How can I store and save images from a digital camera while traveling in Europe over a period of four months cheaply? I’m going to be getting a Canon Power Shot A70. What I’m considering doing is getting a used laptop which I could download my cameras files into. Buying extra chips would be too expensive. Do you know of a better/cheaper/easier way to save the pics? I travel by trailer and thus do not have access to a telephone line. My only access to computers is through cyber cafes. Any advice on where to most cheaply get a laptop would be appreciated.
You could download the pics at the cybercafe’s onto floppy discs…otherwise take the the chip into a local photo developing place, most of them should have facilities to write the files to CD, then you can delete them off your chip/card.
Floppy disks won’t be much good with a single high quality image filling an entire floppy (or more). (I have a A70, so I know the high quality jpeg’s run 1 to 2 MB. Extra memory cards may be the easiest way in the long run.
The only alternative is CD’s and I don’t know if cybercafes will typically have CDRW drives. You could get a USB CD writer (and a USB memory card reader so you don’t have to load the Canon software on the cybercafe PC) and that might work, but the cost is getting greater at that point.
You might look into the “Pocket PCs” using Windows mobile. I think there are very small PCs starting in the $500 range which might be able to store your pictures. Also, there are very competant laptops from companies like Toshiba and Dell that start under $1000. For shopping, I like www.NewEgg.com, www.MWave.com and Dell direct (can’t remember the website address).
If you sign up for a .Mac account (or otherwise have access to one), you could always upload your images to your iDisk for storage. It is accessible through Windows and you have the option of setting it up so that others can view what you’ve stored there. It comes with 100MB of storage standard, and you can buy more space (200MB for $60, 300MB for $100, and so on).
If nothing else, it’s got to be cheaper than buying extra memory cards or a PDA.
Well, "cheaply’ is pretty inconsistent with most known solutions. There are a number of products that are essentially hard drives designed to download and store photos from flash memory cards. In fact, the iPod can now do this if you happen to have one.
The new generation of solution seems to be a CD reader/writer with integrated card reader (e.g. the RoadStor, http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/RDS/RDS.HTM). This is about $250.00, so reasonably affordable – certainly cheaper and lighter than a used laptop. If you do go the CD route, i’d suggest burning a couple of copies each time, mailing one home, and keeping the other. Redundancy is a good thing.
You could try a “digital wallet”. Basically, its a hard-drive with a card slot attached. You stick the card in and press a button and all your photos get dumped on the HD. Even a 10Gb drive would be enough for your purposes I imagine.
With 256MB CF memory cards going for $50 to $60, the .Mac account sounds like an expensive solution. If you have a 300 MB web space on a server, you could upload a card full at a time (with an A70, a 256mb card will hold about 175 full resolution photos) and then have someone else download and store the photos on CDR. Then wipe out the web space when you have the next card full. I pay almost $100 per year for 300MB server space but you can get that much for less than $50 if you shop around.
I was faced with this exact question when I went to Ireland last spring. I wanted to take all my pictures at full resolution (why by a expensive digital camera, and not use all the resolution?). I ended up getting a laptop with a floppy drive. I had thought about getting a digital wallet, but since I wanted to email pictures home while on my trip, I needed a way to edit the good ones to a smaller size for emailing. Then after editing them on my laptop, I stuck the pictures I wanted to email on a floppy, and then took the floppy to Internet Cafés. The connection in the Internet Cafés was very, very slow, so I was glad I had edited them down in size. There was no way I could have uploaded a 128 MB memory stick to an external site, or email full-sized pictures (mine from my camera average 1.6 MB) - I would have been sitting in Internet Cafés for hours.
Having a couple extra sticks did come in handy though when we were out sightseeing for the day, I filled all four of mine up when I was away from my laptop, then at night I would go back to the room and unload my full memory sticks to my laptop, then pick the ones I wanted to email to friends, resize, stick on floppy, then email the next day.
I had a purchase of more than one extra memory card in mind, actually, as well as the $500 PDA. Either way it seemed to me it’d cost at least $100 to get the job done.
Incidentally, you could probably also perform the incremental upload thing with the iDisk.
Several people suggested uploading/mailing your pictures from a cyber cafe. I don’t know if it’s only true here in Germany but any cyber cafe I can think of will hate you if you try to connect your own hardware to their computer.
Maybe it is possible if you ask, but don’t be surprised if they won’l let you.
So do not rely on that too much.
I’ve seen shops advertise a memory card/stick to cd service in Prague at least. I’d be surprised if this service isn’t fairly easy to find in most major cities in Europe, at least the touristy ones anyway. Unless you’re going to be spending most of your time in smaller out of the way places i’d suggest this would be your most cost effective solution.