Storage solutions on trips? CD's?

Has anybody had any luck with dive shops or liveaboards offering hard drive storage then writing cd's of your pictures?

This would solve a lot of problems with carrying memory cards, other devices, or laptops on trips (we have enough to carry!)

Seriously most dive shops and liveaboards have computers, it wouldn't be very difficult or expensive for them to offer this. They could set up a folder for each digital photographer and upload the pictures, then either when they have a full cd's worth or at the end of the week burn a cd.

Haven't been on a boat that offered this yet. Great idea and easy to do. Last trip I brought my I book with burner. Ended up burning CDs for 3 people. I don't think I would go on a trip with my digital camera without bringing it now. :ph34r:

Have you checked into palm-pilots? I was going to see if there was a way to down load info into them, but I don't think they have enough memory. Would be nice if someone created a small device that could burn pic from your camera to a CD. I don't know if I want to lug a lab top on a trip.

You can get stuff to download to a Palm Pilot. However their is was too little storage capacity on them for large files such as from an S2 or a CP 5000. An Ipod is even smaller and is a HD. It would have plenty of storage capacity and can be used as an external HD. It has a Firewire port. I think it logical that Apple will make a version with an LCD screen that you could use for this purpose. Note you can use Ipods with PCs now. :ph34r:

Nice idea! Whether skippers would see it as viable is another question.

Currently storage devices are outrageously expensive (Why is this???) and until they stop ripping off the punters I'm afraid I will still be taking my laptop on trips. It may be bulky but I carry it in a dedicated piece of hand luggage with other tekkie bit'n'bobs. It is also useful to have a look at your pics on a nice 14/15" screen at the end of a dive day.

Mark H

I agree with Mark, I can't imagine travelling without my laptop. I actually uploaded the photos between every dive. It was an incredible new experience to see what I had just done, only minutes before and burn a CD then and there. The other guest on the live-aboard also enjoyed watching the process.

As far as them burning CD's for you, they were only doing that for one person who had rented a digital camera from them for the week. However, as much as they seem to like to sell classes and apparrel, I would guess that it might be coming, for a fee.

Ideally, I think you have to travel with both. I have a laptop I bring with me, but if it dies, I'll be SOL, so I'm going to bring along this X'S drive (which was $87 + drive -- not too shabby) as a backup device.

Last liveaboard I had m laptop with me and it’s was great, at the evening of each day we sat all the divers and sow the last day shots.

That trip was without flights, so I haven’t had a weight problem, for the next trip I don't think I'll carry the laptop again cause its wont be a diving along and we'll probably have a lot of equipment, so I thinking also to buy the X-drive and put the old HD inside it.

I assume that in time when the digital photography is increasing operators of live aboard will but a computer on board with option to burn a CD's, its sure will be good to backup on CD all the materials also.

I took 400+ shots in a week @ 13MB shooting CCD RAW. If you have a laptop and convert them to TIFF, they are 35MB. Of course the laptop allows you to become more discriminate but you could easily use 14 - 15 GB. If you don't have a laptop, you probably will only delete the obvious duds.

I like Eric's idea of having both in case something goes wrong since I do not own enough memory to store most or even half a trip.

X'S drive (which was $87 + drive -- not too shabby) as a backup device.

Where did you find the x-drive at? First I have heard of this.

Where did you find the x-drive at? First I have heard of this.

A search here at wetpixel returns this thread:

Thread about X's Drive

Most CD burners are against any type of movement or vibration during the write phase. I image you would get quite a few bad burns, some photographers might not get his favorite picture and next thing you know they are disputing the charter charge on the visa. Its a pessimistic stance but a risk non the less.

I have burned about 20 CDs on dive boats. A number of them on the way back from Cocos in relatively heavy seas. I have never had a problem with the boat motion bothering the burn process. I use an I book but I doubt the actual burner is much different than what is in a PC. :ph34r:

I took 400+ shots in a week @ 13MB shooting CCD RAW. If you have a laptop and convert them to TIFF, they are 35MB. Of course the laptop allows you to become more discriminate but you could easily use 14 - 15 GB. If you don't have a laptop, you probably will only delete the obvious duds.

Here is how I handled a 2 week trip to Coz with my S2Pro shooting RAW only.

I took a laptop with a CD-Burner and 3 1gb Microdrives. Each day I downloaded the images to my laptop and viewed them using Bibble (from www.bibblelabs.com) which lets you view full size RAW files. I deleted the ones that were no good, saved the remianing to my hard drive using Fuji Finepix software and then burnt them to 2 CD's - that way I had laptop and 2 backup CD's of each day.

I could have used Bibble or RAW Converter EX to convert to TIFF but I dind't want to do that til I got back home (RAW Convertor does a better job of conversion for FUJI RAW files).

I have no idea what I would have done if my laptop had crashed completely although I did have a Windows disk to restore the OS if needed and archives of bibble and the fuji software if I had to reinstall.

M

I picked up a Zip Photo Show for my Smart Media. Quick, easy, and light in wgt. You dont need the computer to make it work. Just slide your media into a slot in the drive and it just rewrites the data from the media to a 250 MB Zip disk. 250 is might likely be small for a power shooters raw files but if you are shooting Jpeg or tiff from a prosumer camera it works very well. Also does compact flash.

You can also write your edited images to it in the form of a slide show and run it on any TV. Great for group viewing or setting up to just run at a party makes for some interesting conversaton.

I paid $150.00 for mine.

Marriard, I did precisely the same thing as you, except while on a liveaboard, I uploaded in between dives. I go to Cozumel at least once per year and have considered the fact that I can't upload between dives. In the past, we have done several 4 dive days from a small boat without returning to home base. I was able to get by with a 512 on the live-aboard but assume I will ultimately need the 1 GB cards for trips such as these. Obviously you were satisfied with the I GB MD's.

I have recently considered the possibility of a total malfunction of my laptop and I'm considering a cheap easy alternative for such an occurance.

scottyb

Fuji S2 Pro, Ikelite Housing, dual SB 105's

X'S drive (which was $87 + drive -- not too shabby) as a backup device.

Where did you find the x-drive at? First I have heard of this.

Check Power By Numbers on the web. I bought mine from here and love it! Iain

I am toting-averse, so I carry a CF card reader-hard drive combo. In my case, it's a Flashtrax 30GB I got used (e-Bay ... be patient and it will come to you, Grasshopper) for about $300. It has a small but decent (not good, decent) screen to view JPG's (it can access the preview in RAWs, but you can't really critique the image). It can output to a TV. And it is a decent MP3 player. It is about the size of a paperback. It has a rechargeable battery, and you can also run it of 4 AA's if you get a battery holder and a jack from your local radio shack equivalent.

I know some people love to get right on their image-editing on a trip. Me, I'd rather eat, drink, sleep, run, swim, bike, kayak, hike, and be merry than photoshop on a boat or an island, so the CPU and big screen are just dead weight.

Just got back from the Nekton Rorqual in Belize. They do have a computer available for guests' use. But I had a problem writing to PNY CD's, other people had no problem with other brands. I will bring a couple different brands on future trips.

Here's a FYI- I had a 1gig CF card in my camera and passed it through the security scanner at the airport in Belize and also in Dallas. I had 12 images get corrupted on the card. Next time they will stay in my pocket!

When you say your CF card pased through the scanner, was it loose in your hand luggage or still in your camera?