Hello, I planning my first serious trip since going digital. Since I'm easily filling up 6 GBs of CF cards in half a day at the local bird refuge I know I've got storage issue problems to address before my 2-3 day trip to Glacier. I'm looking for good portable storage options for around 20 GBs of images. What is everyone using? An economic solution is critical as funds are limited. Any suggestions from a fellow photographer would be greatly appreciated. I can't wait to get back to the park as it is my favorite place to shoot. I've been there two other times and burned a lot of Velvia! Looking forward to seeing what I can do with the Minolta 7D!

Hey Jim,

Welcome aboard. You may want to check out this thread in the NWP Shop Talk section (where we typically discuss gear, etc). It was reccommended by one of our forum members.

http://www.nwpphotoforum.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3609&an=0&page=0#3609

I have much the same issue. I often shoot 10 to 20 gig of data a day. I am mr paronoid and try to keep two complete copies of the data. I of course carry a laptop but 1) need an alternative in case it breaks or I break it. 2) I am often away from the system for an entire day and it forces me to carry 20 or 30 gigs of cards. I have tried most of the portable devices. All but two just aren't fast enough. The new Jobo Pro is good. I just bought the hyperdrive. I like it because it is very fast (empies a 8 gig card in about tem minutes. It has a stone simple interface. It has a simple foldering system that creates a new folder each time you insert a card. My management software is now set up that when I plug in the drive to my laptop or desktop it knows how to deal with the folders. The hard drives can be exchanged in about 1 minute if needed.

Hum, i'd say be a bit more selective about what youre photogarphing? I dont mean that in a bad way as I'm in the camp believes fire power is 1 hit, not 50 misses. That said, it's strange how many times I've had the first and the last shots of the sequence be the best, no matter how many came inbetween. I try to appoach every shot with my gut, I seem to get more and better keepers if I just shoot instinktevely.

As per the solution to your problem, I just use my Laptop and carry about 8 gigs (some 2 gig and some 1 gig cards).

I also shoot JPG when I know I can nail the exposure. I'f I'm in doubt about exposure or White Balance, I shoot raw, otherwise I shoot jpg, and yes I have the proof that this methods works. . .

Good luck, I'm headed from Glacier park - today - to canada for the weekend, lucky me!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a good point. It may seem odd that we shoot so many frames. We are working on a technique that causes us to use the continuous high speed mode for five to eight frames. We intend to interleave the frames with video. We still shoot in RAW and just use up the storage space as our video is being shot in HD.
We only do this on certain body moves of an animal, i.e. when a bear is setting and rotates his head to stand, or an animal starts to walk or climb.

Good luck on the trip. It sounds like we will be just behind you.

I wound up getting a Smartdisk Photobank. Basically a PSD with a 40 GB database. So, I now carry that and a three 2 GB CF cards. As I fill a card I replace it with another and then download the card to the Photobank. Download seems fairly fast but uploading to the computer takes quite awhile.