Storing images off the Sigma SD-10

I have a question for someone who I hope will give me a solution.

I am going travelling for 7 months with my SD-10 I don't want to buy tons of micro drives my question is, is there a card reader out there or hard disk with enough intelligence in it to be able to pull the images from the camera that runs on batteries preferably AA batteries.

My understanding is that the camera cannot push the data from it the data has to be pulled off.

I have e-mailed Sigma and their reply was consult your specialist so all you specialists out there can someone help.

There are many image tanks on the market, where you can put your CF card in and than copy the files on a internal hard drive.

Or when you have a Notebook, buy an additional external drive and store the files on it or burn DVD or CD to store them.
I would do it in one of that ways
Thomas
Tristram wrote:
--
http://www.pbase.com/aroid/
http://www.panodrom.de (QTVR site)
Never ask a man, which computer he used.
If it is a Mac, he will let you know.
If he did not, why mortify him?

Tristram said:

I have a question for someone who I hope will give me a solution.

I am going travelling for 7 months with my SD-10 I don't want to
buy tons of micro drives my question is, is there a card reader out
there or hard disk with enough intelligence in it to be able to
pull the images from the camera that runs on batteries preferably
AA batteries.

My understanding is that the camera cannot push the data from it
the data has to be pulled off.

Click to expand...

My suggestion is a small portable pc, with a card reader. They run on proprietary batteries, but there are chargers that can be used in cars and/or with ordinary wall power. A pc battery lasts for hours, which means quite a few downloads if you don't turn it on for anything else. As a bonus, you can run SPP on it when you have wall power. Some portables have the card reader built-in, which means one device less to drag around.

Whatever you do, don't bother downloading from the camera. It is way too slow. Get something you can stick the CF card into - any reader is way faster than using this camera as a reader. Even the cheapest.

If a portable pc is too big, consider a PDA or something like this: http://www.oqo.com/

If a new pc is too expensive, consider getting a used one. The performance will be low, but you won't need any performance for storage duty only. Just make sure there's enough disk on it.

Helge Hafting

Thomas

Thanks but will be back packing through China and I deffinatly do not want to take a Laptop way to heavy. You mentiones X-Drives what are theas and where can I find out more information about them?

Tristram.

Thomas Mottl said:

There are many image tanks on the market, where you can put your CF
card in and than copy the files on a internal hard drive.
Or when you have a Notebook, buy an additional external drive and
store the files on it or burn DVD or CD to store them.
I would do it in one of that ways
Thomas
Tristram wrote:
--
http://www.pbase.com/aroid/
http://www.panodrom.de (QTVR site)
Never ask a man, which computer he used.
If it is a Mac, he will let you know.
If he did not, why mortify him?

Click to expand...

Hi Tristram,

I bought an old Toshiba Libretto 100 from eBay, not dearer than some of those imagetanks. Overclocked to 233 MHz, added RAM, and a 40GB Harddisk. Running Windows 2K, it is slow but reliable. I use a CF--> PCMCIA Adapter, because Firewire card in the Libretto is way too slow.

So, storing is a matter of seconds, the Libretto does Suspend to Disk quite quick and reliable. If you need to convert images from X3F to jpeg you will need lots of patience because that slow machine will need several minutes.

This little computer is the size of a VHS cassette, and it is sturdy enough to have survived several long motorbike holidays. My SD10 too, btw.
Coming home, I connect it to LAN and transfer the images to a "real" computer...

For me this was a reasonable priced way that gave me more control over the image saving process. I would never trust some gadget where you slot in your CF and push a button, not knowing what is happening exactly.

If you just want to store the X3Fs without having the possibility to convert them on your way, you can even run the Libretto on Linux...

Regards, raven

Google is your friend
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=image+tank&btnG=Search&lr=
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=X-Drive&btnG=Search&lr=
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tripper+storage&btnG=Search&lr=

Hope it helps and wish you much fun and tons of pics. Hope you will share them with us
Thomas

Tristram said:

Thanks but will be back packing through China and I deffinatly do
not want to take a Laptop way to heavy. You mentiones X-Drives what
are theas and where can I find out more information about them?

Tristram.

Thomas Mottl said:

There are many image tanks on the market, where you can put your CF
card in and than copy the files on a internal hard drive.
Or when you have a Notebook, buy an additional external drive and
store the files on it or burn DVD or CD to store them.
I would do it in one of that ways
Thomas
Tristram wrote:
--
http://www.pbase.com/aroid/
http://www.panodrom.de (QTVR site)
Never ask a man, which computer he used.
If it is a Mac, he will let you know.
If he did not, why mortify him?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/aroid/
http://www.panodrom.de (QTVR site)
Never ask a man, which computer he used.
If it is a Mac, he will let you know.
If he did not, why mortify him?

Tristram said:

I have e-mailed Sigma and their reply was consult your specialist

Click to expand...

At least you got a reply, even if it shows they don't have a clue.

Tristram said:

so all you specialists out there can someone help.

Click to expand...

Tristram said:

I have a question for someone who I hope will give me a solution.

I am going travelling for 7 months with my SD-10 I don't want to
buy tons of micro drives my question is, is there a card reader out
there or hard disk with enough intelligence in it to be able to
pull the images from the camera that runs on batteries preferably
AA batteries.

Click to expand...

Any portable storage device should work, as they all just copy whatever files are on a CF card to the HD. You just won't be able to preview if the device has that capability.

However!! If you are going to be gone for seven months, consider a small laptop (like an iBook, the more durable the better) with a DVD/CD burner. Every week or so burn that weeks pictures to TWO DVD's (or CD's), then mail them out seperatley to some fixed location (like your parents house).

The reason for this is that for seven months worth of photos, you may need a lot more storage space than any storage solution will provide you... and over that period of time I would consider it dangerous to only have one HD holding all your most precious data, so it would be ncie to dump things to a backup over time.

Are you going to be somewhere that power will be an issue? If you are worried about having power to charge devices that don't use AA's, you can look into portable solar chargers that work with many electronics.

--
---> Kendall
http://www.pbase.com/kgelner
http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/user_home
Alaska gallery: http://www.kigiphoto.com/alaska

Kendall Helmstetter Gelner said:

Tristram said:

I have a question for someone who I hope will give me a solution.

I am going travelling for 7 months with my SD-10 I don't want to
buy tons of micro drives my question is, is there a card reader out
there or hard disk with enough intelligence in it to be able to
pull the images from the camera that runs on batteries preferably
AA batteries.

Click to expand...

Any portable storage device should work, as they all just copy
whatever files are on a CF card to the HD. You just won't be able
to preview if the device has that capability.

However!! If you are going to be gone for seven months, consider a
small laptop (like an iBook, the more durable the better) with a
DVD/CD burner. Every week or so burn that weeks pictures to TWO
DVD's (or CD's), then mail them out seperatley to some fixed
location (like your parents house).

The reason for this is that for seven months worth of photos, you
may need a lot more storage space than any storage solution will
provide you... and over that period of time I would consider it
dangerous to only have one HD holding all your most precious data,
so it would be ncie to dump things to a backup over time.

Are you going to be somewhere that power will be an issue? If you
are worried about having power to charge devices that don't use
AA's, you can look into portable solar chargers that work with many
electronics.

--
---> Kendall
http://www.pbase.com/kgelner
http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/user_home
Alaska gallery: http://www.kigiphoto.com/alaska

Click to expand...

To add another possible, there are external CD burners designed to accept CF cards, but I think Kendall is correct. If you can get a cheap laptop, you can do basic editing before burning the CDs, or at least check to see that you have pictures to burn to a CD or save to a HDD. Some external burners and HDD's do have LCD preview but I doubt if many have X3F conversion capability.

Also you may want to post an inquiry in the "Storage and Media" forum here on dpreview. They probably have the latest news on what is available if you decide to go that route. Best of luck.
Pete

Tristram said:

I have a question for someone who I hope will give me a solution.

I am going travelling for 7 months with my SD-10 I don't want to
buy tons of micro drives my question is, is there a card reader out
there or hard disk with enough intelligence in it to be able to
pull the images from the camera that runs on batteries preferably
AA batteries.

My understanding is that the camera cannot push the data from it
the data has to be pulled off.

I have e-mailed Sigma and their reply was consult your specialist
so all you specialists out there can someone help.

Click to expand...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

have you concidered using the Apacer CP-100 or CP-200 battery powered portable CD burner ??
If you use 512mb cards you can dump them on a blank CD-R.
Just leave the burner in your camera bag with some blank CDs

http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english/product_html/disc_steno_cp200.asp

here's another link to info on the Apacer CP-200 with more info than the one above

http://www.central-camera.com/Digital/miscellany/apacer-cp200.htm

As an alternative solution, which really does run on AA cells. how about this:-

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=-9785&TabID=1&source=15&WorldID=&doy=11m2

Add a HiMD player ( http://www2.sony.co.uk/himd/ ) and a cheap CF reader, and you can store 350Mbytes per standard Minidisc.

MDs are also more likely than CDs to survive a rough environment.

Plus, of course, you can take music with you, and the whole thing will be light to carry when you're trekking.

I should say that I haven't actually tried this combination, but it should work.

Incidentally, use a CF reader, rather than trying to download from the camera, as the camera can only download to SPP, and a card reader will be more reliable than the camera interface.

--
Thanks,
Gary.