Suggestions for backing up DSLR photos on the move

CelticRambler

I'm heading off shortly on a seven-week (rail)road trip, and for reasons of weight and security, I don't want to bring a laptop, but I do want to bring my DSLR. Any suggestions as to how or where I can download/back-up my RAW files while on the move, so that I don't lose the whole lot if I'm unfortunate enough to lose the camera?

cortinaG

Maybe too obvious an answer but take a bunch of smaller SD cards with you and change them regularly.

Alanstrainor

cortinaG wrote: »

Maybe too obvious an answer but take a bunch of smaller SD cards with you and change them regularly.

Yes. This was my tactic when I went travelling around South America. No laptop, and no internet access where uploading was really possible. My best solution was plenty of cards that I changed regularly. Any cards that weren't in use were buried in the bottom of my bag.

There is still a chance of losing it all if your main bag gets stolen. But this would be the case with any physical media you use for storage. The benefits of this method is that it should be cheap, and it's always nice to have a few cards around in case one fails.

wexie

I used to have a little 2.5 inch HDD enclosure that had a built in battery pack and card readers.
Brilliant little thing (sadly I lost it somewhere).

Might have a look around online for something similar. Pop in an SDD and off you go.

CelticRambler

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Yes. This was my tactic when I went travelling around South America. No laptop, and no internet access where uploading was really possible. My best solution was plenty of cards that I changed regularly. Any cards that weren't in use were buried in the bottom of my bag.

There is still a chance of losing it all if your main bag gets stolen. But this would be the case with any physical media you use for storage. The benefits of this method is that it should be cheap, and it's always nice to have a few cards around in case one fails.

That's what I'd envisaged as a plan B ... along with the worry that I might lose the images and all my spare cards if the whole bag swiped! I do have extra cards anyway for when I'm shooting video (fills them up quickly), but I can spread them around different safe(ish) pockets.


I'll be bringing a tablet (and a phone) with wifi and 3G internet (if either device works in the US), and the tablet has a micro-SD card reader, so I'd still be interested in hearing about any techniques for copying the files to some other storage medium. The tablet has OTG USB functionality, but won't power an external HD so I'd need something self-powered like wexie's black box.

wexie

wexie wrote: »

I used to have a little 2.5 inch HDD enclosure that had a built in battery pack and card readers.

Kinda like this (except the one I had was a lot cheaper and read cards other than SD)

https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/my-passport-wireless-pro.html

bren2002

Would you not just post home the cards on the go? Or burn to dvd for a backup and post the dvds home?

CelticRambler

bren2002 wrote: »

Would you not just post home the cards on the go? Or burn to dvd for a backup and post the dvds home?

If I could get someone to burn DVDs for me, then yes, that might be an option. I was thinking of sending parcels home periodically with stuff that I bought/collected on the trip, so throwing a DVD in would be no bother.



I think I'd rather keep the cards on me rather than send them through the post. That way, at least if they get lost or stolen, I should know fairly quickly, instead of finding out two months later!

New Home

How about a few of these memory sticks/USB drives/whatchamacallits? http://gstylemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SanDisk-Ultra-Dual-Drive-USB-3-8-1024x683.jpg

I saw them at the airport in Dixons (among other places), they were about €22 for a 64GB one. I'm sure you can find them elsewhere at a decent price, too.

They have a micro-USB plug on one side, and a "regular" USB plug on the other. I have a couple, they're very handy.

EDIT: Here they are, on the Sandisk site.

CelticRambler

That could be handy. Now that you remind me, I remember seeing some 128GB flash drives like that in our local supermarket and thought I should get one to store a load of movies for watching on the plane/train. It'd make a handy back-up for the cards.

Of course, there's still the risk of losing the drive, but it might be easier to hide ...

Off on a slight tangent - does anyone use/know of an app or online tool for viewing (Canon) RAW files and exporting them to jpg? When I've got some particularly good pictures in the camera, I like to send them as "postcards" to my WhatsApp correspondents while I'm on the road. Easy to do with a laptop, but the Canon viewer doesn't work on Android.

New Home

I lost one with over 64 films I had transferred from DVD in it (easier to watch them when you're travelling)... Now I keep them all together in a little bag that I've fastened to my handbag.

Sorry, I can't help you with the rest. Enjoy your travels, though!

CelticRambler

Have just remembered that I can save the images in-camera as RAW and jpeg ... :rolleyes: - it's been so long since I edited a jpg, I'd forgot that was an option! :pac:

CabanSail

Have plenty of cards as already stated.

Set up a Cloud with enough capacity.

Preview and work out which shots are "important"

Drop into an Internet Cafe with high speed access about once a week. Back up the "important" RAW files to the cloud.

You will then have the original and a back up.

Cameraman

Not a full solution - but might help : Google Photos.

Reads raw files and also acts as a backup. Can setup albums and/or share directly from it. If you have limited internet access, you could just designate one folder for it - and copy selected files into there.

CelticRambler

Can it read RAW files? I didn't know that. I already use Google Photos' albums (including for posting on this site), but so far only "after the event" - when I come home and go through my pictures on a decent sized screen. But if I can get the tablet to talk directly to the camera, and pull out/upload selected .cr2 images for immediate sharing, it'd save a lot of messing about with duplicate .jpgs. Will try that later today.

Alanstrainor

CelticRambler wrote: »

Can it read RAW files? I didn't know that. I already use Google Photos' albums (including for posting on this site), but so far only "after the event" - when I come home and go through my pictures on a decent sized screen. But if I can get the tablet to talk directly to the camera, and pull out/upload selected .cr2 images for immediate sharing, it'd save a lot of messing about with duplicate .jpgs. Will try that later today.

No it does not upload RAW files. I believe it will convert them to jpg when you upload RAW. This is presuming you haven't bought storage with google, if you have a 100GB plan you can obviously then upload any file type to that 100GB.

Cameraman

Yes - I use it for raw files (Canon) - but obviously best to test on your own files.

Also - it's unlimited free storage if you choose the large option. I have about 60k personal photos stored - the search options are amazing.

Cameraman

Alanstrainor wrote: »

No it does not upload RAW files. I believe it will convert them to jpg when you upload RAW.

This is correct - it stores them as JPGs. If you choose the free, unlimited "high-quality" option - it will resize/limit to 16MP (resolution). The "original" quality stores them uncompressed, but uses your 15GB Google account free storage allowance (along with Gmail etc. etc).

You can of course pay for more storage. I actually don't know if the "original" quality ones are stored as raw files or not - I guess not. But if you're paying for the extra storage, then you can just back them up online anyway.

However, as a fallback - I find it really useful. I have all my raw files backed-up separately anyway.

Alanstrainor

Cameraman wrote: »

Yes - I use it for raw files (Canon) - but obviously best to test on your own files.

Also - it's unlimited free storage if you choose the large option. I have about 60k personal photos stored - the search options are amazing.

Google states themselves that they do no upload and store the RAWs for a free account. They convert and compress the images. So yes, you can download a version of your photos, but they are not the original RAW files. Try it for yourself, I might have just saved yourself a lot of heartache...

I just did a test. Uploaded a 24MB RAW CR2, when doing so you are asked if you want 'High Quality' or 'Original'. Selecting Original eats into your google drive space available. Selecting High quality is free. But when you go to download the RAW you just uploaded, you end up with a file named like so:

IMG_9084.CR2.jpg

Which in my case went from 24MB to 681.2kB...

This is not a good backup solution. Perhaps it is good for a mobile device, but not what most photographers would consider useful.

CelticRambler

Oh, I wouldn't use Google Photos for back-up, only for quickly sharing pictures that are in the camera. Apart from the challenge of finding a stable internet connection, I find the camera screen unsuitable for checking the image quality (other than validating composition and exposure). So for me, this part of my query refers only to a means of quickly sharing some photos with people who'll be viewing them on equally small screens.

Going back to cards and flash drives, does anyone know of a bricks-and-mortar shop in London that sells these at a good price? I've found myself with an unexpected few hours there later in the week.

AnCatDubh

Bit of a hack, but how about your phone (will work on Android - unsure about iOS) with an OTG adapter plugged into a USB card reader, your memory card into that and upload to the cloud (google drive, onedrive, or flickr maybe) over hotel / mcdonalds / cafe or other free wifi.

Another variation of this without cloud/internet would be if you didn't mind carrying a small additional device - do the same with a small form factor external hard drive. But you'd probably need to power the drive independently (depending on your phone), but that should simply be a powered OTG adapter/cable plugged into your phone charger (with decent power output i'd guess). A few other things to consider with this - try before you go to make sure everything is working for you. Format of the external drive may be an issue (a reformat to FAT or other compatible format would solve this). I've read also that there's a software solution (app) which can read other formats from the phone too but i've no experience of same.

If free wifi was going to be an issue on your travels (or if you were traveling in a wifi drought part of the world), then the latter might be a useful option. But the latter is a single point of failure so consider this too - all photos on one medium with no further backup.

ED E

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-FlashAir-W-04-Class-Memory/dp/B073LM5TRX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536612136&sr=8-1&keywords=Eyefi

Seems the Eyefi brand is gone? Anyways one of these + smartphone + wifi to backup to Google Drive etc in your hotel etc would work in theory. Syncing 80MB raws might be a bit slow depending on if you're in Singapore or Sierra Leone.

CelticRambler

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Bit of a hack, but how about your phone (will work on Android - unsure about iOS) with an OTG adapter plugged into a USB card reader, your memory card into that and upload to the cloud (google drive, onedrive, or flickr maybe) over hotel / mcdonalds / cafe or other free wifi.

My phone doesn't support OTG, but the tablet does. I tested things out last night, connecting the camera to Google Photos via USB, and was able to upload a selected RAW image to the new trip folder, and subsequently share it on WhatsApp on my phone. So that's all good. :cool: And in doing the exercise, I realised that of course I can preview all the photos on a 10" screen instead of the camera. Doh! Don't know why I didn't think of that sooner, seeing as I bought the tablet specifically to use as a remote screen for the camera when shooting video (but never got around to it) :rolleyes:

The trip is an Amtrak tour of the US, so not exactly third world, but also a country not sufficiently developed to be able to get the trains to run on time! :pac: Checking my global roaming T&Cs, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my tablet's 99ct/month French sim includes 25GB of 3G data in the US (somewhat better than Three.ie's 5€/MB :eek: ) so that reduce my dependence on internet cafés - if I can get a signal.

Nevertheless, for the back-up, I'm going to stick with "hard copies" of the files, either a high capacity flash drive kept separate to the SD cards, or DVDs posted home, or both.

Cameraman

Yep - "real" backup is a problem when on the move for an extended time.

Just going back to Google Photos, another useful side-effect is the amazing indexing. I have all my personal photos mirrored on it. If I want to find all the photos of, say Auntie Joan, or all the photos with a dog in them - it will do this really fast - no keywording necessary (though I sometime add a description).
It's not always 100% accurate, but better then anything else I've used.

So, if I just want a quick sharing image - it's there straight away. If I want the original file, I have the date and the filename which allows me to easily find it on my main storage.

And if I ever lose the 3+ copies I have of everything - it'll still be there with my Auntie Joan photos :-)

CelticRambler

Hmm. I've found the indexing completely useless! I added descriptions to about a hundred photos of a European tour so that I could easily find the "Bruges" or "Italy" or whatever images afterwards. Google ignored them, and even now if type in "Italy" it'll throw up untagged pictures that I took in Kilkee or my downstairs toilet! :pac:
But like everything, once you get used to working with a system, you can live with it's quirks. I just wish they'd put my albums at the top of the album page, instead of their own hit-and-miss collections.

Cameraman

Well, I suppose everyone's experience varies.

I've found it spookily accurate - especially on the face recognition (despite including the odd statue). I also found it fairly good at guessing locations - even if I didn't add descriptions. I wondered if this was helped by the fact that I often take some phone photos (GPS tagged) alongside camera ones at the same locations.

CelticRambler

I've been doing that aswell - taking a GPS-tagged phone photo for reference - after spending hours and hours trying to figure out exactly where I was or what I was looking at when I took the DSLR picture! The auld in-head memory still works well too, though!