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Travelling w/ digital camera first time--advice??

Do you take your laptop to download the pictures as you go? My camera holds about 200, but I'm a little worried about losing them, obviously there's no way to back them up without a computer (right?) What do you do? I hate to drag the laptop along, I don't need it otherwise. Thanks!

Marti, It all depends upon what type of digital camera you have. Memory is very cheap now so you could buy several additional cards to take along. Another option is to buy one of the new portable hard-drives that have built in card readers for downloading your files. These cost between $300 to $400 for about a 10 Gigs.

We just take extra memory cards and leave the laptop at home. We've never lost any pictures from a flashcard.

Buy another memory card. Edit as you go.

There are three very important things to take with your digitial camera on vacation: batteries, batteries, batteries :-) The memory cards are cheap and small. I prefer to have three or four 64 mb cards instead of one 128 mb or 256 mb. The cards go bad occasionally or get lost, and I don't want to lose all my pictures. Mike Honeycutt

The only problem I hear with having a lot of small cards is that there is greater wear and tear and chance of damage or getting dirt inside the camera if you change the cards often. So far I've been using 2 128 cards and have not run out or lost anything. Don't forget your battery charger, though!

Take lots of batteries. And don't forget how expensive it is to print those digital photos are when you get back. I'm back to using the 35 mm camera for economical reasons and for quality.

camera buff - how are you printing your photos that it is so expensive?

This is a great thread. I have been wondering whether or not to start using a digital camera for vacations and want to solicit more opinions on this. Also, what are people's favorite cameras and features, etc? I don't have a lot of cash flow right now so don't want to spend an exorbitant amount right now. Thanks for any help!

I bought an Olympus D510Z on eBay for less than $200. It's 2megapixel with 3x optical zoom. I love it, at default resolution you can store approx 256 pics on a 128meg card. Battery life is much better than I expected but I don't use the LCD screen much which helps. I wouldn't dream of taking a laptop with me on vacation ! An excellent reference site is: http://www.steves-digicams.com/default.htm Have fun, p.

On our recent trip to Hawaii I took 750 digital pics. Thankfully, my son loaned me his small portable hard drive and each night I downloaded my pictures for that day onto it. We had a backup camera along, just in case, but thankfully everything was there when we returned home.

I, too, have high printing costs. I print onto quality paper on my color printer. It's much more costly than when I take a normal roll to Costco for regular development.

One piece of advice to a first-time user that hasn't been mentioned: Use the highest-resolution (lowest number of exposures) .jpg exposures that your camera can handle. The best solution is probably to buy extra cards. Been there, done that. Took my near-new Nikon 2M camera on vacation to Columbus IN (a great architecture town,) and to the USAF Museum at Dayton. Shot almost everything at VGA (640x480) instead of the hi-res 1600x1200. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I won't get into the whys and wherefores--you can find that on any good digital photo site. Just read and heed. Batteries? If they are AAs, get a charger, and two sets of rechargables. If it's proprietary, get a 2nd one.

Took 3 128 flashcards to Yellowstone in July. Used all of them- over 300 pictures. Camera is a Canon Powershot G2- 4 meg. The pictures came out beautifully! We also carried a back-up 35mm Olympus point and shoot. Ironically, the Olympus broke on day 4 or so and we bought some cheap disposables just to make sure we didn't end up without any pictures at all.

I find that it's less expensive for me to print my own pictures than to develop film. I watch for sales on photo paper and buy a bunch.

As above - memory and batteries. Also, if you are travelling to another country, make sure you have proper adapter/converter to charge the battery. We had big argument about this before trip to Egypt. Memory was still rather expensive, but we bought lots anyway to avoid hauling laptop halfway across the world. Also, I would bring some sort of back-up if trip photos are important, even if it is just several disposable cameras. Don't bring the laptop - if you use it for business the temptation is too great to work on vacation.

I also use a small portable hard drive to store pics. Mine is by minds at work, used to be called a digital wallet, newer version is called MindStor. About $300 but can store thousands.(they have a website). Works great. My trusty Nikon SLR is lonely in the closet since I got my Olympus digital camera. Mine is a C2100 zoom (10X telephoto lens). Even it is down to about $500 but I've also used someone else's Olympus that only cost about $200 and those photos were also excellent. In terms of the cost of printing - if you compare a 4x6 picture that you print with one done at wallmart or somewhere the store cost will be less. BUT - I never print every shot I take, or even most of them so if you compare costs in the end it actually can come out much cheaper to print your own (and you won't have shoeboxes full of extra shots you don't want). Also, enlargements are cheaper to print yourself. Plus, you can edit the pictures; crop, fix exposures, etc. so your end product is much better. I love digital.

Visit the Usenet newsgroup rec.photo.digital (you can also get there via Google Groups) for lots of great info on digital cameras of all types. My suggestion: don't learn how to use a digital camera on vacation, or you are liable to be sorry later that you didn't get the great photos you hoped you would. Take lots of photos with your camera ahead of time and learn about the best way to print, how many photos you can fit on your media, etc. long before you leave for vacation. Then you'll have an idea how long your batteries last, how quickly you fill up your flash cards, etc. All of this will vary by the type and brand of camera you buy. I have a ton of storage for my Canon D30 (an expensive digital SLR). On my recent two-week trip to Europe, I had two 1GB Microdrives, a 340MB Microdrive, and a 128MB flash card. I took over 1300 shots and filled up both 1GB Microdrives before moving to the 340MB Microdrive. But by then I had a good idea how to budget my storage. Your camera may be able to fit more pictures onto a memory card than mine can, so you might not need as much storage as I have. Another option is to get a digital wallet instead of using a laptop to free up your memory cards. As for printing: I have an expensive camera and a fast computer, but I don't even own a color printer. It's not worth it to me just now. I am content to have my digital photos printed at Wal-Mart one-hour service (29 cents a digital print - not all Wal-Mart one-hour places do digital prints yet) or at another local place in Portland that is about the same price. I get fantastic quality prints back, even via Wal-Mart, and I never have to worry about paper quality, running out of ink, etc. Some Costco one-hour photo labs also offer digital prints (not mine). It takes time to learn a "work flow" with digital photography. You have to learn how to download your pics from your camera, pick the ones you want, touch them up in Photoshop or Paint Shop, then get them printed (burn a CD and take to Wal-Mart? Upload to a photo lab's web site? How long will that take with your Internet connection? Etc.). I've got a flow that works pretty well for me, but it took time to learn it. Now I take even my 35mm shots through almost the same flow - I don't even get 35mm prints anymore, just high-res scans that I can get printed later if I choose. Andrew Portland, OR

I also took both the digital and my 35 mm on trips and took many of the same shots on both cameras...the 35 mm to print and the digital to email and edit. Just recently, one of our Costcos started doing digital prints for only 20cents apiece. The beauty of a good digital camera is that you can take tons of shots at absolutely no expense, then save and/or print just the nice ones. I've also started putting my digital photos on Sony's image station website as private albums. You can email the address and password to your friends and they can view the pics there, rather than downloading onto their computer.

Lucy - how does the Sony website work? Do you have to pay to use it? Where can I find it? Thanks.