Photography Thailand Forum

[mike397]

Hi ;
I am traveling to Thailand on 10/31 for 21 days,this is my first trip.
 My camera is a Canon XT.
I'm bringing 2 compact flah cards,a 2gb,and a 1gb.
I'd like to shoot in raw+jpg setting,and I'm wondering if this is enough?
Do most of you shoot in JPG or Raw?

Any help would be appreciated,
Mike

[gregoire]

21 days? raw + jpg? Forget about it. You'll fill both your cards in half a day.

Have you considered some kind of portable backup device? I think even if you shot all JPG, you'd need one for 21 days in Amazing Thailand.

There's a long RAW vs. JPG thread on this forum here somewhere so I don't want to rekindle that topic :P

[bjorn slis]

Why raw+jpeg ?
you can empty your cards in any internet cafe to cd's
or better as gregoire suggests a portable harddrive.
(if you happen to have an ipod, a camera connector would be enough)

[mike397]

Gregoire & Bjorn,
Thanks for your replies....
I didn't even know they had Internet Cafes in Thailand...this is my first trip.
  Now I know...thanks.
Yes,I will probably use the cafes and transfer the cards to DVD.
If I do go with a portable device,which one would you recommend?
Our first 8 days will be touring up North,then back to Bangkok...then I'm on my own,for about 2 weeks
Any other advise you want to give me,would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike

[bjorn slis]

I haven't found a single internet cafe with a dvd burner here yet (chiang mai) it's still all cds.
see
http://www.photographythailand.com/Forum/index.php?topic=67.0
for info on portable drives

[gregoire]

Yeah, I'm afraid it is mostly CD's, not DVD's, Mike. Here in Bangkok, too. You can also get it done in photo labs/print shops. It could do the trick but it will be a hassle, if you ask me. Your three cards would take 5 CD's to be emptied. The more CD's, the more chances of the shop screwing up at some point as well; and the more time you need to spend waiting for the CD's to get burnt.

[bjorn slis]

agreed, portable HD will be the best thing to do

[kinginexile]

Hi Mike,

Indeed, it will be a hassle to transfer just about everyday, the pix on a CD, and basically it would cost you about 100+bahts (2 euros, 2,5 $) each CD. Depending where you are, you may have to make a trip to that place, not just get across the street to do so as well.

Definitely, a portable hard drive is the best solution and you will have it for keeps on many other trips. I give you a link where you can see the one I am using, it's basically a shell with the memory cards slots and you need to buy the real memory to install inside it, the link gives a column of such accessories, on sale too. This one is really basic, no screen, no MP3, but for some 70 bucks you get  the shell plus 30GB worth of memory space. for 110$, 100GB memory. Now, the catch, I bought mine (digimate, same as in the add) in Bangkok at the famous computer shopping mall Pantip Plaza (everyone knows where it's at, there). So, in case, you are strapped with time to make a decision, and as you may get into BKK on your first 48 hours, take the info with you and ask any store that seems to handle computer hardware where is the shop to buy such hardware (I think mine was on the 4th floor) and someone, maybe not the first asked, will know where to point you at. It may be a bit more expensive than net prices, but the main is to get it. Ask them to format it for you, and be very gentle every time you plug the compact flash card in/out the slot of such portable hard drive. there are many pins and they can be bent if too rough or careless.   I hope this helps, here is the link to the digimate, maybe someone has a better deal to tell us about:

  http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A-DPM1&cat=HDD

[Chris Savery]

Get a portable drive with CF card reader built in, as suggested above. For the price there is no other way to handle this and you don't want to spend hours and hours in net cafes here. Are you the kind of guy who takes 10 shots a day or 100+ a day? For 10 shots you may survive without a drive but if not then it's not really any more practical a choice then having a lens. There are many available. I have a Vosonic 2160 and some others here do as well. I bought it without hard drive and added in a 40 GB unit. Enough for now.

Since your trip is 21 days I would suggest picking this item up before leaving home and testing it completely first. Check that the latest firmware is installed as some units with out of date firmware can have trouble. You will be going back home and have better chance of dealing with problems later than if you bought it here in Bkk. Prices here are ok but not any better than wise shopping in most other places.

If you're snap happy then it's fairly easy to fill 1-2GB / day here using RAW. You can save a bit by not saving JPG at same time. Using good RAW conversion software like RawShooter (free version available) makes saving JPGs hardly worthwhile.

If you are not carrying a notebook computer (egads, enough stuff already!) then I'd suggest also picking up a small 256MB USB memory stick and loading your most used tools onto it for portable use. It is mighty handy when hitting various net cafes to have your favourite tools right there. They need to be tools that can be run without full installs (talking Windows here). One suggestion is a file viewer like Faststone (ggogle that) as it can handle Canon RAW files and many others. Plug your drive into USB slot and you can view all RAW files quickly with that program and I think they even have some option for installing on portable media.

Buying another 2GB CF card is also a good idea if within budget as it will give you more range - but again it all depends on how snap happy you are. If you feel the need after arriving then don't worry - this is a fully modern country and here in Bkk you can buy most anything you would need.

One final comment - without getting into the RAW-JPEG debate again - choosing whether you shoot RAW mostly depends on what you see you doing with your images over time. If you expect that eventually you want to extract the very best from them and you're very picky then RAW is the way to go. For most other common day to day uses JPG is fine. I have sometimes been close to running out of space and switched late in the day to JPG to conserve space. But I have photos from 3 years ago that, damn, I really wish I had the RAW for it as I could get so much better dynamic range now if I did.

Chris :)

[gregoire]

What do you guys think about people who say that it's just too scary to have a backup device with no screen because you can't check that you've back-uped your pics?

What about ipod videos? Does anyone use that? I saw the commemorative 60GB (for The Monarch's 60th Birthday) version is 12,000 baht. Pricier than what some of you guys suggested but it has a screen and you can use it as an ipod when you're not travelling.

What about those who are REALLY paranoid and only carry a laptop so they can 1.) backup 2.) check the backup 3,) burn a DVD of the backup 4.) mail the DVD home! If your HD crashes, you gear gets stolen, why even if your plane crashes, your pictures will make it to your place (if the postman wills it). I think there are quite a few people who have had all their gear stolen at the end of a once-in-a-lifetime 3-week trip to the end of the world who would not find this all as silly as it sounds. What do you guys think?

This also goes for commercial work. Marc said he shot on two cards, ok I can't do that because I don't have a 1ds Mk II, but wouldn't the second best thing short of doing that be to do what I mentioned above?

Curious to know what you guys think about all this...

[bjorn slis]

as for the iPod I know the bad thing about it that transferring speeds are slow, a 512 mb card takes about 20 min to copy, the advantage is that you can check if everything is really copied.
NB. there are different kinds and brands of connectors, be sure to check if the one you want to buy is compatible with your camera.
For the really paranoid,.... your harddisk can crash wheter it's in a laptop, ipod, etc. So be sure, whatever backup device you buy that you have a good harddisk installed !
I backup my stuff on two harddrives and on DVD, so I guess you can call me paranoid.
(maybe I should start making copies of the DVDs  )

[Ellen Agger]

Hi, folks. I recently bought a Vosonic 8360 because I wanted to be able to see my photos, not just to know they're there, but to be able to make some decisions about my shooting approaches and to be able to show people my photos while there for 2 months.

Question for Chris Slavery, who said:
If you are not carrying a notebook computer (egads, enough stuff already!) then I'd suggest also picking up a small 256MB USB memory stick and loading your most used tools onto it for portable use. It is mighty handy when hitting various net cafes to have your favourite tools right there. They need to be tools that can be run without full installs (talking Windows here). One suggestion is a file viewer like Faststone (ggogle that) as it can handle Canon RAW files and many others. Plug your drive into USB slot and you can view all RAW files quickly with that program and I think they even have some option for installing on portable media.

I may want to view my photos on a computer from time to time so I'm interested in this approach. I've downloaded various portable apps to my USB stick (not yet including Faststone or a similar program) but haven't yet played with them. I'm not quite clear on how this would work with the photos. Download from card to storage device; download from the storage device to what? the computer in the internet cafe? to the stick (limited space)? if to the computer, can you use the programs on the stick to view something that you've downloaded to the computer? Thanks for clarifying this.

Ellen

[kinginexile]

Curious to know what you guys think about all this...
----------------------------------------

About the screen, maybe i misspoke yesterday, the digimate has a screen, but that's not to see the pix, just to check status of memory loading and what's left of it to record.

Since i paid my dues, concerning loss of a whole trip photography (99,5% of it), I think the law of karma has to direct us, ie. doodoo happens, and you can't be on top of everything (even in Thailand .... Er,  , sorry for the bad bad joke).   at some point, it starts being ludicrous to travel to locales where  your "just to be on the safe and safer side" equipment and concerns are keeping you alien from the pleasure of feeling alive, you know: FREE! If it's an assignment and professional, different story, but otherwise, I think the more we have to protect in terms of property, the least we are one with the world, and to me, that's the reason I get out the door and check what's behind the horizon line.  I have well -intentionned friends who keep telling me I should buy this and that, spend money for top quality equipment, etc...., but I just don't travel in style enough to warrant becoming hi-tech-ed to the teeth, neither can I spend $ as if they were bahts! 

[Chris Savery]

For Ellen,

There is lots of ways you may go about this. I have a small portable hard drive with built-in CF reader. This is the Vosonic 2160 I mentioned. It is USB and has a CF reader that can be used standalone to one-button dupe a CF card onto it's drive, or can be plugged in as a normal CF reader / slash hard drive. In that case both cf card and drive show up as normal drive letters on the computer.

On my USB stick I keep a variety of tools that I use when on the road whether for viewing images, editing files or logging in and managing my web servers. Also have a password safe for my zillions of passwords. The only thing that is tricky about running apps off your memory stick while travelling is that they need to be able to work without being properly installed into Windows and hence dependent on the registry. Many apps cannot be used that way but some can. This is sometimes referred to as a "portable installation", meaning it can move from machine to machine without noticing that Windows has changed. I think Faststone can work this way and it's useful because it can view RAW files and do many useful things. Note that you don't need a memory stick to do this if you have the portable drive with you as you can put it all on that but I often don't have both items and so I have some stuff on the stick and just keep photos on the drive.

I dupe my photos onto the hard drive (from the CF card) while out and about but when I come into the cafe I can plug in the drive and get access to all the photos I've saved for viewing or uploading. I don't usually copy anything onto the host PC and sometimes you can't do that anyway if the net cafe is properly secured (most in Thailand aren't but in many countries they are). But the portable drive is fully functional and you can do anything on it you would do on any drive. A memory stick is not big enough on it's own to be very useful for photos but since it's so small you can always have it in your pcoket and so whatever else happens you still have it's contents. It's good for keeping electronic copies of docs/info too.

Maybe I just blabbed on too much but I tried to explain somewhat how I use both these items.

[mike397]

OK,well you guys talked me into it...
I just ordered a Wolverine7040 ..
Should be here in NY in5-7 days.
Is anyone familiar with this company?,and whats your opinion on there products.
Thanks again for all your advise.
Mike