could download into the palmpilot and store that way but NNNNooooo
A holiday in italy with digital photos well there'll be hundreds...what are the other options?

How about buying extra storage media card - e.g. a 128 mb compact flash card can store hundreds of good quality images.

rcc - the trouble is I can easily take 50 ( digital) pictures a day - and after 21 days of travel it's..a lot and there's two of us.

While in Italy I took 2 64mb smart cards to an internet cafe and they burned the pix to a CD. Cost about 8 Euros. Ended up being cheaper than buying another smart card.

clever idea!
and do-able as the nearest thing i can find is Potable Image Storage from Nixvue but it's $450 ..I'm not interested in getting it.
for $300 more i can get a cheaper end Dell laptop - but as if anyone is interested.. a review of their product is here
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nixvuevista/
dseive: i thnk yr idea is best so far tks

At least Compact Flash cards have come down drastically in price in the last year. You could get a 512 mb card for about $125 without trying at Amazon. Depending on your camera, resolution, and compression schemes, this could easily store 100-5000 photos.

Marc David Miller
[email protected]

There are several storage devices available. I have a digital wallet from MindStor (they have a web site) . You can get them in several sizes but mine is 20 gigs so it can easily handle several hundred shots at an average of 1 mb per shot. I also use it as a card reader as it is quick and easy. I just read about a new one called SmartDisk that holds 30GB and lets you view your shots as well as arrange them and show them on a TV. They are fairly expensive - like $300-500. But for the amount you can store you would have to buy an awful lot of smart media or compact flash cards. The digital wallet is the size of a palm pilot and I've used it for several trips and had no problems.

There are now several different brands of "digital wallets" (battery-powered hard-drives) available for under $300US for 20GB.

One of the more interesting is the Archos Multimedia Jukebox (around $300US at Amazon.com) - an MP3 player with a 20GB hard-drive, color LCD screen and memory-card slot.

Dsieve...

What a GREAT idea to have images transfered to a CD.

I'm, leaving for Italy today with a 512mb card and two 64's.

It's nice to know that in case I need more memory.

I also noticed that during my recent trip to London and Vienna that many internet places would burn a CD for you, but i wouldn't count on that. On this trip I took 2000 photos, yes 2000. Don't laugh but I took 3 68mb cards and 5 128mb cards.

May I also add that you can get disks dirt cheap in 3 palces...

1. Yahoo! Shopping (sort by price, low to high)

2. half.com - buy on the spot

3. ebay.com

I also have to add that I believe that the brand Lexar are the fastest disks available for camera recycle time and downloads. Look for the Lexar disks that are either 8x or 12x speed. I also feel that the brand SanDisk is the worst and slowest.

The idea of burning a CD at a photo service store is a good one, but will those shops be available where you're going? That would be my next question if I were you. I travel with 512MB memory cards--check the internet and membership discount shops (Sam's, BJ's, Costco) and even Walmart, Kmart, Target, etc. It is not unusual with a digital camera to take over 200 photos everyday when on holiday.

Good point that not all internet cafes will burn CD's. I knew of one in Monterosso before I left (from thier website so I didn't have to go searching). I was in several Internet Cafes on my trip and I noticed that several had prices for burning CD's, but not all would provide the service. You might want to check out some websites before you leave.

I avoid the 512mb disks because if you have any sort of disk issues while away you can loose a lot of pics...

128mb would be easier to swallow.

And yes, i have had disk issues.

Richard,

SanDisk makes a faster Compact Flash card called "Ultra"

I have found the easiest method is to store them directly on the CD when taking the picture. This won't help folks who already bought their equipment, but travelers who haven't already bought memory stick technology should check CD cameras out.

A single CD-R costs less than 50 cents (bought in bulk) for up to 180 MB of storage, versus the price of a memory card. I average over 110 high-resolution shots on a single CD. I come home 7 or 8 CDs ready to drop into my computer, without having to locate or deal with a local service provider or haul more stuff around.

Who makes these CD cameras, and what price range are they? I checked out the Best Buy website, and didn't see anything like this. I don't have a digital camera yet, have been hesitant to buy one because of the memory-card hassle, but need a new camera for upcoming Europe trip. Can you tell me the pros and cons?

Hagan, Sony makes digital cameras that use mini-CDs. They fit in regular CD players.

A client brought me a CD created in one of these cameras, and wanted me to make prints from it. It was an inadequate resolution, but perhaps Sony has other models that have higher resolutions. And it would not work in several camera store photofinishing machines, until I had a camera store clerk do things to it. (I'm not sure what, but it took him about ten minutes, used two computers and another camera)

Back to the original question: if you are in decent sized cities, visit the local camera stores; many may have the ability to take your memory card and burn it to a CD, too.

REMEMBER THAT CDS VARY -- it is possibile that the copying of your original files will reduce the resolution, so see what the CD recording standards are before you erase your originals.

DELETE LOUSY PICTURES -- as much as people love to take digital pictures, most are not any good. So, in the evening,use you camera to delate the real losers and the duplicates, and although you take, say, 200 in a day, you may only need to store 50 after you get rid of the bad ones.

I manage to get about 70 5MP images onto a 128MB Card, so for 200 shots a day, (3 cards per day) for 21 days, that's 63 128MB memory cards at, what, $40 each? Total is $2500, which makes one of those digital wallets seem like a bargain.

AND FINALLY -- you might want to get your CDs made twice for each card, in different stores, unless you have confidence in the clerk doing the transfer. And you might want to bring a copy of the software needed to read cameras from your card, if you want to review your pictures on an internet cafe computer. (NikonView, etc.)

BAK

I would not recommend a digital camera that stores pictures on CD directly. It will make the camera larger for one thing, and the CD will tax the batteries more quickly than a memory card will. When shopping for a camera there are more important things to worry about than storage type, and getting one with a CD burner really limits your choices.

Memory cards have come way down in price. I think the best solution for extra storage is simply to buy a few extra cards. And, in downtime on your trip, edit out some obvious bad pictures to make more room if you are that close. At worst, you can probably buy a memory card over there if you are unable to get your images burned to CD at some internet cafe.

If you intend to take lots of pictures and especially if you take pictures in high resolution you quickly need lots of memory. And thus I would strongly advise people to get cameras with Compact Flash cards as they are solid, cheap and you get fast cards relatively cheap.

Cobos

I bought a compact flasg microdrive with a capacity of 1 Gig !!! It holds over 700 photos at maximum quality on my 5 megapixel Dimage 7. Who needs any extra ?