I'm going to Europe for 5 weeks and do not wish to take my laptop with me. I expect I would take approximately 360 photographs if I brought my conventional 35mm SLR, but there is no way I could store that many photos if I purchase one of the 2.0 Megapixel cameras and save high resolution shots (e.g. 5.7 MB per pic). What is the best way to handle this without buying 2 dozen 64 MB flash memory cards? I am considering spending $400 for an Iomega Clik and the disks to go with it, but what about FTPing the images to a computer at home? Or maybe I don't need such high resolution images? Thanks for your thoughts. Chuck Wilson

-- Charles L. Wilson (clwilson@ucla.edu), March 29, 1999

Answers

Almost the question I would have asked. How does one use a digital camera "on the road" without megabucks in cards, etc., or considering a laptop as a mandatory accessory. I would expect battery usage would be a major consideration as well if one needed to use the camera to show/edit "bad" shots of the cards. (How many batteries and chargers will you need to keep going and rotating, adapters for different currents, etc.) I'd like to transition to digital but it looks like the "accessories" cost over and above the camera is still very steep. Waiting with you to see answers and I'm only considering travel within the western US.

-- Craig Gillette (cgillette@thegrid.net), March 29, 1999.

First of all, use compression: I don't know what type of camera that you have, so I don't know the compression modes - but at a compression mode of 4:1 (which is the Nikon 900s best quality compressed mode, JPEG is nearly lossless and the quality is pretty near that of an uncompressed image (for typical subject matter, generally ratios of almost 3:1 can be obtained in a completely lossless manner, so most cameras are pretty good in their highest quality compressed mode (the Kodaks are the noteable exception to this, as their "best" mode is compressed at between 8:1 and 10:1) So now you are looking at approximately 1 - 1.5 MB per image. Next bit of advice is to get yourself a couple of good CF cards - A couple of 64MB cards should be sufficient, provided that you can edit the less desireable shots as you go. These can be gotten nowadays for around $150 each. If you can only find 48 MB cards, get 3 of them.

As far as batteries are concerned: 2 sets of NiMH cells and a decent, reasonably fast charger should be sufficient, but a 3rd set might not be a bad idea (it's only another $10)

-- Doug Green (dougjgreen@yahoo.com), March 29, 1999.

When you take a good hard look at the alternatives, I think you'll change your mind about not bringing the laptop. :) Grab the laptop and a pcmcia adaptor.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), March 29, 1999.