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DSLR Backup

JRDailey
Contributor

Heading out on vacation soon and won't have a computer with me, (not buying a new laptop right now).    How can I save / backup my pictures and take them home to load into my PC  ??

Thanks ,   John

 

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Tronhard
Elite
Elite

Downloading to a USB drive requires you to have a device into which to plug the said USB drive, but you are apparently not taking such a device with you.  If you are going on vacation to a place that that has the facility (i.e. not in the wild) you could go to an internet café and plug a USB drive into their computer to download your images from your cards.  It might be a good idea to take a USB card reader with you in that case.

To me, the simplest and cheapest way is to get a few spare cards for your cameras, (obviously you need both CF and SD cards, based on your cameras) and cycle them through. You should be taking spare ones with you in any case in the event of a card failure at a critical moment.  Then download them to your computer when you get home.  You can get a compact, but robust card holder for storing and organizing them.  That way you have spare cards for future occasions, so it's an investment in the future!


cheers, TREVOR

"The Amount of Misery expands to fill the space available"
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

View solution in original post

16 REPLIES 16

Remember that extra SD cards don't give you backup, just increased storage capacity. You need a secure card wallet or storage case that you keep in a safe place.

Since you won't have backup capability on travel you should plan on a number of smaller capacity cards vs larger so that if the rare card malfunction occurs you minimize the loss of images.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

Well... you could get larger cards (I'm thinking of 32-64GB) cards that will be useful and forwardly compatible to new technology as you upgrade over time, you just don't have to fill them up.


cheers, TREVOR

"The Amount of Misery expands to fill the space available"
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

In today's world I consider 32 or 64 GB cards small capacity.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

Fair enough - 'small' can be a very subjective description! 🤔 😏

 


cheers, TREVOR

"The Amount of Misery expands to fill the space available"
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

I only buy the smaller cards, 32-63G.   Learned from a photographer friend a long time ago, don't put too many eggs in one pot. 

I enjoy and appreciate this community!     👍 👊

 

Backup has many nuances.  Given the limitations defined by the OP, I think this is the best solution at a reasonable cost.  As we both agree (I think) having images stored on multiple cards is at least one way of avoiding losing the whole thing in the event of having a card failure, and does allow added capacity at the least cost.

There are backup drives with SD card reader slots built-in so one can just plug in an SD card and it gets backed up to the drive, but the OP has CF cards and that's not going to work for them.  Also, the cost might be fairly steep if one is not going to use this multiple times.

Best Portable External Hard Drive with an SD Card Reader (partitionwizard.com)


cheers, TREVOR

"The Amount of Misery expands to fill the space available"
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow", Leo Tolstoy;
"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase" Percy W. Harris

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend

Will you be staying in locations that may have computers?

You could buy an SSD drive and use the computers to transfer files to the SSD. 
0A0A4C66-0D00-4DBB-B79C-0A4F9729D6A3.jpeg

 

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic
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