airplane travel and my brand new dslr

"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote:
Mark² wrote:
For hard-drive space...go to Costco and pick up one of these for a
mere $109:
http://westerndigital.com/en/product...sp?DriveID=262
I have three of these, and they've been extremely reliable. It's
great to not have a need for power cords, as it runs off the USB
power. Very well-constructed, and TINY. 160GB. Great little units!

I took a picture of the Western Digital HD to give you an idea of how small
they are (I noticed there was nothing in the web-site's image to give you
perspective):

He
http://www.pbase.com/image/79831138/original

Very very small. It also comes with a very nice, custom-fit soft case that
has a pocket for the small USB cord:
http://www.pbase.com/image/79831887/original

I'd agree that is probably the right solution, given the
size, disk space, and price.

There are some interesting variations which might be
useful in certain circumstance, for example on an
extended trip or for otherwise massive disk storage
needs.

First, many if not most laptops these days have
writable DVD drives.

Second, there are USB to IDE/SATA converters, along with
storage cases (all at less than $20). For use with 2.5"
drives designed for laptops no power supply is needed,
and for the larger 3.5" drives there are external power
supplies. Obviously these are not nearly as small and
cute as the one pictured in the URL above (and at $109
for 160GB that makes a very nice package), but if the
space needed is large, a couple of $15 case/adapter kits
and a pair of 500GB or larger disks is both a readily
available solution, and totally mind boggling too!

For my laptop I carry around a 200GB disk that,
including the USB adapter, cost less than $90. And
today there are 320GB external hard disks with power
supply and enclosures that are selling on eBay for $110
(including the $20 shipping and handling charge).

I'm tempted (not enough yet to actually do it) to get a
second disk with a USB adapter just to see if Linux's
software RAID array would double the disk i/o speed on
these things! Mine runs at just a bit slower than the
internal IDE disk in the laptop, so it is possible that
i/o speed could be nearly doubled. Maybe.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Joseph Meehan wrote:
louise wrote:
..

The hard drive on my portable will not be able to hold all
the RAW photos I'll shoot. I have a very small and light
Thinkpad which has no built in writable drive and just a
couple of usb ports and a relatively small hard drive.
Uploading from Japan to a server in NY will be very slow if
not impossible. What would be the best method of
transferring the raw files from my SD disks onto a different
media?


I suggest that you learn to use the delete button. Digital has
allowed us to become rather sloppy and get away with it. People take
50 photos of a single subject. There may be 3 really good ones and
40 that are dups or poor quality images. For some reason people just
can't bring them selves to say, hey that one is ugly or just another
good image, but not as good as this other one and I should delete it.
In the old days we would not have made 50 images, maybe two or three.
Note, I am an old guy and when I was in it professionally a 4X5 was
still standard.
Really I do suggest, even if you have an amazing storage capacity,
to delete most of what you take. Your average quality will go way
up. Are you old enough to have sat through someone's vacation
slides? If so you will know what I mean. You really don't need to
keep your mistakes and second best photos.

I agree about deleting clear mistakes, or complete duplicates... But I'd be
a little careful with wholesale deletion. There have been literally
HUNDREDS of times where I've gone back to an archived collection of shots
that were culled into obscure storage upon my initial round of those I
wished to have ready access to...where I've found some real gems. There are
often shots we find significant for different reasons, but not until later
do they seem significant. This can be especially true with family photos,
but also many others. -Just a word of caution/balance on that...

Mark²

--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 20:35:15 +0100, Adrian Boliston wrote:

The hard drive on my portable will not be able to hold all the RAW photos
I'll shoot. I have a very small and light Thinkpad which has no built in
writable drive and just a couple of usb ports and a relatively small hard
drive.
. . .

You must be planning on shooting a lot of RAW if it will fill your HDD!
Even entry level portables seem to come with at least 60 gigs these days.

We don't know how large her Thinkpad drive is. I have an old
Thinkpad and it has a hard drive with less capacity than one of my
SD or xD cards, only 1.2GB. Let's assume that her Thinkpad's hard
drive has as capacity somewhere between 1.2GB and 60GB.

One solution would be to get one of the very small external hard
drives that has a USB port, and the portable could copy the RAW
photos to its own hard drive and then recopy them to the USB drive.
The 40 and 80 GB versions I've seen are inexpensive and about the
size of an indictable ham sandwich.

"Joseph Meehan" wrote:
I suggest that you learn to use the delete button. Digital has allowed
us to become rather sloppy and get away with it. People take 50 photos of a
single subject. There may be 3 really good ones and 40 that are dups or
poor quality images. For some reason people just can't bring them selves to
say, hey that one is ugly or just another good image, but not as good as
this other one and I should delete it. In the old days we would not have
made 50 images, maybe two or three. Note, I am an old guy and when I was in
it professionally a 4X5 was still standard.

Really I do suggest, even if you have an amazing storage capacity, to
delete most of what you take. Your average quality will go way up. Are you
old enough to have sat through someone's vacation slides? If so you will
know what I mean. You really don't need to keep your mistakes and second
best photos.

You are assuming a lot that is not in evidence.

An example. Many years ago my brother was polite enough
to sit through the showing of some "home movies" that a
friend had taken. Pretty boring stuff for a real
photographer. But at some point he nearly fell out of
his chair! One totally useless bit of the film,
virtually wasted in the opinion of the owner because it
was just a test to see if the camera was working and was
aimed at a group of people he didn't even know... just
happened to catch my brother's attention because it was
*his* brother, yours truly, and family that was on the
film.

I've kept thousands of images which appear at first
glance to be useless. Because sometimes it isn't a
"great photograph" that is needed, but merely
documentation of what was there. It can even be out of
focus, poorly light and ill framed, and still have
*exactly* the information needed.

Delete photos of the ceiling, the floor, of totally
white and totally black... but keeping the duplicates
and 2nd (or worse) best images is *cheap*. And
sometimes they just happen to end up being the 1st
choice years later when the need is something nobody
could have foreseen.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Mark² wrote:
Mark² wrote:
For hard-drive space...go to Costco and pick up one of these for a
mere $109:
http://westerndigital.com/en/product...sp?DriveID=262
I have three of these, and they've been extremely reliable. It's
great to not have a need for power cords, as it runs off the USB
power. Very well-constructed, and TINY. 160GB. Great little units!

I took a picture of the Western Digital HD to give you an idea of how small
they are (I noticed there was nothing in the web-site's image to give you
perspective):

He
http://www.pbase.com/image/79831138/original

Very very small. It also comes with a very nice, custom-fit soft case that
has a pocket for the small USB cord:
http://www.pbase.com/image/79831887/original

-Mark²

Thank you so much for the recommendations and for the
picture - it really is small, which is very important.

Louise

Michael Meissner wrote:
louise writes:

I will be taking a trip to Japan and will need to carry a portable computer,
several bottles of different medications since one now has to have the pills in
the bottle, and clothing and such for a few weeks.

Additionally, I want to take my new Nikon D40X and my new 55-200 VR Nikon lens.
I have two questions:

The hard drive on my portable will not be able to hold all the RAW photos I'll
shoot. I have a very small and light Thinkpad which has no built in writable
drive and just a couple of usb ports and a relatively small hard
drive. Uploading from Japan to a server in NY will be very slow if not
impossible. What would be the best method of transferring the raw files from
my SD disks onto a different media?

Next question is about carry-on. I can't see being able to carry all this onto
the plane with the new regulations. Is there a case which is considered
"baggage proof" into which I could put my camera and lens that I could put on
with my other baggage?

I always carry my camera gear, medical machine (CPAP), medicines, and laptop.
Clothes and such, I always check (but it is better to have at least one change
of shirt, underware, socks in your carry on also). While it doesn't happen
that often, it is not unknown for high end checked gear to get stolen. I
believe the airlines have a little clause that they will not be responsible if
you check cameras or laptops specifically.

There are different strategies I've used over the years, depending on the
flights I'm going to be making, and how much gear I'm carrying:

1) Lowepro Compudaypack -- I just bought this on my last trip, and it has 3
separate compartments, one for laptop, one for camera, and another
compartment. My gear just bit in the backpack. Note, it is larger by an
inch for some of the smaller regional airlines, so be sure to know the size
(and weight) requirements of each of your flights.

2) National Geographic NG-5162 backpack -- This is like the Compudaypack in
that it has 3 compartments. It met the smaller size of the SwissAir carry
on in a trip I had last November, but my work laptop didn't fit in the
laptop pocket, so my wife volunteered to carry my CPAP machine (she won't do
that again, since the CPAP machine guarantees you a bag inspection). I
recomend actually finding a store that has the bags in stock so you can
avoid this problem and try it out ahead of time.

3) National Geographic NG-2475 shoulder bag -- my NG-2475 has a laptop pocket
that is big enough for the laptop, and it fits under the seats. For US
flights that allow a 'personal' bag plus suitcase, it works fine for me.

4) Stormcase or Pelican hard sided roller bag -- as long as you have good
padding inside, this should survive baggage handling. However, it does
pretty much stick out as saying expensive gear inside. I also discovered
that airlines have smaller than the standard IATA requirements, and when I
wanted to use it last fall for a trip to Europe, it was too big for one of
the flights. I do use it as a normal roller bag and will gate check the bag
on smaller regional airlines. Another downside is it is fairly heavy, and
it airlines are enforcing the weight limits, you won't be able to carry much
DSLR gear. Note, I bought this right after the London terrorist incident
last year when they required you to check everything, so I wanted to be
prepared to check the gear if needed.

5) Normal roller bag -- I found a roller bag at Walmart that I can pack
everything, and it has a laptop pocket so I can get the laptop out for
inspection. Like the Stormcase, it was too big for one of my flights last
year.

6) Normal backpack with laptop pocket -- if you aren't carrying too much gear,
this is nice an anonymous and allows you to carry a moderate amount of
stuff.

Another place to check is http://www.thinktankphoto.com which is dedicated to
making bags for the traveling photographer.

I see you list an option of a "normal roller bag" - this is
what I've used in the past and I have put my Thinkpad
inside. But my normal roller bag is canvas to keep it
lightweight. If I were to use this, how would I adequately
protect the camera and lens?

If I did it separately, I would have 3 items: my purse, my
normal roller bag, the camera on my shoulder and the second
lens on my belt. I could probably get away with this but
what if I couldn't?

I'll look at thinktankphoto as well.

Louise

Joseph Meehan wrote:
louise wrote:
..
The hard drive on my portable will not be able to hold all
the RAW photos I'll shoot. I have a very small and light
Thinkpad which has no built in writable drive and just a
couple of usb ports and a relatively small hard drive.
Uploading from Japan to a server in NY will be very slow if
not impossible. What would be the best method of
transferring the raw files from my SD disks onto a different
media?


I suggest that you learn to use the delete button. Digital has allowed
us to become rather sloppy and get away with it. People take 50 photos of a
single subject. There may be 3 really good ones and 40 that are dups or
poor quality images. For some reason people just can't bring them selves to
say, hey that one is ugly or just another good image, but not as good as
this other one and I should delete it. In the old days we would not have
made 50 images, maybe two or three. Note, I am an old guy and when I was in
it professionally a 4X5 was still standard.

Really I do suggest, even if you have an amazing storage capacity, to
delete most of what you take. Your average quality will go way up. Are you
old enough to have sat through someone's vacation slides? If so you will
know what I mean. You really don't need to keep your mistakes and second
best photos.

I know you're right.....in principle.

But my travel companion will kill me if I spend half our
trip taking pictures and then come back to the hotel room
every night and obsess about what to delete :-) I'm hoping
to avoid major deletion decisions until I get back.

Louise

louise wrote:

I will be taking a trip to Japan and will need to carry a
portable computer, several bottles of different medications
since one now has to have the pills in the bottle, and
clothing and such for a few weeks.

Additionally, I want to take my new Nikon D40X and my new
55-200 VR Nikon lens. I have two questions:

The hard drive on my portable will not be able to hold all
the RAW photos I'll shoot. I have a very small and light
Thinkpad which has no built in writable drive and just a
couple of usb ports and a relatively small hard drive.
Uploading from Japan to a server in NY will be very slow if
not impossible. What would be the best method of
transferring the raw files from my SD disks onto a different
media?

Next question is about carry-on. I can't see being able to
carry all this onto the plane with the new regulations. Is
there a case which is considered "baggage proof" into which
I could put my camera and lens that I could put on with my
other baggage?

I'd never check my camera gear. In fact, if I can help it, I don't check
anything and just carry two carry-ons.

I have the Lowepro Stealth Reporter 650, which is a little too humongous
for my gear, but it was the only thing I could find on short notice, and
has been very useful ever since. It counts as a carry-on. It can hold
the laptop, too.

Here's a review: http://www.vividlight.com/articles/1614.htm

--
http://www.xoverboard.com/cartoons/2..._argument.html

On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 23:28:04 -0400, louise wrote:

I know you're right.....in principle.

But my travel companion will kill me if I spend half our
trip taking pictures and then come back to the hotel room
every night and obsess about what to delete :-) I'm hoping
to avoid major deletion decisions until I get back.

You could simplify the process by dividing the photos into three
groups when you get back to the hotel. This may not seem like less
work at first glance, but if you store them in different folders as
Keepers, Deleters and Maybes, you can probably work much faster, not
having to spend extra time agonizing about which ones to delete.
The actual deletion can still take place when you get back, or if
you run out of storage space towards the end of your trip, then you
could cull the ones in the Deleters folder.

Some have mentioned the value of saving *everything*, since a few
of those that would be deleted might someday be one that would have
had some value. The problem with this thinking is that these
represent a *tiny* fraction of the pictures, and most people
probably never would have any that would be valuable. And the ones
you're able to take because of space freed for them by the triage
deleted Deleters are just as likely to be one of the similarly poor
shots that may someday have some value. But they also are much more
likely to turn into some additional Keepers. If their logic had
much value, they'd bring along more flash cards or backup devices
and take at least twice as many shots, because out of all of the
extra shots, someday a few may turn out to be of some value. But
most won't, and it will cost the photographer double the time,
effort and expense to take or archive them.

louise writes:

I see you list an option of a "normal roller bag" - this is what I've used in
the past and I have put my Thinkpad inside. But my normal roller bag is canvas
to keep it lightweight. If I were to use this, how would I adequately protect
the camera and lens?

Usually when I go the rollerbag approach, I pack the camera in a padded bag
inside of the roller bag. The usual bag that I used to use is the Adorama
Slinger which is narrower than a lot of bags, and fits in my roller bag that
has the laptop pocket on the bottom that speeds up getting the laptop out for
security:
http://www.adorama.com/GBSLGY.html?s...nger&item_no=6

I use use a small enough roller bag that it can be normally a carry on. If I'm
flying a small regional jet, I have to gate check it where they load it up in
the cargo hold, and then on jetway or tarmac everybody waits for their bags to
be delivered. Obviously for the most protection, you need to use a Stormcase
or Pelican as the roller bag, but as I said they have their own disadvantages.

I forgot one other approach that I don't recomend. Ditch the dslr, and get a
small superzoom (Olympus SP-550, Canon S3/S5, Panasonic FZ8/FZ50/etc.).


If I did it separately, I would have 3 items: my purse, my normal roller bag,
the camera on my shoulder and the second lens on my belt. I could probably get
away with this but what if I couldn't?

When I flew to Europe last November, the rule was one bag, with no exceptions
for a purse, laptop bag, camera bag, medical equipment, etc. like they allow in
the USA. So your carry on bag had to be able to hold the purse, etc. Ie, the
roller bag needs to carry everything (I don't generally carry much spare
clothes in the roller bag, and of course there is rule about liquids).

I usually put things like extra batteries, flashes, etc. in checked luggage,
though nowadays airlines are starting to be stingy about the amount of weight
of checked luggage as well, so you need to start thinking about what you really
don't need.

I've seen some working pro photographers will do things like wear a photo vest
cramed with gear, but as an already big guy, the vests would make it impossible
for me to fit in the seat.

--
Michael Meissner
email:
http://www.the-meissners.org