Travel photography issues: Storage of digital photos
1. Worries over insufficient storage
Suggestion 1: more memory cards
(ymmij) bring more memory cards (buy, beg, borrow, steal)
(tmfwy) I would suggest getting an 8gb CF card. Microdrives are fairly cheap and even at the largest best jpeg setting on an 8.2 megapixel camera, it is more than sufficient for 8 days ( unless you are trigger happy and shoot alot per day.. )
comments: in general, prepare at least 3 cards. 1 card is the one in your camera, the 2nd is one that is empty and ready to be exchanged once the first is full or almost full (just like film, if you anticipate that you may need to shoot at surprise, do not wait until it is totally full before you change. you may miss your shot when the card is changed). the 3rd is optional as a backup. also note the capacity of your DSLR card slot, some older DSLR may not take the higher capacity of the newer cards.
(snowcrash) One idea is considering you are 'renting a few CF cards" for the trip when buying those new 2gig CF cards.
After the trip, sell them here in clubsnap as you don't need them anymore. The difference is the rent you pay for the 8 days trip. I'm sure CS buyers won't mind getting close to new CF cards at a good price. My advice is don't keep those card for too long, as the price goes down quickly, epecially if they are sitting 'idle' at home.
Suggestion 2: portable storage device
(ymmij) bring along a portable storage device (psd) for transfer of files
(Hoky) There are three main problems w/ PSD.
1. You still need battery. (Difficult if you go to rural areas or Nepal... etc) Lose power in cold temps as well.
2. Depending on your thermal insulation (or your body heat to warm it up ) They don't work well in extreme cold temps coz the read /write head, spindle... etc contracts.
3. They are not exactly shock proof. Once you drop it, thats it... the worst case that can happen is to drop it on your way back.
(wind30) For portable storage, there are a lot of options. like portable harddisk, ultra moble PCs, small media players like ipod, zen vision, epson P2000, etc.
(madmax) a portable storage device is the way to go.
(catchlights) get a portable storage device lar, if you worried about dropping it, why don't worried about dropping the camera and lens? If you worry about charging it, than the batteries of camera and flash don't need to charge meh? 20~40GB storage, shoot all in RAW also can.
(azul123) If you really want to take all you want without limitation of your memory cards, invest in one of those HDD Viewer like Vosonic or Epson whichever you fancy. Then you are no more limited by the memory cards but by your harddisk space. Unless if you are also bringing your notebook lah then no point getting the HDD Viewer or without the viewer also can.
Suggestion 3: rental of portable storage
(catchlights) tho CF card is cheap now, but rent a portable storage device for this trip will be a better choice
comments: anyone who is keen in offering this service can post here.
(lurgee) I would say renting a portable drive would be good. Shoot as much as you want and just transfer them in when the card is full. If you're worried, you could upload them into a laptop if you're bringing one..if not go to one of the many internet cafes and have your photos burnt into cds.
Suggestion 4: bring a notebook
(tmfwy) bring a notebook with you
(Hoky) I'm not against the PSD. But I would prefer a slim notebook and lotsa of memory anytime. Store in CFs during cold temperatures and transfer and burn into DVD whenever possible.
Suggestion 5: shoot at lower sized format
(ymmij) shoot at large normal format instead of large fine. this is not going to make a huge difference if you are not printing big, but you could practically double your shots.
(wind30) I am also thinking what resolution to shoot for my 11 day Japan trip next week. I have like 12GB of storage. I am thinking of actually shooting RAW which is 25meg per file for my camera. You should at least shoot the highest quality Jpeg. That is like at most 5meg a file. Travel pictures is always better to take higher resolution as you may not have a chance to go back to the same place again. I am not sure how many pictures you take a day but for my case, 2gb is not enough. I take around 100 shots a day on my travels.
(catchlights) for D200, if you shoot large jpg at basic, print S8R shouldn't be any problem, but you should get all the things at bullseye, eg, white balance, exposure. cos at basic setting, the compression is the highest, throw away lots of info, so the file size is smallest, there is no rooms for any further massive editing.
(eastwest) Before you go, find something to shoot and take identical pictures at your camera's different picture sizes (L/M/S) and at the different compressions (FINE/MEDIUM/BASIC) - that will be 9 pictures in all, 10 if you include a RAW. If you can mount the camera on the tripod it will help as you will then get almost identical pictures. Keep all other settings the same. Then print the pictures out (the bigger the better) and compare. It will help you to decide if you can get away with not having the camera set on L/FINE. When I did this on my D2X and printed pictures at S8R, I was really surprised at the lack of differences between the L/Fine and S/Basic. Of course you lose some fine detail but I now know that if I am away on a trip, I can easily shoot at M/Medium and have pictures that will print out at S8R. If I am really running out of memory, I would drop to S/Basic and still sleep easy knowing that I am going to get ok shots at S8R.
(little zeus) once you shoot raw, u will never change back, but PC processing is a problem if you do not have batch editing fuction software like photoshop. RAW will give you more tolerance to correct your mistake.
I suggest you shoot RAW + JPG(small), JPG is just for quick reviewing to decide whether its RAW file is worth to further retouching or not. 2GB may not enough, nowadays the new cameras are all very high file size, sigh~ 4GB and 8GB is safe to cover to whole trip but expensive......... however, compare with your trip expense, it is worth.
comments: the other limitation of shooting at lower sized format, other than not being able to show big or print at fair size, is that non raw format would give more artifacts and look less natural upon aggressive post processing. i would thus personally prefer to shoot raw with jpeg small (for faster viewing on computer without conversion) and prepare more storage to overcome that volume requirement
Suggestion 6: be more selective at snapping
(ymmij) shoot less.
(stoned) I'm no Nikon man, but according to Ken Rockwell, there isn't an appreciable difference between shooting fine and basic. Here's the article, should you wish to take a look. He used the same D200 and 18-200 you use for his tests.
http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/quality-settings.htm
Typically, for holidays, I bring about 1-2GB of storage and shoot RAWs all the way on a 8MP camera. I used to use about 3-5 rolls of film per holiday so I don't think that's a big change for me in terms of shooting habits. If I come back with about 10 winners that's a great holiday, but more often I come back with <5 good shots and about 70 snapshots. If you think about it, you're gonna junk 90% of those shots anyway when you get back, why bother keeping them on your card while you're there? It's ok to be trigger happy, but if the shot doesn't cut it on the spot when you review the image, direct your finger to the delete button and it wouldn't have taken up any space at all.
IF under the rare circumstance you can still run out of space, review the shots again and increase the "minimum standard", cutting all the shots that didn't make it for the minimum standard. Naturally, keep those memory shots of your family/friends, even if they stink. Personally I limit these "memory" shots to 1 per place(I would pick the best and junk the rest), or I let someone else take care of them.
Nevertheless, this is all my personal philosophy, because I totally cannot take processing thousands of photos after I come back. I figured if I was able to shoot that many great shots in a week, I'd be a world famous photographer by now. If you use a world-class bar, I typically produce 0-1 great shots per holiday. You're gonna present your best anyway. Who wants to see the rest?
comments: selective shooting differs from people to people. you are your own judge on that. if there is a person who shoots his best shots in only 10 shots, that doesn't mean you will get the same; and you may even miss all your best 10 shots when you thought you are doing good selection of what you think is good to shoot at. it is a personal discipline, and there is no rules other than your own.
Suggestion 7: burn into cd/dvd at commercial outlets
(catchlights) you can find some places able for you to download and burn into DVD with a cost.
comments on point 6: anyone who knows a good lobang to do this at the various locations may post here too.
.