Epson P-2000 is coming !!

[iwatkins]

Hooray,

The portable storage device I've been waiting for is coming. The screen on the Epson P-1000 was perfect but the device itself was only 10Gb and USB 1.0 only, but did everything else I wanted it to do. I didn't buy one in the end because I had the promise from Epson's UK Product Manager that he would listen to my ideas for the next version.

Looks like he listened (but I admit, probably not just to me). And the best bit ? RRP of £350 in the UK, that is £100 less than the current P-1000 is shipping for. :D

More info on this DPReview (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0410/04101203epson_p2000.asp)

Cheers

Ian

[Mark Kemp]

Sounds great but..

I am always a bit nervous about having all my eggs in one basket so to speak - hard disks are not the most reliable things and in a portable device as well????? what if a whole weeks shots were on it and it went phutt?????

[iwatkins]

Mark,

Very true, and as the cost of CF cards keeps coming down it makes it more difficult to justify a mechnical means of storage.

However, I would only use this device to keep a days shooting on, and transfer to laptop or PC at end of the day. In addition, I need to show quite a few of my shoots to the customer during a shoot (mainly for shot/angle/style monitoring), so this would a very useful device as the screen is excellent.

Anyway, portable storage using hard disks (i.e. laptops) has come a long way. Look after them and I find them as reliable as desktop PCs.

You could easily loose a whole weeks shooting from a laptop or desktop as well :D I haven't met (in person) anybody yet who does this for a hobby/semi-pro who has a bombproof backup system in place on their main PCs. Some risk loosing months of work. :(

Cheers

Ian

[Webster]

The BIG question for me is: how many 1G cards can be stored between trips to an electrical outlet? Almost all devices our there fail on that score. I'm not too fussy about how long it takes to offload a card, and the viewing screen is a total yawn. But if the device won't handle fifteen cards out in the field, I don't want it.

[jhankins]

I'm wondering how well the wireless file transfer will help in some a few settings where having a mac or pc there to accept the images and then of course burn to DVD. In studio setting this would be great as you can offload to a RAID system so at least physical hardware failure loss is reduced. With scripting on folder actions this could be fairly automated rather easily. Xfer rate will still of course be an issue (damn, hi-res files) Certainly I see wireless as an enabler to improve workflow in my work. (Now when can I get ONE!!! :) )

Regards,

Jim

[khkohl]

The new wireless adapter from Canon let's you select either jpeg or raw transfer. I think the best scenario would be to have a nice laptop near the shoot that is receiving med res jpeg images. This would give immediate feedback on a much larger brighter screen than the P-2000.

[outoffocus]

Apple is coming out with a new ipod shortly. Rumor mill has it that it will have a color screen and more. One would think this baby will have a digital photography connection. If you are on the fence with buying this device, and do not yet need it.. I would wait to hear what the IPOD will have.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/10/12/tech.apple.reut/index.html

I work mostly on macs, but am not commercially affiliated with Apple.. tho it may sound like it from this post!

[Mark Kemp]

My strategy is to have all my images on both an internal and an external hard drive on my desktop. Plus two CDs as well.

Basically as soon as I am home I copy everything to both hard drives and at least one CD. So the only time there is only 1 copy is while its still on the CF.

I try to have enough CF for a days shooting and if I am away for longer I have a laptop and burn CDs in my hotel at night.

A portable hard drive is smaller than the laptop, but not quite as versatile, so I am still not convinced.

[pcasciola]

This sounds like the ultimate chimping accessory. Most of these devices are like 320x240 resolution. 640x480 on a 3.8" LCD is sharper than any display device I think we have ever seen. I just measured a 640x480 JPEG on my 1280x1024 19" LCD, and it's 9". That means this device will have almost 2.5x the pixel density of that.

[iwatkins]

The screen on this widget is something like 212 pixels per inch. i.e. dense. :D

A similar screen was on the P-1000, I used it for quite a while and it was just wonderful to use, bit like having a good inkjet print, but it glowed. :D

Cheers

Ian

[pcasciola]

Oh, I didn't realize the P-1000 had the same display. That's great. How is it for viewing outdoors in sunlight?

[digitalmono]

Just got my P-2000!

And...and...It's GREAT! It performs the copy of my Lexar 1G 80x really fast!
And the other features are very useful, too! The most amazing is how fast you can browse your entire card as fast as a powerful computer. Highly recommended!

[kiwimichael]

The BIG question for me is: how many 1G cards can be stored between trips to an electrical outlet? Almost all devices our there fail on that score. I'm not too fussy about how long it takes to offload a card, and the viewing screen is a total yawn. But if the device won't handle fifteen cards out in the field, I don't want it.

Hi, this is also one of my concerns. This is one of the problems I have with my X's-drive II. According to the review at The Luminous Landscape http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/P-2000.shtml it was possible to store 13 x 1GB cards before the battery warning light lit up.
Furthermore, the battery is removeable so you are able to purchase extra batteries - see
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductQuickSpec.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=50899006&category=

The P-2000 is now high on my shopping list.

[Spatch]

I had a look at a P-2000 last week, but I have held back because (even though you can veiw them) you cannot zoom in on .RAW images. Since I take generally .RAW this is a bit of a disappointment. I am still looking around at other options and I may even write to Epson to see if the function of zooming in on .RAW may be a feature that they will incorporate in furture firmware upgrades. Apart from that it is a great little item.