 Diane Dupuis |
Travelling in Europe with Digital I'm going to be travelling for the first time with my Finepix 2600 Digital camera. We will be in Europe for 2 weeks - and I love taking lots of shots. I usually set my camera on Fine (which gives me only about 80 shots on a memory card). I was wondering if I should take my pictures at a lower setting (how much will it affect the quality?) or should I buy more cards? I will not have access to a computer to download the pictures. Any advice you may have is greatly appreciated!
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Giao N. |
Diane, I don't recommend taking your pictures at a lower setting - the high resolution is part of the reason you bought your camera, right? You may want to consider buying another memory card, though. I just came back from 2 weeks in Europe with a Sony Cybershot F-707 and about 512 MB of memory. I had my camera set on Fine and the highest resolution (which is 5 mega-pixels), and took pictures of EVERYTHING. Many places will be able to burn your images to disk. It's about 5-8 Euro and some places it's 1 Euro cheaper if you already have your own disk. I had them burn my images to disk about every other day, and it worked out fine.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks so much Giao! I would appreciate any tips on travelling with my digital camera!
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Giao N. |
I would make sure to have an extra fully charged battery along, as well as plenty of memory space in case you can't get to a photo place before your next excursion. Most cities that I went to had at least one or two places that could burn your pictures to CD for you. Some photo places (photo developing places, digital camera stores, some internet cafes) do it immediately and some take 1 hour or so. I had no trouble finding places in cities like Rome and London, but it was a little more difficult to find a place in a smaller city like Zurich, so you want to have enough memory to tide you over until you can find a place that will do it. Also, make sure to familiarize yourself with all the controls on your camera before you go. Have a great trip!
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Alison A. Thomas |
I have a 6.1 megapixel which is a real limitation when I'm away from my computer. I found a copy machine for $300.00. It takes up to a 512K memory card and downloads the card onto disk. It runs on a rechargable battery and fits in my camera case. Downloading 512K takes about 20 minutes if you use the check option and it has to have a flat and stable surface. I'm sorry I've forgotten the name and manufacturer but it is made by one of the common memory card makers.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks Alison!
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Andy |
Since Giao mentioned the extra battery, you may need an AC adapter for your charger because the electrical current in Europe is different from US (assuming you are from US).
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks Andy - I'm from Montreal actually, and have the adapter on my list of things to get... Thanks!
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Kevin S. Jones |
Diane, I've done similar trips and have had no problem finding internet cafes to burn cds. I'm always concerned that I might some how lose my photos (theft or lost luggage for example), so every time I burned a disc I kept one with me and mailed one back to my permanent address. It was a little bit more expensive, but to me, worth the piece of mind.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks Kevin!
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Evelyn Madsen |
Just spent 5 weeks on a Volga River cruise thru Russia (St. Petersburg-Moscow-Volgograd) where there are no internet cafes. I took over 1600 photos with a 5.2 megapixel Minolta DiMage 7 using the fine setting and 128 and 256 Mb cards. Not wanting to buy a laptop, I purchased a palm-sized battery-powered Nixvue Vista for $475 w/30 Gb memory and downloaded every one or two days. The camera uses 4 AA batteries so took 8 sets, a quick charger (1 hour), and adaptor and always had plenty of power to shoot all day. Usually took 3 sets plus those in the camera. Have a good trip.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks Evelyn!
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David Robinson |
I would suggest that you purchase separately a portable hard disc to down load your cards onto during your trip. On your return the contents of the disc can be transferred to your computer. The hard disc I have is 'Digital Wallet' but they unfortunately have gone out of business but I am sure that there must be other makes available. The capacity of these portable discs is in the 6 to 20 gigabyte range which will be enough capacity for even the most snap happy snapper.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks David!
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Evelyn Madsen |
Diane: The Nixvue Vista is a digital photo album and an excellent substitute for the Digital Wallet. It comes in various capacities from 10 to 60 GB. The charger for the Vista only requires an adaptor to charge the battery. They also have different types of digital photo albums. The name of the company is Nixvue Systems Pte Ltd in Singapore and they have a website: www.nixvue.com.
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Evelyn Madsen |
Diane: The Nixvue Vista is a digital photo album and an excellent substitute for the Digital Wallet. It comes in various capacities from 10 to 60 GB. The charger for the Vista only requires an adaptor to charge the battery. They also have different types of digital photo albums. The name of the company is Nixvue Systems Pte Ltd in Singapore and they have a website: www.nixvue.com.
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shawna mccutcheon |
Here's another item for your dilema. A Multi Media Jukebox. Dell sells them for around 2 - 3 hundred. I bought one for the drag races last year. Mine has a 20G hard drive in it. You can put any type of computer file on it, even MP3's. So if you want to take a set of headphones and put some music on it, you can do that. Also, it shoots video, so if you want to do that with it. There are endless possibilities with the little box.
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Jim Wilson |
I purchased a 20 Gb portable hard drive called Digital Photo Library by I/O Magic for a trip to France last Fall. It has a built in 6 in 1 card reader which should cover any type of memory card you may have. It is small enough to fit in a coat pocket. I second the extra battery sugestion. I dont know how other similar devices work, but a lesson I learned is to only download from the memory card once, when it is full. Otherwise you end up with multiple folders containing many of the same pictures.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thanks so much for the tips Evelyn, Shawna and Jim!
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Abdulaziz A. Zarouni |
No need to panic, because where ever you travel, you can find facilities to either store your pictures on a CD or buy a new card, I went to London last summer and I had a 128 Mb card with my Nikon coolpix 4300 I took nearly 300 pictures with fine resolutions I also had a film camera which I rearly used, so I say don’t panic and you can find a way while you are on trip. Regards,
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Phillip A. Flusche |
I took a trip to Italy this fall and bought an Apacer C100 Disc Steno. There is a review of this machine at www.steves-digicams.com in the accessories area. Or go to www.apacer.com to read about it. It is a portable CD Burner. It operates on either a wall AC adapter or a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery. The AC adapter works on 110V to 240V so is useful worldwide if you have a wall adapter (no AC converter needed). It accepts most standard memory cards exept the xD card. All you do is turn it on, plug in a full memory card, push either the record button or the record w/check button. It then automatically downloads and burns your pictures to a CD. Each card download is saved in a new folder. When the card is full the unit merely requires a new balnk CD/R or RW Thus providing a permanent copy of all the shots. It also serves as an external CD Burner when hooked up to a PC. The only negative is that you have no way to check the pictures are really burned. I filled up over 2 CDs while on my trip. IT WORKED PERFECTLY. All the pictures were there. I did go to an internet cafe in Italy and looked at the stored pictures. The last time I checked the C100 was around - $300. There is a newer model out, the C200 with some more features that allow you to hook it up to a TV to do a slide show. I highly recommend this unit. The battery is supposed to be good for I think 2 hours of recording before needing recharging. For batteries. I took along a Maha MH-C401FS (AA or AAA batteries) charger with an international AC adapter that was useful 110V to 240V. Europe uses 220V. Again all I needed was a wall adapter. In Europe except for England you just need a wall adapter that is two small round plugs. Both of these units came with a car DC plug in for recharging purposes. Thus you don't need that many cards. I like it because now I automatically have a permanent copy of all y shots. When I get home I just have to put in each CD and then work with the shots I want to work with and save them after I edit. I always have the backup original. CDs are very inexpensive compared to memory cards.
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- Gerda Grice Contact Gerda Grice Gerda Grice's Gallery |
About battery chargers and adapters, I've found that it's more convenient--though not cheaper--to buy a "universal" battery charger than to buy adapters, especially if you are going to both England and various countries on the continent of Europe, since the U.K. uses a very different kind of plug than those used in either Europe or North America. The "universal" rechargers can take both 240 and 120 current (Eur. and N.A.), and have attached extensions that can fit into each of the 3 different kinds of wall outlets and that fold up or retract into the body of the recharger when not in use, so that the thing can fit into your bag with no extending bits that could be damaged. I bought one that recharges in 2 hours and found it very helpful. If you have a charger that already can use either kind of current but has only the North Amercian style of plug insert, then, yes, you will need to buy a set of adapters. Just make sure to get ones that hold your plug extensions firmly. I've had some that didn't in the years before I got my universal chargers, and they were a real pain. Incidentally, I don't own a laptop computer, and I haven't tried buring CDs away from home. On my last trip (10 days away) I carried 4 256 and 4 128 CF cards, and that turned out to be enough.
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Diane Dupuis |
Thank you all so much for your advice. I will be checking out these different options.
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