Travel: How many memory cards do you carry?

I'm wondering the same thing. My camera annoyingly reset the file numbering, but if I remember correctly, I'm below 800 since I bought it 11 months ago. I guess I need to stop refreshing rumors-of-future-cameras-blog-dot-com and start taking more photos!
 
A golden rule about technology: You can never, ever, have *enough* redundancy. :eek:

One spare of everything that will break you. Let's face it - power and storage are what matters if you're shooting digital. If you run out of one or the other, well, I hope you like guided tours. :tongue:

Each camera I have has two batts minimum. For the heavy shooting I'll do at events and airshows, three. I have two leather pocket storage folios full of Compactflash and lately, more and more SDHC.

All it takes is one corrupt card and all the shooting you've done to date is irrecoverable, or at least, some good shots lost. I offset that by buying only Sandisk and Lexar. If I'm away from home base for a prolonged period, I use HDDs with built-in readers - this offsets having to carry a laptop/tablet around.
 
I take many 16 and 32 GB cards in card wallets (Think Tank Pixel Pocket Rocket) they have a little leash I can attach to the inside of my camera bag. Last year I lost a little wallet of SD cards I had in my pocket while hiking in Joshua Tree National Park I retraced my steps and notified the Park Rangers but never saw those cards again, I lost a days shooting.

I also back up my cards to two devices while traveling. It used to be portable Hard Drives but now I use SSD drives. I have a few, 256GB SSD (Solid State Drives). One is thunderbolt and USB3 the other two are USB3 only but are very small (one is the size of two matchbooks). I travel with my 13" MacBook Air. Never trust your photos to only one media, back them up as soon as you can.
 
I've just "done the math". Take out 10 hours in every 24 for sleeping, eating and, er "abloutions". That leaves 14 "shooting" hours. That's 50 photos per hour. Every hour. For 14 hours...

Wow.

Sent from another Galaxy
 
I took over 8,000 photos in a month on my trip. But I did a photo documentary, basically because I doubt I'll ever be able to go back to all the countries and places I visited. So I literally shot every couple of minutes, with whatever camera I had to hand. The photos aren't for everyone but just to remind me of what I did and where I went and what I saw. Paris by itself was mind boggling for this gobsmacked antipodean old woman who has NEVER seen anything like the architecture I saw there! Let alone the Louvre, the art galleries, the streets, the............. :eek:
 
Genuine question...

How??

On an overseas trip I average less than a dozen shots a day. Even if I go out for the day specifically to take photos at a target-rich event such as Hampton Court Flower Show, Chinese New Year or the Farnborough Air Show I'm usually below 100, and often below 75. The rest of my time I have the camera over my shoulder or in my bag as I enjoy the place I find myself in. I cannot conceive of taking 700 shots a day :eek:

Sent from another Galaxy

Surprisingly easy. With a camera around my neck, the shutter goes off once every few minutes or so. Most of them are snapshots of where I am going and what I see at any given moment, the intention of which is to provide me with a near-complete tally of what I did during the day. If I'm somewhere that I am deliberately shooting, rather than just capturing the journey, I'll take 2-4 images of the same subject before moving on. When I was in Japan for three weeks in 2010 with a friend, he said that if he didn't hear a shutter going off, he would wonder where I was or what was wrong! :D

I'm probably a prime candidate for the new Autographer automatic camera! The thought of having something that makes a chronological account of the day is liberating, as I can concentrate on more studied and artistic purposes. It would also be a pleasant surprise to see images that I did not think of taking.

Where you cannot imagine taking 700 images in a day, I can not imagine taking at least 400 on a day out. :2thumbs:
 
An example: for a wedding that lasted from 9am to 12 midnight, I took about 1000 images spread over four cameras. I was not the designated photographer, but the bride and groom thought it might be nice to get my perspective on the day. In the end I gave them 172 photos which I had hand-picked and processed, and they liked them a lot more than the photos they got from the duo of pro wedding photogs. They liked one image so much that they sent it to the wedding photographers to have them put in THEIR photobook! :D Perhaps 70% of the 1000 were deliberate images rather than flying grabshots.

Another example. On a day out with good friends, I took about 324 images and 16 short video segments. About half were of the flying grabshot variety.

In Hong Kong in January this year, in one day I shot 980 images and 34 short video segments. Often, scenes were shot 4-5 times in rapid succession, which explains the rather bloated image count. In another day I shot about 400, which I considered a slow day, haha! Some days were in the low 500's, other days were over 1000.
 
99.9% of the time I have just the one card in the camera. On long trips I'll take two per camera, and rotate them on a daily basis. I'll also back up en route. Ultimately, however, this question is impossible to answer because it depends how profligate you are with your shooting. I am quite parsimonious so what works for me may not work for you!

Hi Bill, thank you for that. Yes it does depend upon how much... I wanted ideas to see if I could take on board something new.
 
In Italy I had two cards per camera and at least two batteries for each camera plus an external hard drive [I do not have a laptop, used my husbands work laptop to port images over to my external] I emptied photos onto every evening. I never filled up a 16GB card however I did have to swap batteries midday. I shot all in RAW btw. You can't go back to take a shot if you lost info via the in-camera jpg software.

Thanks Isoterica, yes I always carry a spare battery per camera. I'm loathe to carry a laptop though the number of people that do I might have to rethink that. I was very interested to read that even shooting RAW you never filled up a 16GB card! I will take on board the RAW comment and never being able to go back.
 
Hello Everyone...

Thank you SOOOOO much for sharing each of your methods. I started to thank each entry but then I decided I wouldn't do that so I hope that noone gets offended that I haven't.

I've taken note of everything - and wow just wow - on how amazing some of you are about how many photos you take and how you back up!

There are a few items that seem to be mentioned more often and those are hard drives. Thanks to those that pointed out that the hard drives with card readers still exist! I changed my search methods and found some to investigate :)

So, I took into account my own tendencies and decided that the hard drive/card reader combo was best for me. I've invested in a HyperDrive ColorSpace UDMA 2 (1TB). I've already got myself an extra camera battery, travel charger and USB cables and chargers which allow me to charge in a variety of ways. I've got 2 x 32GB memory cards and will decide if to take more ("borrow" from the other cameras). I will need to back up each and every night religiously.

Another consideration for me that not many others mentioned is that I need to keep my equipment weight low as I will be carrying it all on my back as I hike. No, not the chargers and cables but the sensitive stuff - what I consider sensitive - the camera/s, the hard drives. As I'm already carrying an iPad and iPhone along with the daily needs of food and water, it adds up!

Thanks once again for helping me in my decision... Looking forward to France :D
 
check the lowepro hatchback i posted over in the other forum...

Fuji

that's what i used when i hiked portland trails. it's the smaller of the two available sizes. it sounds like it would fit all you have.

(Sent from my EVO via Tapatalk)
 
check the lowepro hatchback i posted over in the other forum...

Fuji

Thanks for that tip. I'm not looking for a bag for this trip as I'll be using a traditional back pack to blend in... But I'll keep that style in mind for another occasion :)






Irene,
Have camera will travel & shoot!
 
Back
Top