 Paula S. Masterson |
Digital Image Transfer I am planning a trip to Chicago for my daughter's wedding, followed by a week of sight-seeing. I have several memory cards, but won't be surprised to fill them all before we are finished. My question regards the feasability of temporarily transferring my images to my hubby's work laptop: Does he need a digi-imaging program in order to accept the images from my cards? What do we use to move the images back off his lap-top to my desk-top? A jump drive? I would appreciate some insight into these, as we have never used one. Would appreciate any thoughts! Thanks.
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Joe Jarosz |
Hi Paula, You don't need a digital imaging program just to transfer the images. Assuming its running somethink like Windows XP (Sorry, I don't know Mac) when you connect your camera, or if you have a USB card reader (you can get them pretty cheaply at places like Best Buy or Circuit City, basically a small device you plug into a USB port, then put your card into it) as soon as you connect, your computer will recognize it just like another disk drive. Just use something like Windows Explorer to drag and drop them to the computer hard drive. It may even have a pop up which gives you options to do it automatically. As far as transferring back, best bet would be if the laptop has a writeable CD drive, make CD's from them (you'll have backups as well then!). If not, a jump drive would work, but you won't get to many images on them and it will be a lot of work. If you have that USB card reader, and can copy the images back to the memory card, and then connect that same device to the USB on your home computer and do the same copy there. Here's one from Best Buy for CF cards, not sure what kind of memory card you have, they have other ones as well. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=5405876&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat30600050097&id=1051826315916
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Tom A. Collins |
Paula, I used a laptop for my images for several months. I did not need imaging software to accept them to my laptop. However, I installed the driver software that came with my Canon Digital Rebel onto my laptop. I would connect my camera to the available USB port and download. My laptop does not have a burner. Therefore, I used my Ethernet connection along with an Ethernet patch cable (Cat5e)(Retail $6) and the appropriate software (Windows XP) to transfer my images form my laptop to my desktop. Then I changed over to a card reader (Retail $15 - $35) that I used with my laptop and one for my desktop. My newest toy, a stand alone CD burner (Retail $185 - $280) that accepts digital media has been my most convenient asset (I got my roadstor from Internet auction site for $60). It has a rechargeable battery for power. Once I fill up my compact flash card, I insert my card directly into the burner. It copies all my images to CD. I continue this, regardless of time between burns, until the CD is full, then change to a new blank CD. In addition, my images are already archived once I get back home. I do not know what your budget or time will allow for, so I tried to give you several options to choose from. I hope this helps. Sincerely, -Tom
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Paula S. Masterson |
Morning! Thanks to both of you for this help. Joe, I do have a card reader, but was unaware that one can reverse the copy process and return the images to the card. How does that work? I am not sure if his laptop has a CD writing capacity. Tom, am I understanding you to say that you got a Roadstor CD writer on eBay for $60? This device will both read the card and write a CD with your images? Actually, this is an option I have been considering for some time, as I tend to be lazy about backing up my images once they are on the computer. But, as you say, they are not cheap, so it seems you got a steal!! Another fly in the ointment is that my hubby may have to return his laptop (his lease is up and it's time for a new one) while we are away. He suggested using an online image storage system, uploading the images with the hotel's guest computers. Do either of you have any experience with this? Thanks for your help!
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Joe Jarosz |
Two things. Uploading online via the internet will take forever. Even at high speed internet speed. Also the onlines I've used only let you upload, I've never used any to download also.
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Nobu Nagase |
I just read about www.smugmug.com and it seems a very good option in this regard as well. - you can upload your original images for archiving - you can download the original images back to your computer - their backup strategy seems excellent and chances of losing the database is very slim - also, you can order backup copies of your images either on CD or DVD - it seems that you can do all this with minimum fee of $29.95 a year... (please correct me if I am wrong.) However, the simplest and least expensive option you have is as Joe mentioned, use the cardreader and transfer images back and forth between your memory card, the laptop, and the home computer.
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