Yeah, RAW and extra SD cards, but I sometimes do RAW+JPG on split cards (if your camera can swing it) if I want to get the jpgs off a card via tablet or otherwise share them. I don’t have any way to manipulate RAW on my tablet, but like having the RAW files - it’s like keeping negatives vs prints.
It’s a lot easier since SD cards have come down in price.
We both take the laptop and a HD with an SD connector because I’ve lost an entire trips photos to a single point of failure and that’s never happening to me again.
On shorter trips where the laptop is not required for other purposes the HD and sufficient SD cards also covers my redundancy requirement.
I take 2 32 GB cards, my Mac Book Pro, CF card reader, and the external drive where I keep my Lightroom catalogs (it’s actually a portable hard drive with a copy of my LR catalog on it; the original, less portable, external HD stays at home).
At the end of almost every day, I import the day’s images into a day-specific subfolder in LR and format the card I used that day. I usually will take a look at some of the shots I’m really interested in right then. Sometimes, I just import and then look at them later.
If I have downtime, I’ll start curating the images. Every couple of days I’ll copy the imported images from the external HD to the internal, for backup purposes.
I put them on my iPad each night and keep them on the card, too, so that I have two copies.
I prefer to decant photos from the camera’s SD card to the laptop every evening. It isn’t just a question of not wanting to lose all my pictures if I lose my camera; it also helps me keep organized, and avoid the whole “Now, this was Poughkeepsie–I think–No, wait! It’s Kalamazoo! Or maybe it was Walla Walla…” I can put each day’s pictures in a separate folder, with a name that reflects where and when I was, and possibly sub-folders as well. OK, so maybe I get a little obsessive about it.
Granted, the camera will record the date and time, and I could probably buy a fancier camera that would automatically record the latitude and longitude, too, but I think it’s a lot easier to just make folders and organize everything while it’s still fresh in my mind. I don’t want to wind up with the digital equivalent of all those old shoeboxes we used to keep photos in.
I usually take multiple CF cards and a laptop. I haven’t gone on a vacation in a couple of years (bought a new car instead), but the next time I go shooting, I plan on trying out my Kindle Fire’s photo importer app. Talk about traveling light weight.
Another option - I bought a 4 TB external drive to back up my home systems. It is internet enabled (connected to my router and shows as a Network Place) so I can upload/download files from any device that can get on the internet.
I haven’t tried this, but theoretically you could use the tablet internet to access the network drive at home, attach your camera to the tablet, open the picture camera picture folder using the tablet’s file manager and copy directly from your camera drive to the external drive. It may be easier with a file manager app, there are several available free through the Google Play store.
While that can work, I question whether you can rely on a good enough drop to copy the large data sets in a reasonable amount of time. Depending on where you travel, fast connections are not always easy to find.
Oh, I’m sure it’s not fast. When I backed up all my photos and music from my phone the first time I started the process before I went to bed and let it run overnight. No idea how long it took, but it was done when I got up.
I take my iPad and copy the photos to it each night, leaving the images on the camera SD card as well. My camera has WiFi and it connects using a camera-specific app to the iPad. Simply select to copy all images that aren’t already present and it does it in a few minutes. Not fast but easy. I can then do the usual social media thing of posting on FB to show off where we are.
And this is just a hobbyist thing. If I was to use a DSLR or mirrorless camera that I wanted to save the RAW files from, then I’d consider that a bit more than hobbyist and I’d be using a laptop like I used to do before the iPad.
I have a few options. I generally have my laptop with me because even on vacations I do work. If I happen to fill a 32gig cf card then I can backup to the laptop. I also have at least 2 other backup SD cards if I run out on the go.
The 5d3 will take about 700 shots on a 32gig card shooting raw and in a given day I’ve never run into a problem.