image banks

I've just my ist ds and its ace! (although I have only been using a canon ixus 40 before).

Anyway onto the question -

I am going on holiday soon and am a bit worried about not being able to take enough photos.

Having had my canon ixus I've perhaps become a happy snapper and have already eaten up my 512mb card with RAW files several times this weekend. I'm going to buy another crad (a sandisk extreme iii 1gb) but still rekon this wont be enough to store the photos i take.

Has anyone any experience with any image bank hardware? I was potentialy thining about buying a 20gd HP iRiver to store the photos on after a days shooting but would love to know what other people use.

My only other worry with any hardware though is how long the batteries will last after transferring lots of images. Although I hope where I am staying I can plug it in.

Cheers everyone.
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Not many of the hard disk units can read RAW formats, and fewer still read Pentax RAW.

The Innoplus FlashTrax/Phototainer does (and, although a little outdated, this is what I use. Been a lifesaver). For SD cards you'd need an SD-CF adaptor (because the FlashTrax has a Compact Flash interface). The LCD is not the sharpest in the bunch, but it's not let me down yet.

And although I've been looking for smaller devices with better screens, I haven't yet found one that reads Pentax RAW (which is all I shoot)...

Matt

You probably want something small and battery operated.

I have nothing of the sort, so I usually take my laptop with me. It's a 15'' Apple Macintosh PowerBook laptop, so it's a bit too big, and normally stays at the hotel room. A 12'' iBook (wich I do have but has been promoted to server status) or PowerBook would make a nicer and lighter companion you could carry around.

And if you can bear the added wheight, it has a LOT more flexibility than a simple storage device, like letting you do some work or browsing on your way and simply be more productive.

There are other non-Apple laptops (some even smaller, lighter and more expensive) around if you can bear their operating system...

Has anyone had any experience with PalmOne's LifeDrive on this subject?

We had a Phototainer, but found that the CF adapter for SD cards did not work very well. So we bought a Epson P2000, which has CF and SD slots built in. The quality of the image on its large screen is fantastic, and the device works faster and more reliably than the others we have seen.

Having said that, Sue uses the P2000 and I tend to use a large number of SD cards. If the P2000 failed everything would be lost, but it's rather unlikely that every SD card we had would fail at the same time....

You can buy a lot of SD cards for the price of any image bank.

John, does the Epson handle the RAW format or is it just JPG sRGB?
Not the amount I shoot in RAW, John
Matt

Thanks for the input.

I'm not actaully that bothered about being able to see the images, its just a place to store them off and free up the sd cards.

My laptop has an sd card slot on it, but I'm not willing to take it halfway around the world, as any damage to it would be a disaster and its heavy

The Epson handles JPEG and RAW, but will need a firmware update for Pentax RAW files. You no doubt already know that I don't use RAW capture, and I'm not too likely to be doing to be honest. I know I'm being incredibly lazy about it, but I am getting very good quality A3 prints without sacrificing the convenience.

Maybe one day....

Just been reading a post about card speeds for the ds and the link from Matt (davoom) has some storage units if you are not looking to view photos -

http://www.davoom.com/products/index.php?boxaction=main&categoryId=31

Havent a clue what they are like just wanted anyone reading this post to know.

Looked on www.ephotozineshop.com and the Flashtrax/Phototainer is really quite cheap in 20Gb (£169).
Look under "Hard Disks" and "Smartdisk". There's also the "Photochute" which connects directly to the camera via USB, pulls the files off and stores on a 20Gb drive. Tiny size (it looks), and £139.
Might be worth investigating further
Matt