How do you manage your photos?

[momof3lovebugs]

So this will be the first trip with the kids an our first trip in 11 years! I just bought a new Nikon D3000 and am so excited to bring it. My problem is that I am a picture taker! A fiend! I will frequently take upward of 100-150 shots a day. My memory card will hold 'maybe' 500. So being that we will be there for 11 days....what do you do to upload your pics and not run out of memory on the 3rd day of your trip?? My dh wants to bring the laptop but gosh that seems silly to lug around but is there another option?
We have travel trailer that we are usually in when we vacation and we have the lt w/us and just upload every night. Is this what we'll have to do there?
Thanks for any help!!

 

[dizneechic]

I too am picture happy, have the D90 and shoot 200+ AND vid on the cards. Any time we go somewhere we bring our laptop and just deal with uploading. We need to bring it anyway since dh & I both need to access our email for work, so it's not something out of the ordinary for us to bring along. I also feel better not stressing over losing cards and a huge chunk of vacation shots along with them. Worst case is if a card got lost we'd only be out a small percentage since we upload each night.

 

[momof3lovebugs]

I too am picture happy, have the D90 and shoot 200+ AND vid on the cards. Any time we go somewhere we bring our laptop and just deal with uploading. We need to bring it anyway since dh & I both need to access our email for work, so it's not something out of the ordinary for us to bring along. I also feel better not stressing over losing cards and a huge chunk of vacation shots along with them. Worst case is if a card got lost we'd only be out a small percentage since we upload each night.

Thanks for the reply Cariann! I was actually thinking about upgrading my d3000 to the d5000 for the video! I am really more of a still shot taker tho.....decisions! Any recs for a camera backpack?

 

[deerhart]

We took the laptop and unloaded the card each night (we still have the original one that only holds about 150-200 lowest res pics). This year we were able to bring home almost 1k phots versus the 200 we had from the year before.

I anticipate buying a larger memory card for the camera for this year AND still taking the laptop.

 

[thepeach80]

I'm sure we'll bring the laptop, or more cards, lol. Then I can put them on my computer and sort them right into my Memory Manager form Creative Memories! So easy to use and then put into scrapbooks that way.

 

[damren]

cards have gotten alot cheaper. Go to bestbuy and get some bigger cards, mine hold over 1000 each

 

[momof3lovebugs]

cards have gotten alot cheaper. Go to bestbuy and get some bigger cards, mine hold over 1000 each

cool! I will check into that too! Was drooling over some camera bags today and there is one that holds a laptop and extra junk I would need to carry! Sounds like my birthday present this year!!

 

[wtrmlnlabs]

Yep, I'd get a bigger card, they're pretty cheap now. We always took 2 cameras (we split up a lot) 2 2G cards and the laptop. Empty the cards every night, start fresh the next day. It's not that bad, we let the laptop in the room, not really a problem to bring it, but then we drive from PA, I guess if you are flying it'd be a bigger issue....

 

[Alesia]

I would get several small cards. Larger cards are more prone to corruption.

 

[littlbugmom]

I buy 2G and 4G cards when I see them on sale and put them in my Disney bin to be ready for our next trip.

When we get home, I download all of the pics to an external hard drive and some of them to our computer.....and then I keep the pics on the cards as a second backup storage.

 

[Pirate1+Princess4]

We bought a netbook to replace a very old laptop with a power problem. Bought a WD Passport HD to go with it. We move our pictures from our cards every night, but we also had a couple of backup cards, just in case.

Of course we never fully loaded up our card, but we've had one go bad last summer.

I think your choice is to buy more memory or take the laptop. The price is getting better and better, and depending on when your trip is, you could look for good pricing around back-to-school or holiday time. Costco often has a nice deal and you get free prints when you buy memory from them.

FWIW- we had our Nikon D70s, an Olympus P&S, and a Kodak Zi8 video camera. It took DH about an hour each night to copy the pictures over to Passport. Our file sizes from the Nikon are probably 2/3 the size that you'll get with your new camera. I think we never got close to filling our 8 GB card in a day. We hadd 200 -300 shots per day on just the Nikon.

 

[Pirate1+Princess4]

Any recs for a camera backpack?

Lowepro Slingshot. I have the 100, but my sister and friends have the 200. No room for personal items in the 100 if you have 2 lenses with you. We ended up not hauling our camera bag with us. Got a long strap to allow wearing crossbody. Then carried the extra lens in our park bag. Halfway through the trip, I started leaving the long lens in the room, except for AK day, and only used it for Safari. I like having the camera out and ready. For a wet ride, we handed off to non-riding family of put it in a ziploc in our bag. On the rainy, we just carried our P&S and bothered every Photopass photographer we could find.

 

[Khill]

One thing you can do, and what I am doing is have 4, 4gig cards. I have 1 for each park. I case some thing happens to the card, or it get corrupted, or anything else, I will not loose the other pics on the cards.

 

[scrapquitler]

I would just buy a bunch more memory cards! My camera takes 2 gig memory cards which hold about 500 pictures each (varies of course depending on the resolution you are using). I think the last time I bought memory cards they were about $15 or $20 bucks for the 2 gigs (and might be cheaper now?). When we go on vacation, I take one memory card for each day of the trip, which is a lot more than I need...Every day I put a new empty memory card in my camera...I figure that way if something happens and I lose my camera, it gets stolen or whatever, I still have the pictures from all the previous days.

 

[dizneechic]

Thanks for the reply Cariann! I was actually thinking about upgrading my d3000 to the d5000 for the video! I am really more of a still shot taker tho.....decisions! Any recs for a camera backpack?

I have the Tamrac Velocity 7x and 9x as well as a basic rectangular Quantaray SLR bag (got it at Ritz). The Tamracs are great sling bags which I take if I am just out to shoot pics and have something else to carry my crap, but if I am in "mom" mode and need my wallet, a few kids things, and other odds and ends I prefer the cheapie Quantaray bag because it can hold a lot more and is easier access for me than the sling style. Also with the Q bag it's flat on the bottom which a lot of sling and back style bags aren't so it's easier to pop down between your feet on rides.

 

[wdwmickey]

So this will be the first trip with the kids an our first trip in 11 years! I just bought a new Nikon D3000 and am so excited to bring it. My problem is that I am a picture taker! A fiend! I will frequently take upward of 100-150 shots a day. My memory card will hold 'maybe' 500. So being that we will be there for 11 days....what do you do to upload your pics and not run out of memory on the 3rd day of your trip?? My dh wants to bring the laptop but gosh that seems silly to lug around but is there another option?
We have travel trailer that we are usually in when we vacation and we have the lt w/us and just upload every night. Is this what we'll have to do there?
Thanks for any help!!

I would recommend extra SD cards. I generally use a new card each day at WDW and a new card each month or 150 photos at home. I didn't follow my own advice and had 537 pictures on 1 SD card (May thru Nov 2009) and took the card to have pics put on a CD yesterday and they were erased Luckily I had down loaded them to my laptop, but, if I had followed my own rule I wouldn't have been in the position of losing 6 months worth of priceless pics. Have a great trip

 

[dizneechic]

Thanks for the reply Cariann! I was actually thinking about upgrading my d3000 to the d5000 for the video! I am really more of a still shot taker tho.....decisions! Any recs for a camera backpack?

Oh and on the video note... I love the vid in the d90 but it's flaw is that you can't zoom and remain in focus. Your also limited to 5 min clips because they don't want the sensor being open too long. I'm not sure if the D5000 resolved that BUT unless you want to upgrade to really upgrade I would look into grabbing a P&S for vid. I have the Lumix ZS3 as a mom camera (lives in my purse) and use that more often than not for video and sometimes manage double shooting vid on the ZS3 and stills with the D90. My requirement is my camera bag has to hold both, which is usually never a problem since the ZS3 is so small. It's also a steal at it's current price ($240 on Amz), I paid $400 on launch day and don't regret a penny of it! Oh, and the ZS3 and D90 (my 2 cameras) both use SD cards so I only needed to invest in 1 memory format, and the cards work (formatting wise) between both cameras without issues. So if an upgrade can cost you less than $250 (via selling your old one) then sure, go for it, but if it will cost you more and your still really happy with the D3000 look into the ZS3.