Travelling for 2 months - How to manage photos?

[Chalk]

I'm backpacking through South East Asia for two months with a friend at the end of the year and will obviously be taking my camera gear (just my 400D and 2 lenses). As this is my first trip overseas with a decent camera I'm looking for some advice on how best to manage a large numbers of photographs whilst I'm away. My main concern is loosing my gear and hence all my photos so I'd rather be able to offload them as pretty regularly as I go along. My thoughts so far were possibly buying a few cheap usb's and transferring photos to them and posting them home (aus) or just burning them to CD's when I find a computer. I imagine there'll be too many to upload onto the web especially if I'm shooting raw+jpeg... Also what should I look at taking in terms of a tripod, if any at all? Any other general advice for travelling with camera gear would be great as well.
Thanks

[Chalk]

Any help would be great here. Thanks in advance.

[Jim G]

I would definitely not shoot raw+jpg whilst you're away - you lose a lot of space and gain nothing! Shoot RAW and do your processing once you get home.

What's your budget for a travel tripod? There are some awesome CF travel tripods but they're not cheap!

[Jim G]

As a further point to that.. if you're in AU you can pick up an 8G Extreme III CF card for less than $110 - good security could be picking up a handful of those (or of smaller cards, or of cheaper but still good quality cards) and duplicating your images - keep one card on your person with your passport at all times and even if everything gets nicked (assuming you keep your passport appropriately safe on your person) you'll still have the images you'd taken up until your last backup.

[400dabuser]

Probably get a photo storage device something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Storage-Depot-Camera-Buddy-120GB/dp/B000C1YVX4/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1220171658&sr=8-7

doesn't have to be from Amazon, could be from somewhere else

[geoffpowell]

If you're looking for the most robust method of sending your photos back home I'd stick with CF cards. Disk drives, even portable ones, are risky as they could be taking some abuse in the postal system. Also, the more photos in one mailing the higher the risk of losing a large proportion of your images. CF cards may be more expensive overall but what would be the cost (emotional not necessarily financial) of losing half of your images?

[Headshotzx]

If you have a laptop, bring them along. Many parts of SEA have internet hotspots where the laptop can be used for communication and blogging / documentation. That way, you can transfer all photos across, but laptops (unless you own a mininote / EEE PC / Macbook Air) are generally bulky and heavy.

The other way is the storage backup device. Or a lot of CF cards, but for me, I tend to shoot at least 1-2 gigs LargeJPG for every outing, so 60gigs of CF cards might be overkill. You'd have to get 4x16gigs, or 7x8gigs if you shoot 1-2gb / day, and if one CF gets corrupted, you'd be in deep deep trouble.

I still think the laptop way is easiest and hassle-free.

[yabbie]

I burnt DVDs - 2 copies, one for carrying, one for posting in Cambodia.
There are internet and burning places throughout the region - just make sure you check that they've copied all of your photos. I gave a dude 3 cards, and he managed to copy and burn 2 1/2 of them - he was much more interested in getting back to his computer game than doing work.

Now I use 2 portable storage devices instead (dual backup, day pack, big bag). It's a bit expensive to be shipping back CF cards!

There are a few threads about this in the accessories and storage section.

[Chalk]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I'm thinking that taking lots of CF cards would be the safest but not the most economic. At the moment, I'm thinking of taking 2 x 16gb USB sticks. I'll keep one on me and give the other to my mate I'm travelling with and transfer all my photos onto these each time I'm off loading. I'll then take a number of 2 or 4gb usbs (can pick these up in Malaysia cheap as chips on my way through) and transfer my photos to them as I go. Once there full I'll post them home. Does that sound reasonable? I know usb drivers are pretty tough, I've put a couple in the wash before and they were fine, will there be any problem with impact?

As for tripod, I don't have a much to spend, probably a couple hundred dollars. So the CF ones are a little out of price range. Open to any suggestions though, Thanks