Lots of Photos

[Mike Farley]

I used to have an Epson portable drive / viewer which I used for holidays, downloading my CF cards onto it each night. It was fantastic but my camera equipment outgrew it and there was no firmware update for that model. It was also cheaper to replace it with a netbook so I used that for a few years. It's rather heavy though and as the cost of memory went down I stopped using it in favour of just carrying a bunch of CF cards. I now have an iPad but the capacity is not big enough to function as portable storage. You can connect a SD card reader to an iPad but not a CF card reader, for some reason I don't understand and Apple won't explain - but they do camera connector cable enabling you to view thumbnails and download jpgs. It won't read RAW files of course. As for processing on the fly, I have Photoshop Express on the iPad which is ok for basic editing. If I subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud then I could of course use the mobile version of LightRoom which would also sync with my desktop... at the moment I'm reluctant to pay for something I already own though, just so I can use it very occasionally on my iPad. Maybe when the next LR update comes out I might take out a subscription. Or more likely next year, to go with the laptop I am finally going to buy. I hate laptops for anything other than web browsing but if I want to do a bit of work after I retire I'm going to have to have one. Ho hum...

While having lots of memory cards is good, without a means of backing them up it does mean you are relying on a single copy of your images while travelling, albeit the risk is spread across multiple cards which is a partial mitigation.

My smaller laptop is a HP DM-1, bought 4 years ago and still going strong. It has a 11.6" screen and weighs around a couple of pounds, so is not quite as portable as a tablet or a netbook, but comes reasonably close and is more useful than the latter. The processor is not especially powerful by today's standards, but it runs Lightroom well enough and I use it for demonstrations of the application at camera clubs. All I need really do is add a couple of portable external hard drives and ensure that at least one of them is on my person at any time, then I would be set. Maybe not an ideal arrangement in terms of the amount of kit to be transported, but it is a strategy that should ensure against most eventualities.

[davidc]

I'm going for one of these

http://petapixel.com/2014/09/04/wd-anno ... card-slot/

It has the storage capacity I need and being wireless, if I really did need to process photos "in the wild" I can hook it up to LR mobile on the ipad. Having said that, I doubt I'll ever have the need to edit urgently in the field but I said the same about wireless and GPS. Now I have them on the 6D I am finding I am definitely using them. Sitting in the hotel bar after a day of travelling reviewing RAW files wirelessly from the camera, or having a GPS log of exactly where I went is really very handy

Now the challenge is finding a shop over here that sells them. Don't get me started on the state of retail stores over here

[Mike Farley]

Don't get me started on the state of retail stores over here

Getting you into rant mode is normally good value.

I prefer to review my images on a larger monitor, but don't edit in the field as I do not trust the way a cheap laptop screen renders colours, even after calibration. Post capture work is always reserved for my return home and access to a better monitor.

Wi-fi is a useful addition, but not one which I have tried as only one of my cameras has it*. It does make me wonder when Canon added so many bells and whistles to the 7D Mk II, that wi-fi was omitted and requires an accessory which costs £450 in the UK. Around a third of the price of the camera to add one feature? Really?

* Potentially this would be a useful feature for remote control of the camera from a handheld device such as my phone, if only Olympus would release a compatible app. It's my fault, of course, fo having a Windows phone which Olympus is not interested in supporting. I have turned the wi-fi off to help preserve the meagre battery life.

[davidc]

Getting you into rant mode is normally good value.

lol I have a rant mode? Passionate & opined definitely, though maybe not ranty

But since you just kicked the nest, shops here are woeful. Go to their website to order something and you see a list of products. Click a link to a product and instead of letting you buy it, it takes you to the manufacturer's website... websites are literally a catalogue! You're then expected to go to a shop and buy something in person! How 1990s! They have only just started grocery shopping online recently and even then it doesn't include perishables like fruit & veg. Sure, I can buy 1000 bogrolls but I want to get my weekly shopping!



Using the wifi for remote shutter is something I've done before too, specifically for wildlife shots I've never shared, but it was useful. When I've covered corporate events in the past though I have seen a fellow photographer download, process & send the final images to the client while we were on our way home. That seemed like a pretty useful tool though it depends on you getting it there or thereabouts in camera.

[Rose]

Mike I agree with you about using a larger monitor for serious processing, but I've regularly seen pros at corporate events downloading, processing and sending their images to clients in situ or in the local Starbucks for example. Photo journalists even do it on the street. It's all about time - it's normal practice these days when everyone wants stuff immediately. And they're not necessarily even using laptops - one pro I saw was using his iPad to send images to his editor. And jolly good they looked too... the difference was, he got it right first time in-camera

[Rose]

I'm going for one of these

http://petapixel.com/2014/09/04/wd-anno ... card-slot/

Yes, I saw that announced the other day - shame it only takes SD cards

[Mike Farley]

Mike I agree with you about using a larger monitor for serious processing, but I've regularly seen pros at corporate events downloading, processing and sending their images to clients in situ or in the local Starbucks for example. Photo journalists even do it on the street. It's all about time - it's normal practice these days when everyone wants stuff immediately. And they're not necessarily even using laptops - one pro I saw was using his iPad to send images to his editor. And jolly good they looked too... the difference was, he got it right first time in-camera

Pros are working to different criteria, with time frequently being critical, as you say and are probably sending in camera JPEGs where the camera has done a lot of the grunt. As amateurs whose images will not usually be seen for some time, we have the luxury of being able to take more deliberations in our processing.

Still, it is impressive when you consider what things were like even just a short while ago. A few years back, someone gave a talk at the club entitled "My Life in a Tent". He had been one of a three man team shooting pictures for the newspapers. He was the guy in the middle, who got the film from the photographer, processed it in a mobile darkroom set up in the aforementioned tent, before handing a still wet print to the wireman who transmitted it to the newspaper's office. He told us how one of the London evening newspapers had run a picture taken less than an hour before of the winner at Wimbledon holding the trophy aloft.

[Mike Farley]

I'm going for one of these

http://petapixel.com/2014/09/04/wd-anno ... card-slot/

Yes, I saw that announced the other day - shame it only takes SD cards

Compact Flash is becoming increasingly niche. I cannot say that I am sorry, having now ruined two card readers when I did not get the card and pins properly lined up. Thank goodness I have yet to do it with a camera, as it would mean the complete circuit board having to be replaced.

[Mike Farley]

But since you just kicked the nest ......

I knew that you would not be able to resist.

[Mike Farley]

We have all done it, gone on trips without properly checking our gear before setting out. I have discovered* missing chargers, memory cards and that small plate to attach the camera to the tripod I have been lugging around. Worst of all, on one memorable occasion I travelled 50 miles only to discover I had left my main camera behind and ended up shooting the colourful autumn foliage in infrared.

I have just outdone myself and left an entire camera bag behind .........