Media Cards

There are a few things you should know about removable media cards. Obviously, these cards are fragile, so treat them with care. Also, consider the following issues:

• The bigger the card’s capacity, the more power it takes to keep it running. Consequently, in theory, smaller cards use less battery. Although it’s difficult to tell if this has any bearing in the real world, switching to a smaller-capacity card when your batteries run low might garner you a few extra shots.

• Larger-capacity cards generate more heat. If you’re using a tiny camera, which tends to get hot simply because of its design, it might be worth sticking to smaller-capacity cards. As you’ll see later, excess heat can make your images noisier.

• If something goes wrong with a larger-capacity card, you’ll lose more images than you would if you had been using a smaller-capacity card. Therefore, it might be worth buying a number of smaller cards instead of one big one.

• X-rays don’t seem to matter. So feel free to take your camera with you to the airport, dentist, or thoracic surgeon.

Earlier in this chapter, you read about some image size/compression strategies for saving media. Although these practices can make your storage go farther, the ideal solution is simply to buy more media cards. The price of media cards continues to drop, but if you tend to shoot lots of images, or if you’re planning an extended trip, consider some of these storage alternatives.

SD and CompactFlash Considerations SecureDigital or SD cards come in two varieties: regular SD cards and newer SDHC cards, which have a higher capacity and offer faster transfer times. Be aware that SDHC cards do not work in every camera that has an SD slot. If your camera doesn’t specifically support SDHC, then these cards won’t work. If you have a newer camera, it probably supports SDHC. CompactFlash cards now come in a variant called UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access). If you have a camera that supports UDMA cards, then you might find that they work faster than regular CompactFlash cards. If you put a UDMA card in a camera that doesn’t support UDMA, it will still work, but there’s a chance it will be slower than the fastest, regular CompactFlash cards. How fast your cards need to be depends on the type of shooting you do. If you have a camera with a high pixel count, and you tend to burst a lot, or if you plan on shooting video, then a faster card will be important. If you don’t regularly shoot bursts of images, then speed probably doesn’t matter. Note that older CompactFlash and SD readers won’t read the newer UDMA and SDHC cards, so you might need to upgrade your card reader if you opt for one of these newer formats.

Laptop Computers

If you plan on taking a long trip, you can augment your media cards with a laptop computer. In addition to giving you a place to store images, you’ll have a complete darkroom with you. With a laptop and your favorite image editing application, you can assess right away whether your day’s shooting was successful and determine if you need to reshoot something. What’s more, if you begin organizing in the field—sorting, keywording, choosing select images—then you’ll have a leg up on your postproduction when you get home. In fact, if you’ve got enough down time on your trip, you might arrive home with your postproduction chores finished!

Portable Battery-Powered Hard Drives

If you don’t feel like lugging around your laptop computer, consider a stand-alone battery-powered hard drive device such as the Epson P-5000, shown in Figure 3.27. Measuring roughly the same size as a paperback book, these battery-powered devices contain a hard drive, a media slot, and an LCD screen. Simply insert the media from your camera into the slot, and you can back up your images to the internal drive. You can then put the card back into your camera, erase it, and start shooting again. These types of devices also allow you to view and delete images, build slideshows that can be output to a TV via a standard video out port, and even listen to MP3s. Because they’re built around standard laptop computer hard drives, these devices deliver a much cheaper price-per-megabyte than any type of flash card. Although bigger and heavier than a handful of flash cards, they offer a tremendous amount of storage in less space than a full-blown laptop. Less-expensive models are available that lack an LCD screen for reviewing your images.

Figure 3.27. The Epson P-6000 provides up to 80GB of portable battery-powered storage providing a small, high-capacity location to offload your images, letting you free your storage cards for more shooting. The P-5000 lets you view and delete JPEG or raw files, listen to MP3s, and watch movies!

[View full size image]

Smaller, less expensive models are also available. Lacking screens, but easier to carry (and afford) products such as the Photo Safe from Digital Foci (www.digitalfoci.com) can be had at very reasonable prices.

Netbook Computers

The latest generation of netbook computers are ideal photo accessories. Small, light, inexpensive (around $350–$500), and often packing built-in card readers, these computers are not significantly bigger or heavier than a device like the Epson P-6000, but they are significantly cheaper, and they’re a full-fledged computer. They may not pack a screen that’s big enough for serious image editing, but they come with lots of storage, and you can also use them for email and Web browsing, media playback, and all your usual laptop computer chores. Like a laptop, with a netbook, you have the option of starting (and possibly finishing) your postproduction while you’re still on the road.

Tablet Computers

At the time of this writing, the iPad is generating quite a stir, as it ushers in what will surely be a popular new computing paradigm. Currently, neither the iPad nor any other tablet device is a great option for offloading images, if for no other reason than price/gigabyte. These devices are expensive, and don’t offer the features that you’ll get on a netbook or a laptop.

If you tend to shoot low volume and carry an iPad with you anyway, then this might be an ideal choice. For the heavy shooter, lack of storage capacity on current tablets will probably be a deal-breaker.

Also, you won’t be able to run your normal postproduction software, so inserting a tablet into your workflow might complicate things a bit.

Blank Discs, Cables, and PC Adapters

Finally, you can simply carry around some blank CDs or DVDs and all of your camera’s connectivity options. Then you need only find a service bureau, an Internet café, or a friend with a computer to burn your camera’s images to your blanks. Obviously, your service bureau or friend will need a burner and the appropriate port. If they’re running an older operating system that doesn’t automatically download images, you’ll need to bring the transfer software provided with your camera.

Hedge Your Bets by Offloading Even if you have a very large storage card—one that can hold all the pictures you might conceivably need to shoot—it’s still a good idea to offload some images from time to time. Media cards can crash, and backing up to another form of media is a good way to ensure that you won’t lose all your images in the event of a storage crash. If you have the space, consider making more than one backup.