I need advice for buying a CF card for a big trip...

[Alec006c]

I am going to be taking a 3 month trip accross europe this summer and will bring my s400 along, and was wondering what i should do regarding memory...im kinda nervous about getting a 2gb CF card (and not sure whether they work in the s400) because i don't want something to go wrong and cause me to lose my pictures. but being a reader of these forums im hooked on taking the highest quality pictures i can,and i don't want to sacrafice any quality to save memory...anyway, do you guys think it would be a better idea to bring along say 4 512mb cards...or should i just chance it and take one big card? any advice would be great. Thanks

[ekrunaj]

I would go with four 512 Mb cards instead of the 2 Gb card. Also, I would try to have back up CDs burned en route as the cards fill up, but still keeping the images on the card for download when you return home. To be even safer, you could mail the back up CDs home.

[JeffS]

You may want to consider an accessory like the RoadStor, a small device that copies the contents of your CF card to CDs. Battery powered, portable, I paid about $200 on sale for one that I've had for a couple of years or so now. There are other types that will create DVDs, too, that have a greater capacity.

See info at
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/RDS/RDS.HTM

[Nabil-A]

In Nov of last year we took a trip to Thailand and stayed there for 14 nights. I used up 3x 1gb cards during that trip. The last week though, to be safe i payed a visit to the local photo lab and had them process all images to a 5xCD's. It freed up all 3gb worth of cards and i was able to do the whole thing again.

My advice go for about 2-3x 1gb cards (or whatever your budget allows). But yes more numerous cards would be safer than 1 card. 1gb cards offer better value than 512.

Also, dont be afraid about memory so much, you can always transfer to CD if you get to a photo lab.

Thirdly, there are bound to be several photos that you will delete along the way becuase you thought they looked right but closer inspection on th lcd reveals they are blurry etc. so you'll inevitable make space in this manner closer to the end of your holidays.


Most importantly...have fun.

[cactusclay]

It would be a shame to loose 512 mb of pictures due to a rarely faulty memory card, but it would be even worse to loose 1 or 2 gigs.

[Nabil-A]

It would be a shame to loose 512 mb of pictures due to a rarely faulty memory card, but it would be even worse to loose 1 or 2 gigs.
If you store your cards away properly and treat them like you treat your camera, your chances of memory loss are next to nothing. Been on many trips and to this day have not had a single incident of memory loss on all my memory cards.. except for when i accidently forgot to protect my imagesand deleted the wrong one.

This brings up another point.. if you get the chance to sit down at the end of every day or so, go through and protect the good images, ensures you dont delete them accidently later on.

[Alec006c]

i just wanted to thank everyone for the advice...i hadn't thought of the photolab option, and i think that would work well to make backups to mail home and/or free up some space if i run out. Thanks again for the tips.

[matrad]

You can burn photos in CDs-DVDs in local photo lab or buy an Xdrive for example

for s400 512mb is good-every night you can download your photo in the portable hard drive

[lost]

I always hear people suggest the different portable storage solutions. (epson) So they cant be that bad. Personally I use my laptop. You can pickup a used laptop with a cd burner for under 500 bucks now so it is worth a look. Plus look at all the solitare you could play on the way there.

[CyberDyneSystems]

For an EOS SLR shooting 8MB files,. I would also recomend a portable storage device, I mean your allready carrying a bunch of other stuff.

For an s400 which fits in a pocket and can fit hunderds and hundreds of images on a single 512???

Forget the bulky portable storage (larger than your camera nad charger combined) and just get some more 512MB cards. With an S400 your largest file size is just under 1MB.. so we'll round up.. makes the math easy. Over 500 images per CF card.. (cheap these days)

4 cards = 2,000 images !!!
If 2,000 isn't enough get 4 1gb cards and double your capacity.. keep in mind if you use 512MB cards then you can easily dump some to CD at a local photo lab when you come across one.

I really wouldn't carry all that extra hard drive stuff with such a portable camera.. the hard drive is much more likely to be damaged and your images lost than a CF card..

Get some extra batteries (at least one spare) bring your charger and a bunch of CF cards. :)

[George Horst]

I took a trip to Russia last year and took along 4 256's and 2 128's. Ended up with 534 pictures on my Powershot S50.

The other thing you need to consider is a converter for your battery pack. Mine takes 220 okay but you need the adapter to plug in the Europeon wall plugs.

You can buy them for $15 to $20 and most have several types of plugs you can use.

Have a great trip and take alot of pictures.