How many memory cards(and how big) do you take

[Nettaboo]

When you go to WDW and do you take your laptop to upload your pictures once they are filled?

[richmo]

If the only reason to take a laptop along is to copy your pictures, it would be a lot easier to just pick up an extra memory card or two for your camera. Memory cards are pretty cheap these days.

I have a 2Gb card in my camera and I think it holds something like 600 pictures, which is far more than I'd take anyway. If that was a problem, I'd just buy another card.

[RustManFan]

I don't take my laptop to WDW but do take it when we rent a lakeside place in New Hampshire.

I generally take 2 memory cards (but don't think I have used both on the same trip) They are both 2GB cards.

[JEAhrtWDW]

2 2GB memory cards would have worked for our 5 day trip, but I do not think that it will work for our 10 day trip and DS(2)'s first. I will bring my laptop to upload pictures off the memory card :thumbsup2

[crow11ad]

We will be gone in Florida for 12 days, 9 which will be at WDW. I will be bringong the laptop. Plus we can do trip reports.

[PrincessMonkey]

When you go to WDW and do you take your laptop to upload your pictures once they are filled?

We currently have one 2GB card that came with our camera, but we take lots of pictures (along with buying a Disney Photopass), and we dislike having to empty the camera's pictures into our laptop each night, because it took up about an hour for each transfer. So, we want to expand the capacity of our camera's storage.

We were originally planning to buy a new 8GB card, but after some research, we have decided to buy a few more 2 GB cards, which are at a great price.

The logic is this: if an 8GB card goes bad, all of the pictures / videos are lost. On the other hand, multiple smaller cards will need to be swapped out when they are full (and we need to keep track of them in a ziploc bag, etc.), but at least we wouldn't lose all of our pictures from the trip if any single card goes bad.

We are still going to take a small Mac laptop with us. But with multiple cards, we will save time and be able to transfer the pictures at our convenience.

[WriteDisney]

I took two 2GB memory cards and a 4GB memory card on our 10 day trip we just took.. I only used one of the 2GB cards and just about filled about the 4GB card.. didn't use the other 2GB card though it is nice to have just in case!

[shadowryter]

Our last trip consisted of 12 days and 3 2GB memory cards. I filled them all.:thumbsup2

[sbell111]

I keep three cards in the bag (or camera); a one gb, two gb, and 4 gb. I use the 1 gb card first, then the 2 gb card. I don't really do this because I am worried that my cards are going to die, I do it because it takes longer to zip through the pics in the camera using the larger cards, even though they are high speed cards.

[Brian_WDW74]

I've moved this thread to the Photography board. :)

[Dan Murphy]

I will typically take four or five 2g cards, though backup to laptop at end of each day and then burn a DVD for that day.

[Joselle173]

I think I'd rather carry a little memory card than an entire lap top (less hassle at the airport too), provided you can wait to view your photos until you get home. I would choose smaller memory cards (1-2 gb) mainly because if something snafus at least you haven't lost every photo you took of the entire trip. Also, how many photos you can get on a card depends on the quality you choose (usually a camera has several settings from low to high quality and if you have a DSLR, you can also shoot in RAW, which takes up more memory space.)

I shoot tons of photos, and have a 1GB and 2 GB card. I think it'll be plenty (about 900 photos if I fill them up at high quality jpegs.)

[WillCAD]

I have been taking my laptop any time I go to Florida. I use it for downloading and processing my pics, but also for getting on the net, and sometimes as a giant MP3 player, since I have ALL of my digital music on the laptop but can only fit a fraction of it on my MP3 player and its MicroSD cards.

But on shorter trips where I leave the laptop at home, I carry memory cards large enough to fit one heavy shooting days worth of pics, and have 1 for each day of the trip, plus a spare. For me, this means 1gb cards, since a 1gb card will hold about 250-300 pics on my camera's highest quality settings, and I rarely shoot more than 250 pics in a single day.

At the end of each day, I put the used cards, full or not, in my hotel safe, and put a fresh, empty card in my camera. This way, if something happens to my camera or one of my cards, I can never lose more than one days pics; I'll never lose the whole trip.

When I have my laptop with me, I download my pics every night and rotate the memory cards, and I burn a DVD of the whole trip's pics before I go home. The DVD acts as a backup in case something happens to my laptop; it goes in my checked bag on the way home, not in the laptop or camera case.

[DebºoºS]

I've been taking 4-5 2GB cards. If I run out of space I'll burn CD's at WDW.

[Nettaboo]

Thank you all for you responses!! They help alot!!
I espcially like the one about replacing the card at night regardless if it is full or not. I lost alot of pictures from Universal last year and If I had done that, I would still have my dds picture with barney!!

[tubachick]

I'll bring several memory cards with, currently I have 3- 1G, 2- 2G and 1- 4G. I put a new one in everyday or when one is full. That way if one is lost or damaged I don't loose all my pictures. Also, I can take as many pics as I like without having to delete any before I go through them all.

[Golf4food]

Our last long trip I filled up 5 GB worth of total space in JPEG. I now shoot in RAW, but I also do not take as many pictures either - being picky in what I shoot. My goal is to take fewer pictures each trip, lol - quality, not quantity. The exception there being fireworks (which I shoot in JPEG for speed and space considerations) and some of the shows with lots of fast moving action where I might want to snap of a lot of pics - Lights, Motors, Action or Indiana Jones come to mind. This year I will have 2- 1GB cards, 2- 2GB cards, and 1- 4GB card. I might add another 2 or 4 GB before our 6 day trip in December just in case. Or I might get a portable hard drive instead. We'll see what special deals Black Friday holds. :)

[JonetteA]

I will be taking 2 8's and 2 4's on this next trip. I like to swap out in case a card goes bad.

[Donold_Fan]

We just returned last night, I took 1-8GB, 1-4GB, 3-2GB and 1-1GB. I pretty much filled the 4 and 8 GB cards each day. I emptied them at night to my laptop and also to at least 1 external hard drive. I usually mirrored the external to another external during the day while we were at the parks. The external drives were out of necessity as I only had about 30 gb of disk space on the laptop's internal drive. I had to move things to external to keep some space free.


I ended up shooting about 6500 shots. And about 75% of those in Raw + JPG mode. I haven't gotten good enough (and probably never will) to take fewer shots. I follow the "take a lot of shots and a couple should turn out" philosophy.

[korinian]

I plan on bringing 5 2gb cards and offloading them to the Hyperdrive each night.

It's a nice device:
- High Res 3.2" color LCD screen displays JPEG & RAW
- Backup directly from 11 different memory card types
- Blazing fast card backup speed. Backup 1GB in 1min
- Extremely fast USB transfer speed (28MB/s)
- Unlimited capacity (40~500GB & beyond)
- Ultra powerful battery (backup 120GB per battery)
- 32-bit copy verification system
- Card scan, repair & image recovery tools
- Ultra compact (only 25mm thick)

I don't have to bring my laptop, I can view the pictures along with their EXIF data and Histograms, and the transfer speeds are great. You can read about it at the hyperdrive website.

Leaving in 5 days!!!

Korinian

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Call me paranoid lol. I did have a SD card go bad once. Cheap card. Boys and Girls always buy good cards not cheap brands lol. I now have several cards heres what I have for our family outings.
-4 cameras. ones for each family member.
-10 1 gig cards. What can i say we had a sale on brand name cards last year so I stocked up lol
-picture storage device. 40 gig transfer pictures nightly.
-** new ** now have a laptop and started transfering pictures directly to it instead of storage device.
We always unload nightly and I format the cards each time in my camera. Never had problems after that one incident.

[tripodjw]

I take all my memory cards on every vacation.

1x 8GB
4x 4GB
3x 2GB
2x 1GB

I also take my laptop for backing up all shots every night. Laptop is so useful when on vacation for both the backing up pics and also checking out stuff on the internet (now that most places have free internet its even better) like your driving route for the next day or opening times or zip codes for stores to enter into the GPS.

I shoot in RAW & JPEG (at highest resolution) so get about 300 pics on a 4GB card, and considering on a typical vacation (anywhere not just Disney) I'll take a minimum of 200 shots a day and its usually nearer 400.

I do not reuse a card until i have used each one and am doubly sure everything is backed up

[KimAshton]

Just be careful cause if you upload them and then erase them off your memory card what happens if you are on your trip and something happens to your laptop and you don't have them back up. My friend had that happen to her a few years ago and she lost all her pics.

[boBQuincy]

We typically go through about 2-3 GB per day. We take a mini-laptop and back up our memory cards to other memory cards. We don't erase a card until we get home and have made at least two copies.

[WillCAD]

Just be careful cause if you upload them and then erase them off your memory card what happens if you are on your trip and something happens to your laptop and you don't have them back up. My friend had that happen to her a few years ago and she lost all her pics.

That's why I burn a DVD of my images before I come home, in case something happens to my laptop in transit. The DVD rides home in my checked bag, while the laptop is with me in my carry-on.

Of course, stuff can still happen to the DVD in my checked bag, but the odds of something wiping out both my checked bag and my carry-on are much slimmer than something happening to just one of them.

If I have time, and an internet connection, I have also been known to upload my pics to my online account, as a second backup.

[loopner67]

I just got back. I took a 2 gb card that held almost 1000 pictures - my camera is 10.0 megapixels. I then had 1 GB card that I put another 250 pictures on and it still had plenty of room (for another 200+ pics).

My big thing was having that second battery with me! I edited and deleted a lot during the day (while touring the parks), so my battery would be drained each day. It was very handy to have a 2nd charged battery ready to go when/if needed.

[handicap18]

On our last trip I brought 6 2GB and my laptop with an external hard drive. Each night I downloaded to the external HD (160GB) via the laptop.

I filled all 6 cards and had to reformat 2 of them for a 2nd round of use. I shot in RAW and got on average of about 340 images per card. The 2 cards I had to reformat to use a 2nd time I downloaded the images to the laptops HD and the external HD.

[handicap18]

I just got back. I took a 2 gb card that held almost 1000 pictures - my camera is 10.0 megapixels. I then had 1 GB card that I put another 250 pictures on and it still had plenty of room (for another 200+ pics).

My big thing was having that second battery with me! I edited and deleted a lot during the day (while touring the parks), so my battery would be drained each day. It was very handy to have a 2nd charged battery ready to go when/if needed.

What setting were you using? My current camera is 12.3MP and on a 4GB card I get about 700 JPEG images on the highest JPEG setting.

I actually only get about 275 though because I shoot in RAW.

[brack]

I take them all! While I haven't added them all up there is more than 10GB. My plan is to buy more.

When I get home I download them to at least three hard drives and on DVD (my old ones are on a bunch of CD's but I'll transfer those to DVD soon):surfweb:

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Just be careful cause if you upload them and then erase them off your memory card what happens if you are on your trip and something happens to your laptop and you don't have them back up. My friend had that happen to her a few years ago and she lost all her pics.


OK OK ya got me I upload to both my laptop and portable storage device lol. Yeah as I said call me paranoid.

[Chikabowa]

Take what I say with a grain of salt... I'm a freak! LOL!
I am taking 40GB of memory spread out over 10 different cards, each varying in size from 1GB all the way up to 8GB. I'm also taking my laptop because I can't be away from the computer/business/work/internet for 12 days straight. I think my entire life would fall apart.

I told you I am a freak.

[Experiment_626]

I guess I'm in the minority because I take only eight gigabytes of memory cards with me anywhere and everywhere I go. I have two 2GB cards and one 4GB. One is 120X and the other two are 133x. I can get away with this only because I take an iPod to which I download my photos at the end of every day. Sure, there are better purpose-built devices for photo storage, but the advantage of using the iPod is that I already have it.

SSB

[My2Girls66]

When we went in Feb for 5 days I took all my memory cards to be safe- I had 3- 2gb and a bunch of 1gb. I ended up filling 2-2GB cards and most of a 1GB card with my D50 and took some more pictures on a Canon A560, not even 1Gb worth.