backpack travel photography, take laptop?

Should i?

going only for 3 weeks in vietnam and debating on whether i should bring it or not for editing pics/backup.

Thoughts?

i will house this all in just a isngle fstop loka 37L bag which is a good balance of not being too big or too small for a backpack

I took my laptop for a 2 wee trip to hawaii. I found that editing and culling on the trip began to get distracting. More cards is my plan for next time or my ipad with the external card reader. Less equipment and less distraction.

This is of course a vacation for pleasure.

That is true. i do have an ipad 3rd gen. i could use eye fi and auto sync and download the medium jpeg files on my tablet and then when im in a hotel/hostel, upload that to the cloud

Whenever I go on a long photo/vacation trip, I never even consider taking a computer.
- The added weight from the laptop is a bother; you could leave it at the hotel, but you still need to carry it between nodal destinations.
- I find that culling/editing (beyond getting rid of obvious failed shots) is best done at least after I'm back and have a full load of photos to get a sense of the overall mood. In fact, it's even more efficient after I've been back for a couple weeks.
- Full-on editing is a lengthy process - moreso if you don't have the appropriate computing power. I have better things to do on location, such as taking pictures and enjoying the time I have abroad. I can glue myself to my computer when I'm home. Hell, I've been back from my latest trip for 5 weeks and am barely through editing half the shots that made it through my first cull.

Backup is a legitimate concern that I haven't addressed yet, but I'd rather go with one of those small external hard-drives that you can dump SD cards to.

It depends what kind of traveling...

If you are going to be in the same hotel the whole time and it isn't shady then yes I would bring it.

If you are going to be backpacking and moving from weird hotel to the next I would just bring an external and dump all my pictures onto that or at most an ipad.

im going to be bakpacking

cards, lots of cards and possibly a back-up drive like the old Epson. I am sure there are more out there but that's all I remember.

unless you're a blogger or need to work while on vacation, just bring lots of cards.
if you want to take pictures and share them on social network, then bring a smartphone or a tablet.

i would rather go out and explorer instead of just sitting with a laptop in the hotel room

My girlfriend and I spent a month traveling around Thailand and China with one 45 liter backpack each. We decided to leave both of our laptops with friends in Korea while we traveled. Definitely a good choice. It was less you have to worry about getting damaged in rain storms or getting stolen. Less technology helped us focus on enjoying the trip more.

For traveling, instead of bringing my Canon 50D, I bought an older, but still very capable, Olympus EP2. Best decision I made for that trip. It was small enough that I could toss it in my day pack and didn't attract any attention. I also was not too worried about damaging it as it was not expensive on the used market. Sold it when I returned from my trip for the same price I bought it. Bring multiple memory cards and shoot as much as you can in South East Asia. It is amazing. Worry about culling the images when you get home and just enjoy the trip.

Keith_D wrote in post #16578512
My girlfriend and I spent a month traveling around Thailand and China with one 45 liter backpack each. We decided to leave both of our laptops with friends in Korea while we traveled. Definitely a good choice. It was less you have to worry about getting damaged in rain storms or getting stolen. Less technology helped us focus on enjoying the trip more.

For traveling, instead of bringing my Canon 50D, I bought an older, but still very capable, Olympus EP2. Best decision I made for that trip. It was small enough that I could toss it in my day pack and didn't attract any attention. I also was not too worried about damaging it as it was not expensive on the used market. Sold it when I returned from my trip for the same price I bought it. Bring multiple memory cards and shoot as much as you can in South East Asia. It is amazing. Worry about culling the images when you get home and just enjoy the trip.

cool nice one.

You bought two backpacks with u? a day back and your main one?

jonneymendoza wrote in post #16580066
cool nice one.

You bought two backpacks with u? a day back and your main one?

Yea, we each had a 45 liter and smaller backpack type bag for going out. Mine was just a $3 canvas backpack from a thrift store.

It was good for keeping travel books, water, cameras, etc. when going out. I would definitely recommend some sort of smaller bag to bring with you when you go out, especially in South East Asia where you will want to have a lot of water on you.

When we would move from place to place we would have the 45 liter on our backs with the day pack on our chests.

Keith_D wrote in post #16580164
Yea, we each had a 45 liter and smaller backpack type bag for going out. Mine was just a $3 canvas backpack from a thrift store.

It was good for keeping travel books, water, cameras, etc. when going out. I would definitely recommend some sort of smaller bag to bring with you when you go out, especially in South East Asia where you will want to have a lot of water on you.

When we would move from place to place we would have the 45 liter on our backs with the day pack on our chests.

i was thinking of doing this ie carrying two backpacks but that would reduce my mobility a bit!

did u stay in hostels or proper hotels? i imagine that staying in a hotel u can bring a suitcase if u wanted too but when staying in less secured hotels or hostels, carrying all of that could weigh u down so to speak!

jonneymendoza wrote in post #16581567
i was thinking of doing this ie carrying two backpacks but that would reduce my mobility a bit!

did u stay in hostels or proper hotels? i imagine that staying in a hotel u can bring a suitcase if u wanted too but when staying in less secured hotels or hostels, carrying all of that could weigh u down so to speak!

We stayed is hostels, with the exception of the islands in Thailand where we stayed in bungalows. Since SE Asia is quite cheap compared to the US, we generally went for private rooms where we could. We never had any issues about security in private or dorm rooms. When we stayed in dorms we would lock up our valuables in the lockers and leave our main packs on or under the bed and never had a problem. Some places didn't have lockers, so then we would take valuables with us in our day packs.

I thought the same thing before we left, that the second bag would be quite cumbersome, but if you find a small light one, you won't really notice it. When you move around you can always stuff it into your main pack or strap it your main pack. Looking back, it would have been quite annoying not to have a day pack. I didn't notice any other backpackers who didn't have a smaller pack on their front when moving around. But do whatever you are most comfortable with.

For me the question would be how could I back up the cards? I would be nervous about having all these pictures vulnerable to a card failure.

But it may be do-able. Let's say you have a bunch of 16GB cards. You also have an Android device with a micro-SD card that has at least 16GB free, a USB OTG adapter and a card reader/writer. So you could just copy the content from the card onto the micro-SD and back out onto a new SD card.

I hadn't thought about using an Android device like this before; previous holidays I have always taken a laptop just to let me do backups!

Probably you can do the same with iDevices too... I don't know.

I have no experience with any of these but the Sanho Colorspace line has gotten some good reviews from what I hvae seen.
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …rage/ci/3369/N/​4000227848