Opinions

Digital Camera memory cards
What to do with them on vacation
by Bruce Sherman Aka Capt_Nemo

With more and more people buying digital cameras to use instead of film type cameras, people have been asking for help, what to do about not having to worry about running out of memory while on vacation.

Here are some suggestions people have thought about solving this issue.

1) Taking a laptop computer with you on vacation to download photos daily from the camera to the computers hard drive.

Not everyone owns a laptop computer, nor if they do, will want to worry about keeping one with them on vacation. You are not going to walk around the world with a laptop in your backpack. If you don't have a car, you can't store it there. And will you want to worry about keeping one in the hotel room?

2) Taking advantage of places inside WDW that will transfer your photos from a memory card to a burned CDROM. There are also places outside the world that will do this.

There is one location per park that will transfer your photos from a memory card to a CDROM.

Steve Carter wrote the following to help me with this article.

    The first time I went to the Kodak center at the beginning of Main Street in MK and asked about using the kiosk they had there and was told I would have to wait about 30 minutes for the person in front of me to get finished. They have a kiosk like the ones in the grocery and drug stores where you can get actual prints right from the memory card. Not wanting to wait in line I asked about alternatives and was told to fill out the standard Kodak processing envelope and drop in the memory stick and they would have it put on a Kodak Picture CD and delivered to my resort if I wanted.

    At the top of the envelope there is a whole list of places where you can have it delivered you just need to circle the one you want. If you drop it off by 11 AM before the courier comes you will have it in your resort gift shop by 8PM otherwise it will be there by 9 the next day. They will only transfer pictures to the disk. If you took movies they will not be transferred. They won't delete anything off the disk. You will get it back the same as you sent it. Just delete the pictures from your disk and save the movies until you get home.

     It cost me about $6.99 for them to transfer 1 x 256MB memory stick (105 x 5MP pictures) to the disk. Kodak disks also include the Easy Share software for editing, buying, publishing, and e-mailing the pictures. The Editor has a pretty good exposure correction tool for those too dark photos. A lot of the new DVD players now include the Technology to play these Kodak CDs right on them.

3) Purchasing additional memory cards so you don't run out.

In the old days, people worried about how much film to buy for a Disney vacation, there is never a good answer. The same can be said about how many memory cards you need for a vacation, if you don't want to transfer them to a laptop or CDROM. I can only suggest taking a look at your digital cameras manual. There they explain how many photos you can get which depend on the capacity of the memory card and the quality of the photo you want to take.

4) Purchase a portable device that you can download a memory card to a larger storage device.

This is what I use and I will describe one brand which I have, but the arguments I make can be said for others that are similar. Here is the link to the manufacturer of the item I have.

http://www.iomagic.com/Products/show_all_results.asp?ProdID=I6N1USB20GB

The product is called Digital Photo Library and is made by IO Magic. It is a self powered (built in rechargeable batteries) so it is portable. It is about the size of a paperback book, so it is small enough to be carried with you. It can handle 6 different memory card types. Before you purchase it, make sure yours is one of the ones it can handle. I believe it cannot handle a XD memory type card without an adapter. The units main function is its 20 gig internal hard drive. This is how it works

When your memory card is full or you just want to empty it, you place the card into the unit, press the power button, and then press the copy button. Within a couple of minutes, it transfers the contents of the memory card onto its own unique subdirectory on the units hard drive. Once the transfer is done, you reinstall the memory card and delete its contents through the digital camera's functions. No computer is needed to transfer photos.

When you get home, you attach the device to your computer via the USB port and your computer recognizes the devices hard drive as an additional hard drive on your computer, and you manipulate the photos like you do any file on your computer.

Besides being useful for near unlimited storage for vacations, here are some other ideas for its use.

If you got a family get together, most everyone has a digital camera. You can download everyone's memory card to have copies of their photos for yourself.

Besides your computer recognizing the units hard drive as a drive on your computer, it will also recognize each of the memory card ports as a separate drive. This is helpful, as you don’t need your camera to transfer photos to your computer. This is also helpful if you decide you want to take your memory card and have photos made up at a store. You can transfer the photos to your memory card just as easy as moving files from one drive to another.

Like I said, I use this product, and I am happy with it. There are other types of units that will also burn a CDROM. But I have no experience with this type of unit.

If you feel you need to ask me any further questions about this unit, you can reach me at the below email address.

bruce@the-shermans.us