Digital photography on a long road trip

I’m considering the purchase of a digital camera for use on a 2-month road trip. I figure that I’d also have to buy a laptop of some sort to store/manage the images. Considerations: decent resolution, battery life, speed of loading from camera memory into laptop, and what else? How much might I reasonably expect to spend? (And in the long run, is digital any more practical than 35mm, since I already have an SLR and some decent lenses?)

Hey there I have a digital and against my best judgement was talked into taking it on a lengthy holiday at the beach. I couldn’t imagine how I’d store the images, I didn’t have an extra card and I wasn’t taking my laptop.

…ooops, musta hit the wrong button.

Thing is I’m really glad I did, I found a place that downloaded them onto a CD for me, very reasonable, and I also purchased a couple more storage cards for a song.

In the end, what I thought would be a huge issue turned out not to be. And nothing happened to my camera though I was where it was very, very hot, near the sea, at the sand, all things I was needlessly worried about.

I have some really wonderful pictures of my holiday and my companions as a result.

I have become an excellent photographer now that I have gone digital, I actually get the photos I think I’m getting. Because I shoot like a pro now, think nothing of shooting of 40 shots to get the one I’m after.

And the savings is amazing. Never buying film or paying for processing puts lots of money in my pocket.

Also I only shoot at the highest resolutions as I print photos on my printer. I would never have dreamt photos could be so much fun.

Take your camera, get some extra cards before you go, take the cord in case you see a chance to download.

Oh, and have a great time and show us some photos when you return!

They make special microdrives specially for storing digital camera images. They are basically portable USB drives with memory card slots than can be used without a laptop. Here’s an example of one.

My experience is similar to elbows’. (Although I did bring a laptop along on my latest trip, but that was more to show photos to friends and watch DVDs on th plane.)

In that case, you might want to find out if there’s a digital SLR body that’s compatible with your existing lenses. “Digital vs. film” isn’t necessarily an either/or proposition these days.

Currently the only brands that support digital and film with the same lenses are Canon and Nikon. At that youll only be able to use the current EOS and Nikkor autofocus lenses. You can use manual focus AIS Nikkors but won’t have auto exposure.

The kicker is you’ll spend at least $1,500 for a body plus several hundred for memory and all the other stuff you’ll need. Best bet is to define your budget and work from there.

For road trips get the biggest memory cards you can afford. Compact flash memory is the lowest cost per megabyte and available in the largest sizes. I currently use a 1gb IBM microdrive in my main digicam (it fits a compact flash slot) but solid state memory has surpassed the cost per megabyte of microdrives. For a little over $500 you can get a high performance compact flash memory card. That may be a bit steep buyt 256mb and 512mb cards are quite inexpensive these days.

I also suggest you get a camera that takes generic AA nickel metal hydride batteries and get a charger that will run in a cigarette lighter. I’ve been using a Rayovac 1 hour charger but will be replacing it with better technology as the Rayovac tends to overheat batteries, shortenting their life. MAHA and Lenmar have fast chargers that don’t overheat the batteries.

For a long trip, i think that the type of device recommended by tanstaafl is a very good idea. Given that you could really take a lot of pictures on a two-month trip, you might want more than 10Gb of storage space. The Nixvue album is now available in sizes up to 40Gb, and i believe a 60Gb version is imminent or has just been released.

Of course, for a single trip elbows’s solution will probably be cheaper, if you are certain that you will be within range of such services. The advantage of putting your pictures on CD is that you can post them home so they are there for you when you return, and if you lose one or two CDs, or get robbed, then you will at least have some pictures left. It would be pretty depressing to be robbed of your portable storage device on the last week of your trip and lose hundreds or thousands of pictures.

Err, a few errors. That $500 flash card is 2 gigabyte. There are larger compact flash cards but they only work with newer cameras that support FAT32 file system. The common FAT16 only goes up to 2GB.

Also I think Contax has digital bodies which accept Contax/Yashica film camera lenses. Fuji and Kodak also make DSLR (digital SLR) bodies that use Nikkor autofocus lenses. They actually build them on the chassis of a Nikon film body like the N80.

In any event I don’t expect you will want to spend the wheelbarrow of money it costs to get into a DLSR. For around $500 you can get a decent digicam that will print acceptably at 8x10 plus all the accoutriments you need to go with it.

I would recommend taking a laptop along if you can.
You can upload photos to it, show photos to friends along the way, watch DVDs, and so forth.

The laptop is very useful for booking hotels down the road. We went on a cross-country road trip last year (7500 miles), and each evening I got on the Internet and booked a hotel room for the next evening.

If you have access to non-Internet map software, get it. You have no idea how useful it was to me to have MapPoint on my laptop last year in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, looking for dirt roads that would lead me to my day’s goal (a farm where I lived as a youngster).

Of course, I don’t plan on taking my laptop to Brazil next month (I barely have the courage to take my digital camera). I think I’ll just beg, borrow, steal flash memory cards from as many folks as I can.

It may depend on where you’re at. Personally, I had already spent a dump-truck load of money on Canon EOS lenses, so the idea of spending another wheelbarrow’s worth on a digital body that would still allow me to use my old lenses didn’t seem too bad. :slight_smile:

Even if you don’t want to go the DSLR route at this time, it might be prudent to think about it in the long term. If you have Nikon lenses, for example, you might want to consider whether the accessories you buy for your point-and-shoot digicam (like a printer or a memory card) have a chance of working with Nikon in the future.

I have a Canon D60 DSLR that I’m quite happy with. Granted, it did cost a wheelbarrow of money, but I did a lot of comparison shopping and didn’t care for the quality/zoom capabilities of anything under $800. (My two main subjects are athletic events and nature, so this was a major consideration for me.) Since I was in the same boat as the OP, it was worth it to me to spend the extra and get the camera I really wanted in the first place so that I could continue using the lenses I’d already invested in. I did continue to shop around though and made sure I got a good deal; not necessarily the best price, but not nearly the highest I’d seen it at either, and with lots of extras thrown in. Which fortunately included a spare battery and battery charger/AC adapter, because it sucks juice like nobody’s business, even though I take the battery out when I’m not using it. Some of the accessories were also usable with my film camera - two tripods, filters and lens attachments, for example.

My package also included a large hard case so when I travel I can easily pack both cameras plus all the accessories. Have to say that so far I’ve no regrets about spending the extra cash, my pictures are the same quality that I was used to and I no longer have to wait for them to come back from the processor. Since I mostly share them with friends by e-mail anyway, it does save time and money in the long run.