How do you 'handle' your digital photos when on a trip
 

I am hoping there are some seasoned travellers here that can give me some ideas on how to handle my photos while away other than just leaving them on my SD card until I return.

On our previous trip to Europe I had taken my iPad and downloaded the photos from my camera (hubby was taking those pics) onto my iPad using a lightning cord. I was also taking pics with my iPad. If I didn't download daily, the pics from the last time I downloaded the camera would get mixed in with the iPad pics in no kind of order. Since we were both taking pics I would end up with a multiple of duplicates but not showing up together. This didn't work well as my iPad memory was plum full by the time I got home. I downloaded all the pics from the iPad to my laptop and somehow they duplicated and I ended up with doubles and triples and had no idea where most had been taken. So my 2000 pics now became 4,000 pics. It was mind boggling to check the metadata to find the date and try and figure out what was what and put them in order. I had wanted to make a travel book but finally gave up and still have a giant very messed up file of 6 weeks of travel. So I know I need to deal with them differently.

We have a trip booked to Italy and Portugal and I am looking for an efficient way to handle the pics until I can download them to my laptop at home. Ideally I would like to tag some of places and cull out the bad ones as I go. I would like to be able to view and share a few via Facebook or email etc. and keep them organized so I can make a travel book. I do have a netbook I can also take but don't want to be hauling an iPad, Netbook and 2 cameras on our travels. I thought of uploading to Google photos or the cloud but can't guarantee I am going to have good enough internet to do that on a regular basis. Putting them on a USB stick doesn't work either as I will have them saved but have no way to access or tag etc.

So any ideas that might work?

Thanks for reading and I appreciate and suggestions on my dilemma. :)

I never take photos with my iPad, so backing up the SD cards to my iPad works fine. When I get home I upload to my desktop from the SD cards, not from my iPad. (I think the photo support on the iPad stinks.)

Before the iPad, on a long trip, I had my SD cards backed up to CDs as I went along.

If you can't match the date the photo was taken with your itinerary, and therefore with what you were looking at, perhaps using a camera with GPS tagging would help.

BTW, standing around taking photos with your iPad looks like an invitation to theft. Get a camera or a smart phone.

Sounds like you had a Windows laptop last time. There are 3rd party photo organizers that allow you to sort by "capture time" instead of by file name or file time. They read the metadata for you. I use one called Breeze Browser Pro (as well as Lightroom), but there are others. Make sure it supports both iPad and your camera metadata.

That would have allowed you to sort the photos in a meaningful way, provided your husband's camera and your iPad had the same clock settings.

If you want to back up without a laptop or relying on the cloud then there are devices for that. I have a very much older version of this, which has worked fine.
http://www.hypershop.com/products/hy...lorspace-udma3

Then there is a copy on the device as well as the memory card. Not cheap however. I'm sure there are others I'm not aware of.

We travel for periods between 6-12 months at a time and take loads of photos. Assuming that your camera has GPS, which most do these days, your iPad should sort them for you by location and time/ date.

For back up I download my camera to my iPad very couple of days and I use the Flickr app for iPad which is set it to automatically upload everything to Flickr when online. That way even if I lose my iPad and SD card I still have full res copies online. It is a relatively simple exercise to organise the photos within Flickr into folders. I tend to delete the rubbish photos either from my camera or the iPad before uploading to Flickr.

Also, you could upload your photos direct to your iPad and then set it to upload everything to iCloud. That way everything will be in sync. The only problem with that approach is that the free storage is only 5gb so you would probably have to buy extra storage.

Never simple is it?

Thanks, a lot of great ideas here. It gives me food for thought so I will see what works. I just didn't want to go thru the nightmare I had with our last Europe trip.

I have been using Picaso on my laptop to work with the photos once I got them all downloaded but will check out some of the other options you have mentioned since Picaso is no longer supported.

You are right,crellston, nothing is ever simple.

I use a camera (only), take about 500 pics a day (seriously!), load them onto memory sticks, and bring them home -- and then spend months going through them. ;-)

BTW, make sure the 1st picture you store on ANY memory device -- including your camera or other device -- is a picture showing how to contact you. My message directs anyone who finds whatever to contact me at my e-mail address....

I leave them on my memory cards until I go home. Not the answer you were looking for but I'd rather not spend holiday time doing stuff that can wait until I get back.

I see that you have SD cards. Get some Eye-Fi cards -- they can automatically upload them to a cloud location of your choice. http://amzn.to/1UVBnmH

Hoping for some help. I have an iphone5. Is there a way to get all of my photos on a thumb drive?

<i> Is there a way to get all of my photos on a thumb drive?</i>

Yes.

https://www.wondershare.com/mobile-p...ash-drive.html

http://science.opposingviews.com/tra...ves-15419.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsVIDVGbSY

thanks spark chaser. very helpful

But is there a way to get photos from iPad to a thumb drive <i>without a computer or Internet connection</i>?

I've searched around on occasion and have come up with different answers. I tried again just now and a device called a Leef iBridge Mobile.

(Fodors isn't letting me paste a link at the moment, but a search will bring that up).

Anyone have experience with a device like this, or some other solution?

I would have enough memory cards available not to have to deal with them at all on my trip. I wouldn't want to "waste" time dealing with them while I was still traveling. (would simply bring them home to sort out later).

<i>I would have enough memory cards available not to have to deal with them at all on my trip. I wouldn't want to "waste" time dealing with them while I was still traveling. (would simply bring them home to sort out later).</i>

Aye. Memory cards are dirt cheap these days so there's really no excuse to not having a handful of them ready to go when you travel.

<i>But is there a way to get photos from iPad to a thumb drive without a computer or Internet connection?</i>

This suggests no, you can't.

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/questio...XU2U4FJJA9K7P2

Next time, buy an Android tablet ;)

suze, true enough.

But let's say you spent your career working in the hard drive storage industry, are therefore paranoid about digital memory, and want some fast way to back up without a computer? :)

There are not that many solutions that I've found, especially from an iPad or phone.

I did have a memory card fail once, in the backcountry wilderness near Mount Rainier, so it happens. But I always bring plenty of smaller cards and don't load all pictures from a trip onto one card, especially if there is no way to back up.

Thanks sparkchaser, guess you've got a good point there!

Nelson, maybe you should look into the EyeFi cards.

I bought an EyeFi card after sparkchaser mentioned it on another thread. The perfect answer for me. I have transfered the day's photos from my camera to my Kindle Fire using wifi in little b&bs in the Outer Hebrides and elsewhere, much faster than I would have guessed.

The company also has terrific customer service. While in Spain recently, my Fire and camera couldn't find each other. Emailing EyeFi solved the problem in 15 minutes.

Thanks much for that guys. Yes, that could be a solution in many cases. I just spent some time reading up on them. Appreciate the info, sparkchaser. They get a good write up here:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/batt...i-vs-transcend

I'd still like to connect from an SD card to a hard drive, which I don't think those will do since they need an app on the receiving end. But now I found this, perhaps yet another solution:
http://www.amazon.com/RAVPower-Wirel.../dp/B00AQUMZRA

As you said crellston, nothing is ever simple. But good info here.

Thanks again.

I am happy to report that EyeFi now has a compact flash adapter. This is great news for us with DSLRs that take CF. http://amzn.to/1SJ3mja

I just purchased that plus a 32GB EyeFi card with free 1 year EyeFi Cloud for my upcoming trip to Crete: http://amzn.to/1SJ3wHi

I'll be sure to report back on how the kit worked for me.