30 day trip how to handle my pics

ran

WE will soon be leaving on a 30+ day photography trip, and I have a question about processing my photos.
First let me say I have a limited budget, [3 to $400.00] but I need to be able to process and store up to 3000 raw files per week . I first thought about a Nexus tablet [Chrome OS ]and store them on the cloud. I would have to root the machine to upload any more tha 100GB and I don't have the capabilities. Then I explored the purchase of a small laptop pc and external hard drive. I'm not sure I can get a decent PC and hard drive for that money. Is there anything out there where I can up load directly from my camera into an external hard drive like a 1T WD or a Seagate External Hard Drive Any info will be much appreciated. Thanking in advance.
Randy

mercphoto

One solution is to get a HyperDrive. Built-in card reader, large disk, and display. Its pretty much portable storage and not a computer (i.e. you won't process RAW files with it). I have not idea how you plan to upload 3,000 RAW files per week to the cloud while travelling however. Do you know how long upload times for that many RAW files is going to be? That just won't work.

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive/

siak

ran

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to process 3000 RAW images a week on a $400 budget. If there were, I'd be all over it. When I travel, I post my images using LR5 on a Surface Pro 2 with 8GB of RAM. Even then... it's slow compared to my dedicated desktop system.

I think you might have to accept the limitation of storing your RAW images on physical media (multiple memory cards or transfer to external disk storage) until you can return home to process them.

A cheap $400 laptop may work. But it will be incredibly inefficient (time consuming) to process 13000 RAW images in 30 days using Lightroom on a low-end laptop. You'll miss the fun of traveling and spend far too much travel time look at your computer screen.

In short, bring a bunch of labeled memory cards. Enjoy the travel experience. And process all those great images when you get home.

Sam

Randy,

I found a ton of external / mobile hard drives in the 500 GIG to 1 TB for about $50.00 to $100.00. Make a foam box / container to protect the drive.

I would look at a used laptop within your budget with hopefully a 750 GIG HD. If it has enough power to run LR great, if not see if you have a propriety RAW converter for your camera that requires less resources that will at least let you look at your images. Wait until you get home to process the images.

Never trust one storage device.

Sam

r3t1awr3yd

3000 RAW images on the D610 fit on three 32gig SD cards.
Each SD card is $20 (best buy online)
Four weeks is 12000 images. So 12 cards @ $20 each is $240.
Double the number for card redundancy and you've spent under $500 for enough storage and backup storage for piece of mind?
Just a thought or two.
(And you probably already own some cards that size so subtract a bit per card you already own.)
(yes the D610 says 570 something when you put the card in but I take it over a grand all the time.)

puzzledpaul

Just curious about the trip itself and whether the 3000 frames / week refers to the number taken or those kept after editing / culling?

pp

Richard

A friend of mine just asked me about this machine: http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-S215-Laptop-Computer-59414509/dp/B00KCEFDJM

It's fairly beefy for a netbook (though I wouldn't want to do any serious processing on it), has 500 GB of storage and the sale price ($350) looks like a pretty good deal to me. It's sold by an Amazon partner, so you probably want to check them out first.

DeborahL

ran wrote: »

WE will soon be leaving on a 30+ day photography trip, and I have a question about processing my photos.
First let me say I have a limited budget, [3 to $400.00] but I need to be able to process and store up to 3000 raw files per week . I first thought about a Nexus tablet [Chrome OS ]and store them on the cloud. I would have to root the machine to upload any more tha 100GB and I don't have the capabilities. Then I explored the purchase of a small laptop pc and external hard drive. I'm not sure I can get a decent PC and hard drive for that money. Is there anything out there where I can up load directly from my camera into an external hard drive like a 1T WD or a Seagate External Hard Drive Any info will be much appreciated. Thanking in advance.
Randy

Hi, Randy,
I bought an ASUS netbook at BestBuy for around $495 about a year ago to solve a similar (although not quite so ambitious) problem. The major downside to it is that it, like all other off the shelf PC's now, comes pre-installed with Windows 8 which I have never gotten used to. But, it does have an SD card reader and WiFi. I am not sure about the max upload. It has a big hard drive, though, and you could use it simply for its hard-drive storage.

mercphoto

I will say one nice thing about HyperDrives versus a notebook is their small size. You can put them in large pockets. That means you can take it "in the field", compared to a notebook which probably stays at the hotel. Worth considering.

pathfinder

Now this is just my opinion, and not that of most photographers, but I'm with Wally on this issue - skip the notebook and spinning hard drives, and just take a handful of 32 or 64Gb cards and be done with the issue.

Much simpler to shoot and move on, than to try to shoot, copy to hard drives, and then fetch and carry the drives. This is how I travel these days, I don't even take a notebook with me. I just use an iPad for web browsing and email, and leave image editing until I get home on a real screen and real work station.

I know most folks use laptops, but not for me these days. Just that much more stuff to carry and worry about. Simplifying one's life is a worthwhile endeavor.

Andy

pathfinder wrote: »

Now this is just my opinion, and not that of most photographers, but I'm with Wally on this issue - skip the notebook and spinning hard drives, and just take a handful of 32 or 64Gb cards and be done with the issue.

ran

storage on trip and processing
Well here's what I'm doing. I might be a bit ambitious, [3000 pics per week], but I have bought a new PC with 4GB memory and 750 Gb hard drive , and a WD external hard drive to up load into. I can process when I get back as suggested. All for 365.00 I'll also pick up a few flash cards in the 32 /64 gb range and I think this should work. I want to thank everyone for all the great info and time you spend responding to me , it's always a pleasure to have so much information available. I have always taught my kids there is two kinds of knowledge, that which you know and that whiich you know where to get . The Internet and these forums are awesom.
Thanks Randall