Firewire or similar

I need some advice, I have been asked to take some portraits for a fun-day at my Church. This is not a problem, the problem is that the photos are to be taken away by the children within 2 minutes, and this includes being mounted on card.
I know that "higher end" cameras have the ability to download the photos straight onto a laptop via firewire. Is there anyway at all possible that this or something similar can be used with either the K10D or the *istD. I don't really want to hire a camera for the day as the 1) budget won't stretch and 2) I don't have the time to get my head round the likes of a Canon or Nikon!
The only other way of doing it is to take the memory card out after every 2-3 photos, replace it with another whilst my wife transfers it to the laptop. This seems like a bit of a chore especially with 100+ children to photograph.
Your opinions will be gratefully received.
Paul

I'm fairly sure you could just connect the camera to the laptop with the transfer cable that came with the camera.. that way, you could keep taking the photos and they'd be on the laptop straight away. It'd be USB 2, rather than firewire, but for file sizs of 10mb at a time, there wouldn't be a huge problem with the difference in transfer time.

If the cable isn't long enough, a USB extension cable will give you a bit more leeway, just remember that if you're going over 5m extension you'll need a USB repeater cable.. and you can daisy chain those up to about 25 metres.

HTH, and I'm sure someone will come up with something better..

Cheers

Liam

What genius came up with the two minute idea?

Change it to half an hour and use a card reader.

G

Can't you use the Pentax Remote software with firmware 1.2?

can work that on my mac.
No clue how to on a pc.
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The powers that be in the Church decided on the 2 minute thing, it's so that the child can walk away with it straight away. I guess they thought of Thorpe Park (or similar) and the quick turn around they have!
I was just asked, they wanted my imput as a photographer and not in the planning.
Liam, Thanks for that, I'm trying it now. I've never had to do this before so that's why I have never tried it.
I'll let you know the outcome
Paul

Could you tell me a little more about the Remote Software and how it works. I seem to be new to a lot of these things

I wouldn't go in without a backup plan.
start with something tried and true. (assistant and laptop)
bring a couple extra memory cards and be prepaired to run two printers that will print straight off the cards (epsons work for me).
then after trying the imiage remote software (I find it a tad slow on the response time (shutter lag) and transfer time. may bottle neck your workfolw, especially if you shoot lots of poses (3or4/child).

Now it may be easier for you to educate your client, than restructure your workflow.
I don't give a damn, how much walmart costs or how fast they turn around.
Unless you're going to commit to me, in writing, to do the kind of volume, they do, it's simply not woth my while to buy thier type of equipment, or offer thier type of services.

I know how long it takes me to set up my equipment, shoot my type of images and please my type of clients. If that's not to your schedual, try calling walmart and ask them if they mind packing up thier $280,000 noritsu photolab and bringing it to your event. For the same price I gave you.

now before you go and get yourself fired, try to remember that Gerri usually deals with the people and knows how to translate my lingo into something more diplomattic.

but the logic is sound.

if your laptop fails, print directly of the printers.
if the printers fail, send your assistant to a minilab.
if the customer has unrealistic expectations, educate them.

i would use aperture, automater, applescript, photoshop with actions, and two printers and tear through it. laptop on a stand beside my tripod, bluetooth and/or airport express equiped epsons (wireless printing), shoot on smaller memory cards, jpeg, pulling the cards at 10 min intervals and plugging them into my card readers.
they auto download from the readers and get renamed with date and time.
Photoshop batch processes them, sharpens and watermarks them with our logo and a boarder.
they then go into aperture where theyre auto stacked (using timing between shots to keep images shot within 4-5 seconds of each other into groups).
From there the images can be visually checked (if the image at the top of the stack is no good the stack gets opened and a better image selected. and the pick of each stack gets sent to one of two printers.

fast and good, but still 2 minutes is pushing it with all that automation.
I'd have to just shoot and print with no processing, logos etc to get down to 2 mins.

I don't have a K10D yet so I don't know how the remote software works, but basically it seems to allow you to control your camera from a PC or directly and save the images straight onto the HDD. In your case you'd be able to print them immediately and review them on a large screen.

At least that is my understanding of it...

I would use a printer that works off a card, and use several cards, one for each child. Click, click; card to assistant to print; pose next child; repeat.

But I wouldn't have accepted such an unrealistic assignment to start with. It won't do your reputation any good because you won't have the time to produce work of any quality.

G

I accepted the job as I am a member of this particular Church. The photos are to be given free. Quality isn't really an issue because I know the photos that I will take will be good and I won't need Photoshop to make them any better. I will be using a program to crop but that is all. My assistant (my wife) will be doing the printing and mounting
My reputation will not be affected as I have a successful portraiture business, I will be advertising my business to others on the stall.
This is not part of my query, I have now sorted out the problem thanks to Liam's reply.
If it wasn't for digital I would not have said yes to this job, with film it obviously would not have been possible. Thanks everyone for your help