Recommended best practices for travel with SDHC cards

[NorthernFocus]

Hi, Micheal. Seems most of the replies thus far have recommended additional hardware etc. So I'll just mention the "best practice" for your current situation traveling sans laptop etc.

IMO the highest risk of losing electronic images is not to technical failure of cards, etc. The real risk is lost/stolen equipment or accidental format of a card prior to copying the images from it. Reducing that type of risks can be as cheap/simple as you like or can involve as much additional equipment/complexity as you choose.

The fundamental and simple step to reduce risk from the reasons above is to keep (at least) two copies of you images in separate locations. You mentioned that you already write to both cards while shooting so this can be quite easily done. If you're a high volume shooter it is really easy because both cards will fill at the same time and you then simply remove them from the camera and put them in separate locations. It can be a little more complex and require some disciplined organizational practice if you shoot an entire holiday on one set of cards. For example, if you start each day shooting by creating a new folder(in-camera) the you can use multiple cards in the secondary card slot and change the secondary card each day or after each important shoot. With two or three cards to use as secondary you can rotate them thereby minimizing the number of images potentially lost at any given time if the camera is lost/stolen. By creating a new folder each time you change the backup card you can keep track of which images are on which card.

Of course if you follow the advice of others and carry more hardware to back up to another device, then all of the above is not necessary.

Regardless of which method you choose, risk from theft/loss is best minimized by keeping multiple copies in separate locations. SD cards are a mixed blessing. They take little space and weigh next to nothing so are easy to store/transport. But they are also easy to lose. On Amazon you can find plastic card holders that hold multiple SD cards and fit in the credit card slot in your wallet. That makes it very easy to keep a copy on your person at all times.

[loosecanon]

1 make sure cards are numbered, then you are less likely to make a mistake like formating a card before safely archiving the contents.
keep cards in sealable case, idealy with silica gell, and don't keep with other backups or camera kit.

I now use portable solid state drives to write backups to when traveling, much more shock resistant, smaller, and kept in sealed plastic bags.

flash drives are cheap compared with holiday of a lifetime, as are memory cards, buy more.

[dje]

I was just looking into Chrome OS notebooks, aka Chromebooks. I like what I see except for the fact that all the models that I looked at used an SSD - the largest was 32 GB. Clearly you can't backup a 64GB SDHC onto that SDD so an external drive is a must.

Yes indeed Michael. I have a small portable 512 GB hard drive which cost about $80.

Dave

[paintingwithlight]

Yes indeed Michael. I have a small portable 512 GB hard drive which cost about $80.

Dave

Hi Dave,

That's kind of what I want to get. What photo editor do you use? My workflow currently involves no editing while on the road, leaving a pile for when I get home. I could imagine the following workflow with a notebook: take photos, back them up daily on a notebook/portable HD, delete photos that I don't want off the notebook, keep the SD cards as insurance, when I get home copy the files that I kept on the notebook into LightRoom.

Normally on my first pass I delete about 70% of my photos because I take multiple shots of a given subject. Deleting while on the road (but keeping the photos on the SD card) would save me time after the trip...

Comments or criticisms of the above idea?

Do you find that the chromebook can copy photos from your SD to the external HD at a reasonable speed?

I shoot RAW so I think that for the Chrome OS I am limited to using Polarr...

Thanks all.

-michael

[dje]

Hi Dave,

That's kind of what I want to get. What photo editor do you use? My workflow currently involves no editing while on the road, leaving a pile for when I get home. I could imagine the following workflow with a notebook: take photos, back them up daily on a notebook/portable HD, delete photos that I don't want off the notebook, keep the SD cards as insurance, when I get home copy the files that I kept on the notebook into LightRoom.

Normally on my first pass I delete about 70% of my photos because I take multiple shots of a given subject. Deleting while on the road (but keeping the photos on the SD card) would save me time after the trip...

Comments or criticisms of the above idea?

Do you find that the chromebook can copy photos from your SD to the external HD at a reasonable speed?

I shoot RAW so I think that for the Chrome OS I am limited to using Polarr...

Thanks all.

-michael

Michael I haven't bought a notebook yet, have been using an ipad. I'm a bit uneasy about Chrome OS having done some research. You can get cheap Windows notebooks and this is probably the way I'll go.

I use Photoshop for editing at home and don't do any raw editing when travelling. In the past I have shot raw plus jpeg when travelling. I download the jpegs onto the ipad for rough preview purposes and use the ios app Photos for minor editing. I doubt that I would use a notebook for any raw editing.

Personally I would not delete any files whilst travelling, even the backup ones.

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

Normally on my first pass I delete about 70% of my photos because I take multiple shots of a given subject. Deleting while on the road (but keeping the photos on the SD card) would save me time after the trip...

Comments or criticisms of the above idea?

I think I went to Poland with that as a plan (afterall, it sounds logical), but 'life got in the way' (and I'm glad it did).

While you're there, make the most of it, don't miss out because you're culling shots on a laptop.

[DanK]

The idea of a hard drive that can transfer directly from an SD card sounds interesting. I had never heard of this before. I have no interest in lugging a laptop on most trips (I sometimes do if I will be in one place for a while), but carrying a hard drive would barely be noticeable.

[rpcrowe]

I am thinking of getting this notebook. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-15-6-...z88aApPr8P8HAQ

I would use this for general travel use...

The $209 (USD) price is quite appealing and it has several features that I would want including Win 10 (to keep it matched with my desktop computer), a USD 3.0 slot for downloading images and a DVD/CD reader/burner. There are lighter notebooks on the market (this one is just under five pounds) but, I really want a DVD/CD drive and that boosts the weight. I am getting a bit old now and the 15.6 inch screen may be easier to read than an 11 inch screen.

The 4GB memory and 500 GB drive also is interesting. While 4GB is not all that powerful, I could load an editing program (I have PS CS6 on a disk which I could load on this computer). I don't usually do editing while traveling but occasionally would like to do some simple stuff.

I think that this would give me more versatility than my Chromebook at an affordable price and at a reasonable weight....

[paintingwithlight]

I am posting today from a MacBook Air that I bought for photo editing while travelling. In the end I decided that I would like to be able to edit on vacation rather than just archive on vacation. And I decided that I didn't want to learn another photo editing software suite.

I normally use LightRoom to edit my photos. With the MacBook Air with SSD (solid state hard drive rather than a spinning platter) my photo imports seem to go about 3x faster than with my iMac with regular hard drive. This is just a guess. But I am impressed.

Thank you all for the advice.

Michael

[Simon Garrett]

I got fed up carrying laptops around and tried using an Android tablet as a backup / image review means for when travelling. However, it's awkward:

• One can connect a camera or memory card to a tablet using an OTG ("On The Go") USB lead, so images can be copied to the tablet.
• It involves a lot of fiddling about and is IMHO error-prone
• Android imposes a lot of tedious (and unnecessary) security restrictions on which program can read or write data and where, which involves extra copying steps.
• You need a USB power supply, as tablets generally can't supply enough USB power for a portable HD (and possibly not enough even for an external memory card). That also needs a particular type of OTG lead that allows a power supply to be connected at the same time.
• There aren't many raw image editing or viewing programs for Android. Lightroom mobile is so slow with raws that it's like watching continental drift. Photo Mate R2 is faster at viewing.

In the end I gave up, and went back to a laptop. It's just so much faster and easier.

[DickyOZ]

After 50+ years working in the computer industry I like to have backups of backups of backups.....


My solution when traveling and haven't got room for a laptop is a Kingston Mobilelite wireless G2 device. It cost Aus$50.

It also acts as an emergency battery bank for my mobile phone. It is controlled (wirelessly) by an App on my phone. It has an SD card slot, USB 2 port and a LAN port as well as a USB charging port that will allow it to be charged from virtually any source. The phone app lets you view whatever is on any of the devices plugged into it.

I have a few high capacity USB memory sticks and a 1TB USB hard drive that I can plug into it. (As seen in the photo above) It isn't all that fast but I just set it running while I have dinner and when I'm fed it has finished copying even my biggest day's shooting. It has never let me down since I got it in 2015. I would expect there is a USB 3 version out by now.

[george013]

After 50+ years working in the computer industry I like to have backups of backups of backups.....

And try out the restore procedure..... Mostly when OS is involved.

George

[DanK]

My solution when traveling and haven't got room for a laptop is a Kingston Mobilelite wireless G2 device.

Richard, thanks. I had never heard of these. They are still available, and a model that includes 64GB of internal storage is about $100 US and weighs just under 200g. I think this may be my solution. 64GB will do for most of my trips, and when not, one can buy 64GB thumb drives for about $20

[Manfred M]

With the MacBook Air with SSD (solid state hard drive rather than a spinning platter) my photo imports seem to go about 3x faster than with my iMac with regular hard drive. This is just a guess. But I am impressed.

This is in fact the reason I upgraded to an SSD on both my desktop and my laptop. The read / write speed is much higher than when using a mechanical drive. I even added a small M.2 drive so that I have a scratch drive where I store my working files temporarily' it is not linked to the system drive so that speeds up the response time even more.

Another benefit is that even though I have 32GB RAM, I sometimes have a lot of files open and when the system needs swap memory, it is much faster than swapping out to a mechanical drive.

That being said, all my main storage is on mechanical drives; they are a much more cost effective solution than SSD drives for that purpose.

[paintingwithlight]

That being said, all my main storage is on mechanical drives; they are a much more cost effective solution than SSD drives for that purpose.

Agreed, Manfred. I think that I will use my older, lower capacity SDHC cards as storage for photos that I have parsed and edited on the road. Once at home nothing is as affordable as a spinning platter. I just hope that I don't mix up the edited SD cards with the ones designated for use in my camera.

[joewatt]

Richard, thanks. I had never heard of these. They are still available, and a model that includes 64GB of internal storage is about $100 US and weighs just under 200g. I think this may be my solution. 64GB will do for most of my trips, and when not, one can buy 64GB thumb drives for about $20

Just this moment I got one on Amazon for $69.00

[Manfred M]

Agreed, Manfred. I think that I will use my older, lower capacity SDHC cards as storage for photos that I have parsed and edited on the road. Once at home nothing is as affordable as a spinning platter. I just hope that I don't mix up the edited SD cards with the ones designated for use in my camera.

Just use a permanent marker to identify them as backups to prevent any confusion.

As for the image - diving in a dry suit without a hood seems a bit strange to me. If the water is that warm, a wet suit dive is more comfortable.

[Manfred M]

Richard, thanks. I had never heard of these. They are still available, and a model that includes 64GB of internal storage is about $100 US and weighs just under 200g. I think this may be my solution. 64GB will do for most of my trips, and when not, one can buy 64GB thumb drives for about $20

I think you have done a nice job in proving that there is no single "best practice" and that circumstances that each shooter faces is going to require a slightly different backup / redundancy approach.

I've been on the road for almost 6 weeks and have another 2+ weeks to go before I head home. I have done one intensive eight day photography tour, one week long family trip that included a "safari" and have another very intensive photo tour coming up in less than a week. So far my wife and I have shot over 160GB of material (all of it has been backed up as per what I wrote in #3).

My wife traveled without her laptop this trip and feels it was a mistake to be away from home for such a long period without that tool I do lend her mine, but it's not the same thing. On the other hand, I am going to feel rather naked, as the intense photo tour I am taking next week is a Holi like celebration in two towns in India. They normally have populations of around 5000 people in each, but this will swell to around 500 000 during the Rang Leela festival. I won't be able to take the laptop and backup drives along because of logistics and security concerns. This will be the first time in a long time where I will be relying on not losing anything during the shoots without my normal daily backup routine. I am feeling a bit nervous.

[paintingwithlight]

As for the image - diving in a dry suit without a hood seems a bit strange to me. If the water is that warm, a wet suit dive is more comfortable.

I thought that photo might get a response from "GrumpyDiver." The suit is a shell so it has zero intrinsic insulation. I think that is a photo in Hawaii. I find that it is more comfortable than a wetsuit, especially for surface intervals, provided that you have your buoyancy dialled in.

[loosecanon]

one essential when travelling away from base for some time is the need to check images for a dirty sensor - last thing one wants is 1000's of images ruined by marks on all images.