Cameras and travelling

Mint_Sauce · 29 Oct 2006 at 17:59

I'm off to do some traveling soon and will be taking my trusty 350D and lenses. There's a few things I think I need though and I'm not sure who does the best ones etc.

Firstly, I'll be in a scoobydoo type camper van so will have access to a cigarette lighter slot and need to charge my 350D batteries. It will be a van from New Zeland, maybe they have real plug sockets on board and I can get a plug converter, anyone know?

Then I'll need somewhere to put all my images, I have a 2gb card but that'll probably last a day. So I'm looking at buying some kind of storage bank for it. I've seen kind of portable hard drives with memory card slots on them so you can plug your card in and it downloads all the images to the hdd. Some have a screen on so you can view the pics. Anyone know of any good makes?

Finally, I'll be needing some insurance for all the gear. I've got a fair amounts worth of camera gear (around £3300). How much will it cost to insure it all and anyone know any good companies that I can do that with?

Anything else I should think about?

Cheers!

Scam · 29 Oct 2006 at 19:22

As far as insurance goes, you could check whether or not your gear is covered worldwide under your house contents insurance? Worked for me and saved me a bit.

As for storage, shamelessly quoting from a thread i made in a similar position to yourself:

jhmaeng said:
3. You can get PSDs (Portable Storage Devices) that will allow you to dump the card's content onto the built-in hard disk of the PSD, freeing up your card for the new batch of photos. Think of it as a 2.5 inch external hard disk, with a built-in battery and a CF slot. They vary a lot in price depending on whether they have a display, what size hard disk they have inside etc, but lots of discussions on dpreview and other forums that you can check out.

I personally ended up buying a couple of spare 1GB cards in Hong Kong, as well as a spare battery (very nice to know you have one in your bag at all times). As for dumping images i simply went into camera shops and paid the extortionate costs to have them burn them to DVDs. The better/more pro the camera shop, the cheaper it was. Prices ranged from $10nz to $30nz. Not too bad. I was wary of getting a PSD because if you lose that or break it -- you're ****ed

That was my opinion anyway, i was backpacking.

Mint_Sauce · 29 Oct 2006 at 19:40

Scam said:
As far as insurance goes, you could check whether or not your gear is covered worldwide under your house contents insurance? Worked for me and saved me a bit.

As for storage, shamelessly quoting from a thread i made in a similar position to yourself:

I personally ended up buying a couple of spare 1GB cards in Hong Kong, as well as a spare battery (very nice to know you have one in your bag at all times). As for dumping images i simply went into camera shops and paid the extortionate costs to have them burn them to DVDs. The better/more pro the camera shop, the cheaper it was. Prices ranged from $10nz to $30nz. Not too bad. I was wary of getting a PSD because if you lose that or break it -- you're ****ed That was my opinion anyway, i was backpacking.

Unfortunately I don't have any house insurance.

I don't have much here that's worth a great deal.

Thanks for the tip with the PSD, i've looked at a few and the wolverine looks like the least hassle and best unit out of the lot (for what I want). I may consider buying a PSD as I only have a 2gb CF and would hate to miss out on pictures because of a full cf card!

FranchiseJuan · 29 Oct 2006 at 22:38

I have used a couple of the Vosonic models of PSDs and they have been fine. I curretly travel with my notebook. If you want you can go to Power in numbers and see a large range of vosonic XS drives, and good prices for CF cards. I use to go there in person when I lived in Melbourne. If you need good performance, then the Next to CF stuff is amazing. It can do a 1 gig in about 3-4 minutes (as aposed to the 9-10 minutes for the latest generation of XS drives), but does not do MP3 or any of the other stuff.

Scam · 30 Oct 2006 at 18:20

Mint_Sauce said:
I may consider buying a PSD as I only have a 2gb CF and would hate to miss out on pictures because of a full cf card!

Are you sure you'll be ok with just one card? You surely wont be carrying around the PSD everywhere you go will you? I'm not saying dont get a PSD, i'm just saying having a spare card (like a spare battery) is a godsend sometimes. It's nice to know that you can go nuts when shooting, whereever you go.

Mint_Sauce · 30 Oct 2006 at 19:24

Hmmm, very true Scam, I'll look in to that too! This is costing me a fortune and I haven't even got there yet! I've just decided I'm getting a 5D so that's more expense (but I can't wait!).