Storing Digital Pictures on a Road Trip
Last summer, in anticipation of this summer’s upcoming road trip, I bought myself a digital camera. In the ten months that I’ve had it, I have taken a lot of pictures. When I really get going, I can take over a hundred in a day (like I did on Tuesday at the Bronx Zoo). With only a 256MB Secure Digital card, I’d probably fill it in just a few days over the summer, and I don’t have a laptop to which I can offload pictures.
My initial plan was to spend a little money on about 1GB of storage in the Secure Digital format. Then, every week or so, we could find a library or Internet Cafe with a CD burner and move the pictures over to a CD. Turns out, that’s expensive as hell. So Dan made a recommendation: get an iPod.
I looked into the hardware necessary for the task, and, while it would be more expensive to get all of it than to get 1GB of SD, I’d have more than an order of magnitude of space (and, when all is said and done, an iPod rather than a couple SD cards that I might never need again).
Today I went to the Apple Store on the Ridge and dropped about US$500 on a 20GB iPod, a FireWire card for my PC, and the Belkin Media Reader. Amanda and I will shoot to our hearts’ content this summer, offload pictures to the iPod, and start all over again.
May 13, 2004 - 10:07 PM
Comments and Trackbacks
Good God, I’m impressed. I’m pretty sure there are other alternatives at reasonable prices. There are, for example, portable CD burners that will burn a CD directly from a card. But the ipod has the, I don’t know, “fucking cool” factor, let’s call it. Congratulations on a darling toy.
Nate:
Yeah, there is the “fucking cool” factor, and I won’t pretend that wasn’t a reason for my decision. But it’s also versatile. If I had gotten a portable CD burner, it probably wouldn’t have been useful past this summer.
After searching for the ultimate solution, now I have the same solution like you to store my digital pictures when I go to Europe this summer - to buy an iPod. There are some portable hard disk with memory card reader and they dont require a computer to do it like from Wolverine Data but iPod is a different story I suppose. We can use it to store our pictures, and of course, to listen to music while we are on the road. Online storage sounds cheap, but I never know if I will have the time to do it (if I found them!). Tell me if you have a better idea.