Next spring we are going to be on an extended sojourn in Italy. We will have a digital camera but will not have a laptop. We are curious to know if anyone has had experience in (1) e-mailing pictures at internet cafes, (2) burning CD's at internet cafes, (3)burning CD's at photolabs, and (4) anything else we should know about digital photography on the road. Grazie mille!
Jennifer and Anthony
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kim,
Posts: 284 | Location: New Orleans | Registered: 01 July 2003
I haven't done that myself but in my last trip to Venice I heard someone asking the attendant at the Internet Cafe if he could burn CD's and also send pictures and the answer was YES!. And he was directed to the area where they have the PC's where he could do that type of work. Like at the Kinko's stores here in the USA.
I don't know about photo labs. No, wait! I just remember. They do the CDs at the photo labs. I took my poor Instant Camera to one of them and I asked for hard copies and a CD and they told me that they did CD's only with digital cameras. If I wanted my pictures on a CD it was going to take few days because they had to send the camera somewhere else. Where? I don't know. I guess to mailand. You can find almost everything in Italy, unless you are in the middle of nowhere.
"Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza..."
"I sing to life, to its beauty, to each of its wounds and each of its caresses..."
[This message was edited by Westsider on 15 December 2003 at 09:53 PM.]
Posts: 1831 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: 21 December 2002
Camera stores in all the larger cities will burn a CD of your digital photos - takes about 20 minutes. Another suggestion is to take a couple of extra cards for your camera.
We've had several topic threads in the past about digital photography. I don't know that they address your specific questions ... But using the 'Find' function to do an Advanced Search on "digital" in the 'Subject Only' will yield many threads on digital cameras!
I've been travelling with a digital for almost a year now. I love it. I feel like I can photograph anything and everything without having to worry about the cost of developing. Its made me comfortable with experimenting and I feel this has helped in improving my photographic abilities...
Anyway, I too have seen photo labs and internet cafe's burning CD's. Keep in mind though, you may run out of storage at the most unhelpful of times and there may be no place to burn a CD. So I'm with Bill and Patty, get yourself some extra memory cards for the trip. These are pretty inexpensive now. In the past I've found some good deals at www.newegg.com
you can open an album online and download. They will burn you CD's at almost any internet cafe,and that is a great backup.. extra cards are a must.. for getting through till the next internet cafe!
Also when they are on CD's you can also email them to people. but by having a album online or a blog with foto's. all your friends can stay in touch and you only have to email them!
Thank you for all your replies. We do plan on buying a fairly large memory card - or several of them- to take with us. It is reassuring that we will be able to send pics and burn CD's while we are away from home for 7 months.
Just another thought, we are looking into the canon digital elph SD100 and S400 for this trip. Does anyone have any feedback on these models? Thanks!
Jennifer and Anthony
Posts: 284 | Location: New Orleans | Registered: 01 July 2003
www.dpreview.com has comprehensive, objective reviews on many digital cameras, including the two which you mentioned.
While at dpreview take a look at other camera reviews in your price range. The Nikon Coopix 4500 is a very good option for the Canon models you are thinking about. We have used earlier models of it (the 990) for several years and it still produces very good pictures. We often make make 8 X 10" prints from its image files.
Peter
Posts: 1345 | Location: Essex Fells, NJ and Longboat Key, Florida | Registered: 21 July 2002
I've used a digital camera for the last three years. I have four 128mb cards that hold all the photos I could want to take. When I get home, I dump the data from each card into a file on my computer., Plus, I edit my pictures as I take them so I'm not wasting card space on bad shots. With one card in the camera slot and three in protective sleeves in my wallet, I never have to think about spending time burning CDs at an internet cafe. Buying fresh batteries...that's another story.
Deborah Horn
In a previous life I was an Umbrian sunflower farmer. I'd like to do a past life regression and stay there. ----------------------------------- www.petsburg.com
Posts: 4792 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: 04 September 2001
I just did my first digital trip in Oct. and used most of 2 128 cards at 3.2 mep with some editing. The real variable is battery life. Make sure you have 2 sets of rechargable NIMH batteries and a charger for 220V. No need to burn to CD if you have adequate cards.
BOB THE NAVIGATOR rplittle@bellsouth.net
Posts: 1788 | Location: Chapel Hill NC | Registered: 25 October 2001
For almost four years now I have been using digital cameras. Recently I been carry a laptop and a portal HD to upload my photos to which are each over 6 Megabits big from my current digital camera, Canon 10D
My recomendation for you is to get a portable storage device. I have one, its a 10GB Mindstor which they do not make anymore. I am able to upload my photos to when my memory cards are full. I can get two or three days worth of photos on it before I have to transfer the photos to my portable HD. Also having one, you not have to buy more memory cards. Two are really all you need.
Which one is right for you that depends on your digital camera which you did not mention. Stop by the best website site when it comes to digital cameras, www.dpreview.com and visit the Storage forum. You will find plenty of advice on which type of portable storage device is best for you.
I would stay away from the internet cafe idea or finding a place to burn CD unless you are not bother to have spend your travel time when "they" will be open. You can better use your valuable time to take more photos and seeing what you came to see in the first place.
Bill
Posts: 454 | Location: East Elmhurst, NYC, USA | Registered: 12 September 2003
Uncharacteristically lurking mostly these last few days; specially on this thread, thanks everybody! I plan on taking a portable, leaving it firmly at home in Umbertide and downloading in the evenings or as soon as I get back from a multi-day walk out of the area.
Thank you Bob for the tip about batteries.
I haven't yet bought my camera, although it looks like it'll be Canon's 300D "Digital Rebel" (a cheap version of the 10D that Digital Bill uses); I'm hoping prices will drop a bit after Christmas -- although it's a popular one, so fat chance, right? -- so around January 15.
In 2000, I took an average of 75 photos a day, and because of the discardability of digital photos I expect to take a few more this time. My longest trip away from my portable I expect will be 6 days. My camera (300D or other) will be a 6-megapixel, and I expect I'll want to shoot on the "Raw" (maximum memory) setting. That works out to a need to store 400 large photos before downloading. Pending my experiments in January and February, does anyone have any idea how much memory and how many batteries I should be carrying?
My last trip I got an Energizer NiMH battery charger that came with a car adapter. No need to worry about 220V, or leaving batteries at the house. You can constantly charge them while you are in the car.
In 2000, I took an average of 75 photos a day, and because of the discardability of digital photos I expect to take a few more this time. My longest trip away from my portable I expect will be 6 days. My camera (300D or other) will be a 6-megapixel, and I expect I'll want to shoot on the "Raw" (maximum memory) setting. That works out to a need to store 400 large photos before downloading. Pending my experiments in January and February, does anyone have any idea how much memory and how many batteries I should be carrying?
Bill, a 1GB card on the 300D will hold only about 140 RAW images. Keep in mind each RAW image is about 6.5 MB. I would suggest NOT shooting RAW, anyway, as unless you plan to do extensive post-processing in Photoshop or similar, you won't gain any advantage. Shoot the highest quality JPG setting (FINE) and you'll more than double the amount of shots you can get on a card, and I guarantee you won't see any difference in most situations.
you can check out this page Canon 300D file sizes to see some comparative file sizes of the different file modes in the 300D. There's also info on battery life here.
I would bring a 1GB card; that should give you somewhere over 300 JPG FINE images; since you'll have the laptop to download to, you probably don't need a storage device. You might also consider two 512MB cards instead of a single 1GB as I don't really like putting all my eggs in one basket, as it were.
Bill, your battery life will depend upon whether or not you use the LCD to compose your pictures and how much you review your pictures in the camera. You shouldn't have any problems doing 100 shots in a day and then recharging in the evening. This is based upon experience with the Canon G# series. I was hiking for 5 days in Patagonia away from electricity and I was able to use just one battery. I probably took 100 shots over the 5 days and used the LCD 50% of the time.
I'm guessing the Rebel will be somewhat simliar. If you want to be on the safe side, you might want to purchase a backup battery and I recommend using Battery Barn for a good 3rd party battery and price. The Rebel takes the same battery as my G2. Check out this thread from a local hiking board discussing battery life. You'll find a link for Battery Barn in the thread.
Posts: 7108 | Location: Edmonds, WA | Registered: 25 October 2001
quote: I expect I'll want to shoot on the "Raw" (maximum memory) setting. That works out to a need to store 400 large photos before downloading.
Unless you are familiar with RAW, the benefit and the post processing, you should start with JPEG. Case in point a RAW file convert to TIFF so you can edit it in a program like PhotoShop is 35 Megabytes big. That just one file, you get into the hundreds, you need large hard drives to work with them. I only shoot in RAW and have the computer hardware and software to support using RAW. And I have been at for a few years starting way back when I owned a Olympus E-10. The latest version of PhotoShop, CS, now supports Canon RAW files and does a really good job at it. I will also add that in my opinion the Canon software that comes with the camera to support RAW is poor and makes using RAW very painful.
I have seen excellent photos taken in RAW and JPEG using the camera you are interesting in but it is really up to you to decide if the benefits out way the extra work using RAW.
One of the major benfits of RAW is when the shooting in differnet light sources. You can replace the photo's white balance setting with another one and this is a time saver/lifesaver for me.
Bill
quote: does anyone have any idea how much memory
Like I said before and if you want to use RAW, get yourself a portable storage device, They are now 40 GB big and nowhere can CF cards compete with them when comparing price/storage.
quote: how many batteries I should be carrying?
The Canon DSLR, D-30, D-60, 10D and 3000D line of cameras have proprietary batteries. I can get about 200-300 RAW photos on one battery. But it is always a good idea to have an extra battery. You can find the Canon BP rechargeable batteries for less than $25. The vendor I mention before has them for around $12 and I plan to buy two extra ones from him. I have three but I shoot on average 400 photos a day and I use camera's photo review and histogram much of the time to check for blown highlights. That puts a heavy drain on the batteries. I find that with two batteries, I have the a camera battery grip, I have drained them and ready to go on the third battery. Now things get worst like now, winter time, the cold weather helps drain the batteries faster.
Bill
Posts: 454 | Location: East Elmhurst, NYC, USA | Registered: 12 September 2003
Bill--there are endless debates about the pros and cons of RAW vs. JPEG. There is a very good short report comparing the two here: http://tinyurl.com/yuldv
Shooting in one or the other depends on how you are going to use the images--slide show, large prints up to 13 X 19, small prints, web, images for illustrative pieces etc. The software that comes with the Canons for RAW conversion do not complement the potential quality of the RAW images. There are programs that do but these are quite expensive. I use Capture One and Photoshop CS for reading RAW files. While both are very good, Capture One is a bit better.
The Rebel makes for an excellent travel camera, especially with the 28-135 F3.5-5.6 IS USM lens attached. In 35mm terms that lens would be equal to aproximately 52-205mm. The IS (Image Stabilizaton) will permit achieving decent shutter speeds in low light. I would guess a two stop improvement.
Peter
Posts: 1345 | Location: Essex Fells, NJ and Longboat Key, Florida | Registered: 21 July 2002
I'm now positively dangerous. I always take my laptop to upload my photos daily, and now I have just taken deliivery of a Lexar 256MB CompactFlash. I bought it mail order from J&R in the U.S. Only around $50.00USD while it would have cost $200USD if I'd bought it in Australia. 256MB allows me to store 150 photos at the absolute highest resolution.
Amazing; thank you all (so far). My mind now at ease on the batteries, at least: the car recharger sounds nice, but I knew I should have kept up with the weightlifting; carrying a car as I hike around is not possible for this nondriver without much more training than I currently have....
On memory use, some of your advice reads like Chinese -- lay it down to me being no photographer -- but you've fed me the buzzwords to search for, as well as framing the topic so I can teach myself online; and then I should have a month to train myself with the camera before I leave.
My main reason in thinking RAW is that I'm not sure how much zoom capability I'll have, or will I be able to attach my current Minolta telephoto lens to the camera, so I may have to depend on digital zoom and on large files to get what I sometimes want. Zoom aside, I've used my photos so far, as most of you know, primarily online; but would like to have the option of publication-quality photos as well. My best results with the former have been with TIFFs at 7MB which I then reduce to JPEGs in the 100K-200K range. The few book-quality photos people have used of mine, I scanned from 35mm negative to around 30MB; although a church in Indiana is using 12 of my photos of churches in Rome for their 2004 calendar just off the press: I'll be getting my copy in a few days and am eager to see the results, based on 7MB scans or in one case only a 1+MB scan (said to be satisfactory, but we'll see). The laptop, a Mac of course, uses something called I-Photo, I think; and use PhotoShop back home, so have been hoping to avoid using Canon's software.
I hope a month is time enough to experiment. I need to have this buckled down before I leave!
quote:and how many batteries I should be carrying?
Bill
I bought a dual-voltage battery recharger at Target...it uses AA or AAA batteries, NiMH, and all you need to add is the plug for Italy. Our camera uses 2 AA batteries, and the recharger holds 4, meaning we always have a set ready to go. It's not very bulky, either.
Gavin I want you to know that (in an effort to take a careful technical look at your pictures, although are these with your current camera setup??), I suddenly got moist in the eyes at one of your photos. Not the gamberi in salsa verde, no, but this one of Spello and her plain.
Hi, You have a few options. There are quite a few places in Rome that will take your memory card and create a cd for you. Then you can reuse your memory card. I personally use Photo City to development my digital photos. They have some of the cheapest prices around anywhere, including the US. And the photos are delivered within 1 business day. This way you can send the photos to your hotel or to the local post office. They have web upload or a client that will do it for you.
In Rome there are several internet cafes. The biggest is Easy Everything. Though, I am not sure if you cannot a digital camera. They do offer service to burn a cd, as well. So you can take your photos and burn while you wait.
Saluti, Brian
Posts: 39 | Location: Roma, Italia | Registered: 31 December 2003
Topic Closed
