The need for speed - portable storage.

[Longwatcher]

Time for the next piece of equipment that I will ask for advice on and then probably ignore for some reason :)

There I was at lunch and my brain was thinking about an upcoming air show in a couple of months and I was also thinking about how many pictures I took last weekend. It suddenly dawned on me that my current portable storage solution will no longer work as it is too slow, although it does have enough storage (barely).

My old on location/portable storage solution is a 30GB Delkin Picture Pad. The problem is it reads cards at USB 1.0 speeds (it wll transmit them at full USB 2.0 speeds with the attachment I have). Given that I only have three cards with both capacity and speed to keep up with my new camera (one 2GB SND CF UII, one 1GB SND SD EIII, and one LXR 1GB 40x) I will run out of flash storage in about 12 minutes during the airshow. It will take another 15 minutes after that to get my first card back again. And right now it also can't handle the SD card (although I could get an attachement for that).

So I need to be looking at what would be the best solution.
Getting more CF cards (CF being the most cost effective) or getting a new portable device.
I was thinking maybe the new Epson P2000 device I saw on Luminous-Landscapes, but when I looked up read speed it seems about the same speed (relative) as my Delkin Picture Pad so that won't help any (although it looks nice).

Any suggestions short of packing around a laptop.
My requirements are:
1. Minimum 30GB capacity (larger better)
2. Must be able to confirm pictures have been transferred
3. Must be able to transfer files back to the card on a selected basis
4. In order to be worth it, must be able to transfer from a 2GB Sandisk UII card in less then 10 minutes, preferbly less then 3 minutes. I can trade a bit on write to computer times.
5. Under $500 US.
6. Must handle CF I and II cards and should be able to also handle SD card formats.

Optional:
6. Should be able to review images (at least jpeg, preferably CRW and CR2)
7. Would be nice to have ability to play WMA files or MP3 (although I prefer wma).
8. Having both USB and firewire to computer would also be nice.

Thanks for any help, I will at least consider anything anybody points out to me, I just might not use it when I get to the decision point.

[iwatkins]

Epson P-2000 does sound about perfect for you, apart from overall read times.

I've had mine for a month and I love it. If you haven't seen the screen in person, you haven't lived. :)

Reviews on DPReview and LL both suggest around 7-8 minutes for 1Gb of CF. I haven't seen that myself, I'm seeing more like 4.5-6 minutes using fairly standard speed CF cards.

Get the Epson P-2000 and a couple more CF cards ?

Cheers

Ian

[CyberDyneSystems]

Have you thought about some Microdrives?

In which case you would not offload them till you got home,.. but 4GBs were going for abut $150.00 last I looked.

[Boudreaux]

Longwatcher,

The FlashTrax sounds like it could meet your needs (remember to ignore this message).

Here's the link to the features page:
http://www.smartdisk.com/Products/DigitalMultimedia/FlashTrax.asp#Features

A 40GB version retails for $499 but can probably had for a little cheaper. They are also running a $50 rebate on the 40 & 80 versions. I recieved a 40GB for Christmas (thank you wife!). I haven't put it through the full paces yet but I am off to Las Vegas this week for business meetings. Hope to get out of the city and test the capacity of the FlasTrax.

It seems to meet all of your needs as far as I can tell. Your need #2. Not sure what you mean but the LCD screen does allow you to view the directory (it creates) where the pics are copied to on the drive.

Also, it DOES read Canon EOS-1D Mark II / 20D CR2 files. :-)

Hope this link helps in your research (remember to ignore this message).

[KennyG]

Even though I am an avid FlashTrax user, I would suggest you go with the Epson P2000. Should my FlashTrax give up the ghost, it is the one I would buy for sure, and it fits what you are looking for.

[Longwatcher]

Even though I am an avid FlashTrax user, I would suggest you go with the Epson P2000. Should my FlashTrax give up the ghost, it is the one I would buy for sure, and it fits what you are looking for.

Given a previous recommendation for the flashtrax and you having one. How long does it take to transfer a card to the device? Please provide which card or cards so I can estimate versus the cards I have.

I know how long my Delkin Picture Pad takes and that is probably where I need the biggest improvement. Otherwise If it played wma files I would not be considering replacing it. The P2000 is an upgrade for sure, but at $500 it is not enough an upgrade if it is that slow at transfering data for how often I use it and given I am becoming miserly after seeing my VISA statement this month.

Thanks,

[pcasciola]

The P-2000 is a HUGE upgrade from the Delkin Picture Pad, but it sounds like you are going to need more CF cards, or use a USB 2.0 laptop and a good reader, which is the only thing that is going to come close to offloading a 2Gb card in 3 minutes or less.

The P-2000 supports 20D and 1Ds2 RAW files, has a super high res, 640x480 3.8" display, compared to the Delkin's 320x200 tiny display, and 5-6 times the battery life. Tests on the Delkin show the battery dies after about 2-3Gb in transfers, while the P-2000 can easily transfer 12Gb on a single charge, and still have enough battery left to browse the pictures. A lot of these devices also fail if the battery dies midway through a transfer, but the Epson warns you that you might not have enough battery to complete the transfer. The Epson also supports MPEG-4 video which the Delkin does not, but that's not as useful a feature for most.

[Longwatcher]

Note you did not see battery life in my requirements.
With the AA battery attachment I got for the picture pad battery life is not a problem. Without it right now I can maybe get one 256MB card before it powers down to save the card.

I am impressed by, but at the same time not, by the screen on the P2000. The screen on the Delkin does what I need it to do, which is prove to me that the image transferred to the device. While I would like the screen on the P2000 and if I didn't already have a portable storage device it would win hands down. If all I want it for is playing music and videos I have an older ipaq 3650 for that. Now if we could combine the two devices and a cell phone into a cell phone size; Now that would be what Iam looking for. I am not expecting that anytime soon.

I think the technologically available device close at hand is a hang on belt device that could function as all three: Pocket PC, Portable storage, and cell phone. It would use plug-in headset and heads-up display glasses for the audio and video.

We are so close. But not there yet.

In the meantime. I need a 30+GB fast CF reader portable storage that will give me confidence that my images have been off loaded correctly.

Keep going though, there must still be something we missed.

[tim]

4GB of memory isn't enough for a day? How many "keeper" shots do you get, and how many rejects? One cheap option is to just think a bit more before pushing the button. I mean that as a constructive suggestion not critisism.

I have 2GB of cards shooting RAW with a 300D, and only just filled them in a 6 day holiday in a very picturesque part of New Zealand.

[FlyingPete]

4GB of memory isn't enough for a day? How many "keeper" shots do you get, and how many rejects? One cheap option is to just think a bit more before pushing the button. I mean that as a constructive suggestion not critisism.

I have 2GB of cards shooting RAW with a 300D, and only just filled them in a 6 day holiday in a very picturesque part of New Zealand.

Sometime a specific job will require more space, but not often. Shot about 1GB when I was in Raro last year (one week). What would be nice would being able to hire CF cards or Microdrives for those rare occasions :)

[Jon]

4GB of memory isn't enough for a day? How many "keeper" shots do you get, and how many rejects? One cheap option is to just think a bit more before pushing the button. I mean that as a constructive suggestion not critisism.

I have 2GB of cards shooting RAW with a 300D, and only just filled them in a 6 day holiday in a very picturesque part of New Zealand.

First trip to the NASM Udvar-Hazy Museum, I shot about a gig, JPEG only. Had I been shooting RAW, it would have easily been 4 or more. At an air show, I went over a gig, and with the sky in so many pictures, they compressed well so there were about 600, rather than the more typical 400, shots per 1 gig card. Again JPEG-only - but would have been 5-6 GB of RAW, easily. Those were with a D60, so with a 20D or one of the Mk IIs, it would be still bigger. And using multiple cameras would also mean more shots because of fewer lens changes. Sometimes the picture density is just so high that being selective isn't an option. And you can't reliably decide whether it's a keeper from that tiny little screen. At least I won't.

[Longwatcher]

Try this
at the last air show I was at with my 10D, I took about 4GB of pictures or close to what I normally shoot during a model session. Remember this was with a 10D and slower cards.

I now have a 1DsMkII and Sandisk Ultra II 2GB cards. I can fill up a 2GB card faster on this camera then I could fillup a 256MB card with my 10D because of write and buffer limits.

With my 10D I normally took about 600-800 shots during a 4 hour photo session.
Last weekend, with my 1DsMkII, I took over 2500 shots in an 8 hour session or about twice as many per hour. Because I could. That would translate as 9DVD or about 35GB total.

When all is told I seem to get a slightly higher percentage of useable shots, which means my 1DsMkII is a factor and as a result my standards are starting to climb again.

During an airshow there are batchs of events that I will shoot as many pictures as I can. And being honest if I only shot airshows the 1DM2 at 8 FPS would be a better choice then my 1DsMkII. However, I mainly shoot model sessions with airshows just being one or two a year for the fun of it.

During a model session I shoot a lot of pictures trying to catch the just right facial expressions and body positions. of course with the last one even I was surprised at how many I took, but when you have two models and they click together, you take lots and lots of pictures. Or at least I did. They pose or I pose them, I take some pictures and make small comments "move your hand here, now up a bit, now put it there" between short batches of shots. With the 10D I would hit the buffer limit and during the wait the model would lose what ever pose she was in and so I would have to move on. With the 1DsMKII I can keep going and going until a more natural stop point is reached. I suspect it will be the same with the airshow. Airplane coming in, start taking pictures, stop when plane passes, trade cards and repeat as necessary. The tricky part is usually the finale, as everything happens back-to-back.

And lastly, I actually have been taking more time and paying more attention to detail. believe it or don't.

[Jon]

Oh, yeah. I believe you totally. It all comes down to picture density. It doesn't matter how scenic a place may be, the density of an event, with things constantly happening, just isn't there - there's just not as many shooting opportunities rolled into any given situation. The air show I was referring to was at a small strip, New Garden Airport (http://www.n57.com/). I don't remember what I went through at Andrews. It was pretty bad last time I was at Dawn Patrol, too, and I just had a Kodak DC290 (and a dozen or so rolls of film). Maybe the solution is two (or more) writers, or just keeping a couple of extra 4 GB or so MD cards around for these times until Ultra IIs get cheap.

[Longwatcher]

I had not thought about just carrying a second writer, but then I would probably need at least one more card to work with while waiting for the first to finish. But that had not crossed my mind. I knew this site was good for something.

Speaking of cards. I have no plans on picking up any micro drives. While the one I have has never had any problems and I have had it for awhile (being a IBM 340MB MD) I have read way to many technical reports indicating that the MDs are much more fragile then the CF cards. I also would tend to avoid SD cards (just too tiny for my taste), but I needed a new one to make best use of the second slot. At an airshow I would probably keep the SD card clear just in case one of those rare but spectacular tragic events happens to occur. So maybe I need two more CF cards and the P2000 before then. My price point for flash cards seems to be just under $200 since that is the most I have paid for one yet (not including sales tax). My 1GB Sandisk I have had for almost two years now (or so it seems).