Got my digital camera-5 megapixel! Going to spend 2 weeks in Italy in March including watching my daughter run in the Rome Marathon for benefit of diabetes in honor of her Mom and Grandma. No way I am not going to take a lot of pictures, high resolution pictures.

The memory cards for my camera hold a maximum 128 meg (only 50 picts at the best resolution) but the problem is the same if your camera uses Smartmedia cards or even Compact Flash. Based on our week in Paris last November, I'll probably take 700 frames. That's 14 cards!! I could buy another camera for that! I don't own a portable computer and don't want to drag one around on tour - aside from the fact that thieves love them and then all the cables, etc.

Up pops portable storage devices. They come from the simple that just off-loads the memory card until you plug it into your PC at home to thoses that have a screen to review your photos and will plug into a TV to show them as a slide show on your TV.

I got the simple one. 20 gigs of storage, the equivalent of 160 memory sticks for the price of 4. Now I can shoot all I want and just off-load as we go. Got its own rechargable batterie so I don't have to wait til evening.

I'm ready!!

Glenn

Hi Glenn
Congratulations!
Both on your daugther running the marathon and on your new adquisitions.
What camera did you get? I got the Nikon Coolpix5000 earlier this year and am very very happy with it. I would like more info on the portable device you bought although I managed pretty good with my 3 compact flash cards (one 256, one 128 and the 32 included in the camera). I got away with this on my trip cause I also took 30 36exp 35mm rolls of films, one SLR, a point and shoot and a tripod (so much for traveling lite hehehehe).
I viewed my digitals every night in the hotel room and discarded the ones I didn't like, thus having more memory available.
I used the full size high resolution JPEGs that gives me great 8x10s, but the reason for me to use this size was wallpaper, otherwise the next smaller size is just fine for 5x7 prints.
I invite you to post your pics on line when you get back so we can all share, it's a free service at http://www.webshots.com />You can see mine at:
http://community.webshots.com/user/fabiolad
The last albumns are from our recent trip to France.
Enjoy your trip and when/and if you get a chance, tell me about your portable micro drive or whatever is called.
Fabiola

Hi Fab:

I'm already on Webshots at: http://community.webshots.com/user/gsrunyan />
After much soul searching, I chose the Sony DSC-707, primarily for the Carl Zeiss 28mm-190mm lens. I looked hard at the Nikon 5000, the Canon G3 and the Minolta Dimage, but the longer lens on the Sony was most important to me, despite the fact that the maximum storage on the memory stick is only 128 megs.

I like to shoot with the most detail available and then press down to print 8X10. I use a resolution that will print at 24X30.

I bought an X-drive. It is the size of a 4X6 print and is 3/4 inch thick. It has slots for Compact Flash Card typeI/type II, Smart Media Card (SM), Memory Stick (MS), Secure Digital Card (SD), MultiMedia Card (MMC), IBM MicroDrive. I bought the 20 gig version, only $20 more than 10 gigs. Do a Google search for x-drive and look at the vendors.

There is also a product called Digital Wallet that has the same storage functions but also has a screen that lets you view the photos, create slide shows and show them on your tv. Costs twice as much but seems to be very popular with pro photographers who also hate carrying around portable PCs.

Glenn

Saw your pictures, Glenn, they are great!
Looking forward to see the ones from Italy. I put you on my favorites, so when you have new pics, please e-mail me with the news!
Have a great trip!

That's the same camera I've got, Glenn. Not the most portable camera in the world, but it takes absolutely fabulous pictures!

I'm interested to read about your "X-Drive" - I really need to get something like that myself.

Personally I never use the maximum resolution of the camera - there's really no point unless you're printing out large images. I generally use the 2500x1500 setting at the highest quality factor - that lets me fit about 100 images onto a 128MB memory stick.

Regards,

Chris

Chris:
Go to the "printing" forum at dpreview.com and scan the posts. Although I still don't totally understand the difference between camera dpi and printer dpi, there is good reason to shoot at the highest resolution available. TIFF files, at 16 megs each however, may be overkill.

There is a UK distributor of the x-drive: http://www.vosonic.co.uk. I paid $US199 for the 20 gigabyte version. Vosonic's price is GBP239! Nearly 60% higher with the VAT. I expect it would be cheaper to buy in US and have shipped to you-even adding the VAT. Mine is the European version (prongs on the charger plug), so I know its available.

Glenn

Thanks for the references, Glenn; greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Chris

Glen, what is the marathon in Rome that your daughter is running in & what is the connection with Diabetes? Cheers, Lynne

Glenn
I went searching the Net, and I think I'm getting the 20GB x-drive for X-mas. Is that the one you got? It costs about $259 on sale and it looks very good.
Fabiola

Fabiola:

Try this site:

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/display_products.cfm?category=X%2DDrive

20 GB X-Drive with *Free S/H* for $199.99. From my search, you can also buy one w/o hard drive and install the hard drive yourself. But the IBM Travelstar 20 GB hard drive costs about $100. So their price for the 20 GB X-Drive is pretty good.

I'm thinking about getting one myself for the BB tour (Real France) in April.

Lynn,

Go to the following Website for info on the connection between the Rome marathon and the Diabetes Association:

http://www.diabetes.org/teamdiabetes/team/rome.asp

Fabiola-I got mine at http://www.rudigital.com. The cd with the drivers was bad and I got them to post the correct drivers on site. They now download by FTP. Be sure to format you memory cards or sticks in the camera before copying to the x-drive: it won't copy non-OEM sticks or cards that haven't been formatted in the camera first.

Chris: spent last weekend in Atlanta visiting family and taking my grandson to Zoo Atlanta. Got photos of the pandas. This camera is fabulous!

Glenn

Guys,
Thanks for the info, I'll be getting mine on Sat, my Amex has a promotion that gives double miles on weekends and a mile is a mile.
By the way, just picked up the slides for my Photo class assignment for this week, wich was taking pics with non-commercial filters (i.e. stockings, etc) and they came out awesome! I made a great star filter out of fiberglass tape for drywall joining, and the packing bubbles make a great soft filert. One interesting one I found was shooting thru a faceted glass full of water (works with digital too, of course), you get a repeat effect depending on the facets of the glass.
See you around, will post when I get the x-drive.
Fabiola

X-Drives,
For those of you who have an X-Drive, I just wanted to know how do you like it?
How safe is it with increased airport security? (x-ray scanners and the like),
and is it easy to use while traveling??
I need more memory and am seriously interested in the x-drive option.
THANKS!
ChoirGuy

I've taken mine through a couple of times with no problem. Remember, hard drives and flash cards work on magnetism, not chemistry like film. I would take yours in your carry on and try to keep it away from the magnetic wands and scanners.

Glenn

Got my X-Drive a couple of days ago. It didn't take a lot of effort to get it working. I'm happy with it. IMO, it's a wonderful and inexpensive solution to not having enough storage for digital images while you're away from your computer.

Here is something I've learned about X-Drive:
(1) It's cheaper to get the main unit and hard drive separately, if you can install hard drive yourself or find someone to do it for you (it's pretty easy actually).
X-Drive (w/o hard drive) - http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=VP-2030 (listed $87; use discount code JUMPONDEALS to save 10% plus S/H) or http://www.powerinnumbers.com.au/ />Hard drive (any 2.5", 9mm notebook hard drive will work) - http://www.sybercom.com/cgi-bin/sybercom/HDN20GI.html (IBM Travelstar 20 GB, $85.90, free shipping), http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productlisting.aspx?...=19&category_id=5087 ($118.95, IBM Travelstar 40 GB; $102.95, IBM 30 GB, free shipping may apply)
(2) Need to format the hard drive before copying files from memory card. Win98 will require a device driver. Win2K (SP3) and WinXP don't need driver.
(3) There's a known problem in the firmware in handling fragmented/discontiguous files (a memory card is fragmented which happens when some photos are deleted in the camera). vosonic is currently working on the update and it should be ready soon (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1023&message=3994189) The work around, in the meantime, is to format the memory card in the camera instead of deleting files.