My Digital Accessories on the Road

I am often asked what digital gear I carry while away on a photo shoot, so here is a quick list of the essential workflow tools that I take on the road with me.

Computer

I use a MacBook notebook computer for most of my computing needs, both at home and away. I use a dedicated desktop computer (currently a Dell PC, but will be moving to a Mac Pro desktop soon) for my critical color management applications, but all of my email, word processing, etc happens on my MacBook. I have the 2ghz MacBook with 2GB of RAM, and I have upgraded the internal hard drive to 120GB. Since my typical safari trip has me leading back-to-back safaris, I needed the ability to store between 40GB and 60GB of digital images from my current camera setup, which is sure to change in the future.

Storage

I use an Epson P-2000 storage device as my backup hard drive, as well as a method to offload my images in case my MacBook craters on me. I never know. It could happen at any moment.

I also have an external 100GB USB hard drive as my second backup device, and I keep this hard drive with me at all times when traveling overseas. I also carry my original MacBook’s 80GB hard drive in a padded case, and this will allow me to have a bootable computer in the event of a hard drive failure. I create a fresh backup of my internal hard drive to this 80GB drive at least once every few weeks.

Compact Flash Cards

Ok. My name is Andy Biggs and I am addicted to compact flash cards. I have to admit that I have a boneyard of compact flash cards dating from 2002. Only 11 more steps to go towards my full recovery.

My “collection” of cards that I actually use are the following: (1) 8GB Sandisk Extreme III, (2) 4GB Sandisk Extreme III, (1) Sandisk 2GB Extreme III, (2) Lexar 80x 2GB, various 1GB and 4GB Microdrives to be used as loaners.

I use Lexar USB CF readers, but I am evaluating other options to make sure that I am using the latest and fastest readers available on the market today.

Electrical Plugs

A few months back, while out on safari, Thomas Knoll (one of the original authors of Photoshop), introduced me to the Road Warrior universal electrical plug. I have seen devices like this in the past, but nothing so compact and, well, universal. What a wonderful product. It seems that I only see great innovations like this from the Japanese market, and I was glad to finally find a source for such a product here in the US. The Road Warrior allows me to carry a small and lightweight adapter that will work in any country around the world. Time to put away my multiple sets of plugs. I usually take 3 or 4 adapters on each trip, per country. Sometimes I might need 3 totally different sets of adapters for a single trip. Not any longer, since I found this product.

You can purchase the Road Warrior from Madsonline for US$28 each.

Software

I seem to test and use many different software applications on a daily basis, so this is just a quick list of applications that I am using at this very moment. This list will most certainly change as I get more acquainted to the Mac environment.

• Photo Mechanic – for downloading, renaming, viewing and culling of images.
• Adobe Camera Raw – for digital raw conversions.
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 – for final image cleanup.
• Adobe Lightroom – I am evaluating the application, and I suspect this will be my future all-in-one application for downloading, renaming, viewing, sorting, culling, rating, raw converting, and outputting of images.