I am just a few days short of my 70th birthday and I have decided to try travelling light. Can't keep up with those young kids who carry a huge amount of gear.

One of the things I can do to lighten my load is to leave the laptop at home. I am a nut about backing up my pictures. In the past I have always carried a laptop and two small portable hard drives and diligently downloaded my pics to my laptop and the two hard drives every night.

I think I know the answer, but I will ask anyway. Here's the question - is there any way to copy files directly from the camera (IDMkIV and 7D) to a portable hard drive?

Another option I have thought about is to use the image copy function of the 1DMkIV. I could shoot with only a CF card in either the 1DMkIV or 7D, and then insert an SDHC card in the MkIV and copy the images from the CF card to the SDHC card. For images on the CF card from the 7D, I could place this CF card into the MkIV and copy these images to the SDHC card.

Anybody see any flaws in this thinking?

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

How long is the trip? If you take enough cards to get all your images on the trip I personally would not worry about it....

Greg,

I do not have a specific trip in mind at this time. As an example, my wife and I just returned from six days in Yellowstone NP. I took about 50 GB of pics (before editing and deleting). Based on this, I think that 4 or 5 each of 16 GB CF cards and SDHC cards would be sufficient for most trips I take.

I was thinking of something else along these lines. Many motels have a PC available for guest use. Even though I would not be able to view my pics on such a computer, I could copy the contents of memory cards to a portable HD.

Five CF cards, five SDHC cards, and a small portable HD or two would sure take up less space and weigh much less than a laptop and charger. Would also make getting through airport security a little easier.

I have two ColorSpace photo storage drives that I use for backups.  I have found them very reliable, and each is not much larger than a portable HD.
-Dave Kocher

Ditto on the ColorSpace. You might try the ColorSpace UDMA, with whatever size internal drive you think you might need. They have an OTG adapter that, according to their web site, "USB OTG (On-The-Go) technology allows COLORSPACE UDMA to interface and exchange data directly with another USB device (card reader, hard drive, digital camera etc.) without going through the computer".

This would give you backup that is about the same size as a portable hard drive. I would still try and keep the photos on the cards and just use the ColorSpace as backup.

Liz

Bruce - I don't want to make anyone stop anything that gives them piece of mind; But I feel that if you have the images on two different cards, then any further backup isn't worth it. The odds of both cards failing is very, very small. And the hard drives are more likely to fail than the cards. I suppose cards are a little easier to lose than hard drives, but not by much. And the most likely thing, I think, is that the original is bad and all you're doing is making more and more copies of the original bad file.

Bruce,

I am also looking into alternatives to a laptop not because of a weight issue, but because I use my iPad 99% of the time now. My 7 yr. old laptop died and I really don't need another one. I don't know if you have an iPad but here is what I am looking at for backing up on the road.

Seagate now makes a wireless, USB 3.0, 1TB portable HD for $199.99 http://tinyurl.com/bgvgt75 . What I'm thinking is to use my SD card adapter to copy file to the Ipad, then send them to the HD wirelessly. Then I will keep them on the HD, cards, and ipad until I get home and transfer them to my desktop using USB 3.0.

I just started to look into this, so I'm not really sure how fast it would be.

If anybody has more input on this, feel free to chime in.

Brian K.

I too have a 1D Mark IV and you can set the thing to write to both the CF and SD cards at the same time, or first one, then the other.  So, you'd always have 2 copies if you did the simultaneous setting.  How to is in the owner manual.  32 gig cards would be helpful here.  They are pretty reasonably priced of late.

Another option, though expensive, is to go with a Mac Air laptop.  They weigh next to nothing and the charging cord and transformer is the size of a deck of cards.

I like a backup source that can be kept separate from the camera and cards when traveling.  Tablets just do not offer nearly enough storage.

ASUS VivoBook X202E does it for me.  Small(about the size of a tablet, but much more capability and storage), 2.8lbs, touch screen, windows 8. $499.  Not a workhorse (that would be my desktop), but great for travel.

The problem with going without a laptop is that it guarantee's you won't review images during breaks in the shooting while on your trip. What I've found when I do this is that problems aren't uncovered early in the trip and you might end up with the same problems repeating day after day. These problems can be as simple as unnoticed dust spots or as bad as not noticing problems with focus or DOF. On a trip I took last year I went without laptop. When I returned home and reviewed the images, I noticed all sorts of things that I could have fixed during the trip if I had reviewed then.

If you normally review your images while traveling, traveling without a laptop might start bad habits. I'd recommend a small laptop that is capable of reviewing images while traveling rather than going without entirely. I did try a trip where I reviewed images on my iPad. There were lots of issues starting with only being able to read SD cards reliably, to not being able to just load certain images from the cards. It was also very slow because I shoot RAW and the RAW files needed to be moved. Of course, I couldn't keep all the images on the device either, not nearly enough space was available.

I have been considering going on a 3 week trip without my laptop but Anthony's remarks have changed my mind.

Bruce, I'm a couple of years older and not nearly in as good shape as you. I have looked at several solutions, but none include leaving the laptop at home.

I lightened the camera and lens load, got a 3 wheel golf cart to haul the camera gear when I'm on a trek, but the laptop and backup drives come along on any trip.

I understand the problem if you fly, but it has to be a wedding or funeral to get me to put up with airports any more.

I have an iPad, but don't consider that a solution.

Good luck, youngster.

jn

I'm struggling with this problem myself. I'm trying a small asus netbook (replaced hard drive with ssd) that has usb3 and a 2core processor. In hind site, I think I would have been smarter getting a 13" macbook of some kind.

Carrying small external hard drive. Loading it with delorme topo north america with gps for car, downloader pro, breezebrowzer, lightroom, openoffice, etc.

General observations, ability to review photos cannot be underestimated. Depending upon your camera, raw or jpg, shooting habits, and subjects (birds in flight vs scenics), the data to be transferred can be large and transfer rates important. If you want multiple copies (min two, I keep three distributed between carry on and checked luggage), count the number of usb3 or other highspeed connections. You may need a hub. My shooting on a big trip easily exceeds what I can store on an internal ssd.

The new ultrabooks and nice and light, HDD is a little small being SSD, but it will allow image review, you can get 128 or 256 G HDDs. The Toshiba ones are pretty nice and start at about $799 in the US.

I second the Colorspace UDMA idea. If pressed for space and weight, you don't really need the laptop since the UDMA will allow  you to see your images (it has a built-in RAW converter) so any major flaws will be apparent. The UDMA comes with or without a hard drive, you can buy it yourself cheaper and installation is very easy. You can put in a 250G or up to a 1TB HD in it. It will download six to eight 32G cards on a single charge so can be used in the field if needed.

Pradeep

Brain,

I do not think you can transfer files "from" iPad "to" the seagate HD. I think you can only acees files already placed on the HD "from" the iPad. I hope I am wrong about this because I have been looking for a way to transfer photos off of the iPad to a storage device without a computer since the iPad does not have enough storage. I would love to finds a solution for this.

I see that a couple of people like the Colorspace UDMA, I have in the past used a Epson P6000, to back up and view files.  However the Epson has trouble with my D 800 files.   Would the Colorspace, have any  problems with the files from the 800 ? The epson has now discontinued the viewer.  I have a trip coming up, that makes a laptop a real pain, and was hoping to use the epson untill I gave it a go, Colorspace might be a option I had not considered till the subject come up here.
Thanks

I've used an old version of the Hyperdrive (which makes the Colorspace) back in 2006-2007 or so, and it worked well.

One thing to consider if writing to dual cards is that SDHC cards tend to be slower than CF cards. Not a problem if you have two CF card slots but could be an issue if you are shooting a high frame rate and the buffer is writing at two different speeds. (I'm no tech guru on this so hopefully someone else can chime in with more detailed and accurate info.)

I agree with Tony about reviewing the day's take, but also vote for the colorspace. The current version is fast, you can put a big drive in it, the battery lasts a long time and you could review images but the screen is pretty small.
Mike

For a. Upcoming trip I decided to purchase the color space UDMA2. It handles my D800 files a lot better than the Epsom. The viewing screen is not as good, but
Downloads, a lot faster. One interesting feature the UMDA2 has, is a WIFi attachment, that lets you view the files, on the UDMA, on your IPad.. No Internet
Connection is required or any existing wireless network . Of course if you carried both,probably might as well take your laptop. Alone the UDMA2 is a viable option
To a laptop, when you want to go little lighter !