Downloading photos from camera

Chani, the easiest thing for you will be to take more memory sticks, unless you have an ipod or similar to which you can transfer the photos. You will see places that will burn tehm to CD, but that is not particularly cheap. Enjoy your holday, and have plenty of fun planning the next.

Chani, Go purchase another 2 or 4 gig memory card for your camera. I had a couple 1 gig and one card stopped working in my camera. Fortunately we had a couple other cards with more memory. We found a friend that invited us to his house and his dad downloaded one of the card.
You can also change the setting so that you can take more on one card but...I still would go purchase another 2 gig card. We took 4,803 pictures in England and Wales in a 3 week period. Have deleted a few but they all turned out great!!!!

If your camera is HC compatible, buy a few 8GB cards. They've dropped in price so much, I often see them for less than $40 Canadian. Well worth it to not have to worry about changing cards or getting pictures off. But make sure you have a camera capable of handling high capacity cards.

without a laptop to download and save photos.

Why wouldn't you have a laptop. More memory sticks might allow you to take more pictures, but with a computer can you not only download the pictures, you can also sort them by day and location, and delete the ones you don't want.

Bring a computer!

Chani,

My first suggestion (as others have mentioned) would be to buy more "Memory Sticks"! Memory is fairly inexpensive right now, so buying a couple of 4GB cards shouldn't be too costly. I'm assuming from the terminology you used, that your Camera is a Sony product, and that it's a dSLR (as you're taking RAW photos)?

I really don't think it's necessary to bring a Laptop. I normally shoot JPEG + RAW with file size of 12-14 MB for EACH photo, and I've managed just fine without a Laptop so far. The key to my approach is having LOTS of memory capacity (several 8GB & 4GB cards).

I wouldn't bother with "uploading to the internet", as it's very time consuming and some Net Cafes are a bit strict about connecting Card Readers or Cameras to their PC's. It would be a waste of valuable travel time.

If your Memory Cards are full, your best bet would be to find a Net Cafe or Photo shop that burns DVD's. In my experience, they're not hard to find (your Hotel or Hostel may know of a shop in the vicinity). Be sure to keep the DVD's in a safe place, as once you've re-formatted your Memory Cards to reuse them, those photos won't be retrievable if you lose the DVD's. You may want to burn two copies of each DVD, and keep them in different places.

Another option (in place of a Laptop) would be Portable Hard Drive, such as those from Epson or others. They're a bit pricey but these are equipped with multi-format Card Readers so very easy to store photos. The IPod Classic models with a Photo accessory can be used also, but in my experience these can be "problematic".

If you're going out in the evening and leaving your Camera in the Hotel, be sure to remove the Memory Cards and keep them with you (in a zip-lok bag in your money belt?).

Good luck and happy travels!

The answer, as it so often is, is "it depends."

If you want to shoot tons of large photos (many hundreds or up to several throusand), and you will be shooting large/hi-rez (you mentioned "raw" photos, so I assume you will be using a DSLR and shooting in the RAW format, which means files that are much bigger than the JPGs and casual snapshots that most tourists shoot), then you might need a very large number of high-capacity memory cards - at some point that's not pratical.

If you really are going to be shooting many hundreds (or thousands) of large files, you probably need to either bring along a laptop, or get a dedicated photo storage device (often abbreviated "PSD").

My own recommendation is to get a PSD. I already lug too much crap along, and while a laptop would let me do other things, I'd rather not carry one with me (I will use a computer occasionally while traveling, but there are plenty of internet cafes or PCs at hotels for guests to use -- I generaly am just checking email and catching up on news from home, and for that I do not need to bring a computer along....and I am a complete gearhead/nerd/technology professional).

A PSD is simply a small dedicated device that usually consists of a hard drive and a card reader and (sometimes) a screen to preview photos and operate menu/controls. You pop the memory card out of your camera, pop it in your PSD and download the photos/videos you've taken. Once they're copied to the PSD, you delete them from the card, put that back in your camera, and you're good to go. I've got an Epson PSD that's worked great for this for years; I download the day's photos before going to bed.

The advantage of a dedicated PSD over a laptop is, of course, weight and bulk (my PSD is about the size/weight of an iPhone).

Like any technology, there are fancy, expensive ones, and basic economy models.

Google "photo storage device" and check out the reviews on dpreview.com for more than you will ever need to know.

Thanks for the info. Aside from being heavy (8 lbs or more), the laptop would be a real nuisance to drag around everywhere. I'd be terrified to leave it in a hotel room. If it were stolen, then I'd lose the machine AND all my photos! I found the SanDisk 8 GB stick on Amazon, list $68, selling for $47 - then I went out to price them here. $116. I will definitely buy one next time I'm back in the USofA, but right now it doesn't solve my problem. Unless I can find one in the duty free shop that's significantly cheaper.

Thanks. I am learning so much. I am taking my 80 GB iPod (5th generation) with me. Can anyone tell me how I can transfer photos from the camera to the iPod without an iPod camera link connector?

Have your iPod setup to be used as a hard drive. In iTunes, when your ipod is connected, go to the Summary tab and put a checkmark on "Enable Disk Use"

• Create a folder on desktop...call it ie. 2008-09-22
• Connect camera or memory stick to computer (which would be visible by going into My Computer)
• COPY contents from camera/memory stick to folder 2008-09-22
• Disconnect camera/memory stick from computer and connect iPod to computer (which would be visible in My Computer)
• MOVE folder 2008-09-22 onto iPod
• Check to make sure file folder copied ok onto iPod.
• Then clear pics from camera/memory stick

Hope that helps!

We take the download cable and device--it is small. Then go to a Cyber cafe and download them to a website, such as Kodak. You can google free photo download, and create an account before you go. You can also burn them on disc.

I would recommend going to a Kodak shop or similar and have your photos put on to CD's. I dind't find it a very expensive exercise. Only took about 25 minutes. I have friends who just returned from Scandanavia and have lost all their photos. My friend's husband replaced the memory card when it was full and unfortunately put it 'in a safe place. Never to be found.

Thanks for all suggestions. I like having back-up plans, since photos are my memories of all my wonderful travels, even years and years later.

Chani,

Judy says it best, IMO. Go to a local photo shop( hopefully one out of the tourist flow ), give them 2E and a big smile and the job will be done correctly. Have a great trip.