I have a Canon A70 digital camera and am going on a trip in a few weeks. I have never taken the digital camera on a trip and was wondering whether memory sticks are practical storage devices. The A70 has a USB connection for uploading to the PC, and uses Compact Flash memory cards.
Would I be able to upload pictures from the camera to a memory stick via the USB connection? Or do I need an adapter for the Compact Flash card?
I notice that Sonry has something called Memory Stick Pro and there are Compact Flash adapters for it. Has anyone used these?
I’m confused about the need for an adapter. I’m leaning toward just bringing my regular film camera and having CDs made at the photo store.
p.s. I don’t want to spend tons of money…
Why would you want to transfer your pics from one medium to another?
If you need more storage, get another CF card. They’re pretty cheap these days.
Several options are available for storage of digital photos on an extended trip:
-Buy more memory cards (can be expensive if you want a lot of extra capacity)
-Take a laptop (but it’s a bit of a target for crime)
-Get an ‘image bank’ - these are portable hard drives with slots to accept digital camera storage cards - the files are transferred from the card to the device at the press of a button and some devices have a built-in screen to view the phoitos, or can output the images as a slideshow to a TV. Some even incorporate media player functionality for muisic and video. They are typically quite expensive.
-Get a USB bridge device and some other USB mass storage solution, such as a USB hard drive - the USB bridge device acts as a host for camera and drive and effects transfer of files - I think they are even smart enough to rename potentially-conflicting files. These devices aren’t compatible with every camera and every hard drive.
Another vote here for staying with CF cards and forgetting the rest.
But before you go out and buy any storage device, you need to be sure you understand your camera and how the different settings affect the number of images you can store. The A70 has image resolution up to 2,048 x 1,536 which is giant! No one using the camera for “snapshot” type photography would need to shoot at that high of a resolution. Set your camera to its lowest resolution settings and see how many images your CF card can hold. (The display will tell you). Use that as a guide for how much memory you will need. The camera comes with a 16 MB card, but you could easily pick up a second card to match your budget. You can get a 128 MB card for about $25 and have eight times the capacity!
How long will you be on the trip? How many pictures a day do you think you will be taking? If you go for 5 days and take 50 pictures a day, you need to store 250 pictures. Also, don’t forget that you only want to store the good shots. People not familiar with digital camers often forget that when they take a bad shot, they should delete it immediately to free up storage memory.
Seriously, do the math and I’m betting a second CF card will beat all other options hands down.
Dpreview says you should be able to fit about 154 of the highest-possible-quality images (2048x1536 “superfine”) on a 256 MB CF card. If you’re willing to drop down to 1024x768 “fine” quality images, you’ll fit more than 700.
You can get a 256 MB compact flash card on Amazon.com right now for less than $15.
OK, you guys have convinced me!!! I’m getting another CF card. Thanks very much for the advice!
Memory is cheap, very cheap. You can get a basic 1 gig CF card (your camera can’t take advantage of the high speed cards) for $60. If you do want to get significantly more offline storage, you can buy a digital wallet, essentially a hard drive with a card reader, but it doesn’t sound like you need one.
I’d go with maximum image size, and fine image quality (which increases the JPG compression). It’s slightly lossy, but you are extremely unlikely to notice the difference viewing online or in prints below 11x14.
I often shoot 200+ shots a day, so I need a few more cards for my next big trip.
This is not a bad option even for digital cards. Although memory cards are pretty robust, they do occasionally fail (or get lost or stolen). So it’s not a terrible idea to burn a couple of backup CDs (or even better, DVDs) and mail one home occasionally. Especially if this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips to Europe or Fiji or someplace exceptionally photogenic. If you bring a few blank CDs or DVDs with you, and a card reader, you might even be able to find some kind person with a laptop willing to do it for you.
You will, of course, need to make sure you have plenty of batteries and/or the charger for your digital camera.
Also, consider getting a pro account at Flickr. It’s got 2Gb of uploads/month (and it’s cumulative, so month two, you could conceivably have 4Gb of photos uploaded, month 5 would be 10, etc.). I think they’re running $25/yr.
Of course, the downside is you’ll need to get to a computer/internet connection to upload them and that’s inconvienent at best and impossible at worst.