Poll: USB from camera or external card reader?

USB from camera or external card reader?

  • Attach the camera to the computer via the provided USB cable and transfer files over

    Votes: 8 25.0%

  • Remove memory card from camera and put the files on the computer using an external card reader

    Votes: 24 75.0%
  • Total voters
    32

James J

James J

James J

Soldato
Joined
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Posts
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Location
North Lincolnshire
Just interested in seeing how OcUK forum users transfer their pictures to their computers for editing/archiving etc?

Choices are as follows! (I'll try and get a poll setup):

  • Attach the camera to the computer via the provided USB cable and transfer files over
  • Remove memory card from camera and put the files on the computer using an external card reader

I personally use the USB cable as my camera uses CF and my MBA has an inbuilt SD card slot. Never felt the need to get an external CF reader, which is why I'm interested in why people buy such devices! Perhaps I'm missing some sort of trick :D
 
Raymond Lin said:
Can you transfer 8G in under 4 minutes?
Click to expand...

Never timed it, yet I tend to start processing files as soon as the first one is transferring to the mac, so how fast the transfer actually is tends to be irrelevant for me anyway. Suppose the way you work when it comes to PP would also be a deciding factor to this.
 
James J said:
Never timed it, yet I tend to start processing files as soon as the first one is transferring to the mac, so how fast the transfer actually is tends to be irrelevant for me anyway. Suppose the way you work when it comes to PP would also be a deciding factor to this.
Click to expand...

Speed is relevant because there are loads of cards, and I don't start until they are all in. Then sync them in when it is all in the HD, not sync it every time I add more photos (that's just wasting more time).

One 8G card takes 4mins, 10 takes 40minutes. plus swapping time.

USB 2 takes something stupid like 20 minutes, I don't want to spend 3 to 4 hours transferring photos.
 
Yeah but how many photos do you try and transfer to your PC and how often? Its all fine and dandy talking about transferring 2000-3000 photos after you've shot a wedding and left numerous other shots from the week on other memory cards, but for day to day shooting and smaller jobs, none of that is required at all, nor necessary.

I've got a 16gb CF + 16gb SD card in my D300s atm and the max number of shots I've transferred to the PC in 1 go was just over 1000. It had finished transferring all of them into my aperture library before I'd got even a third of the way through the first cull of shots, so an external card reader still wouldn't have been beneficial to me even then.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Speed is relevant because there are loads of cards, and I don't start until they are all in. Then sync them in when it is all in the HD, not sync it every time I add more photos (that's just wasting more time).

One 8G card takes 4mins, 10 takes 40minutes. plus swapping time.

USB 2 takes something stupid like 20 minutes, I don't want to spend 3 to 4 hours transferring photos.
Click to expand...



You should get A D800 with usbo 3.0, faster than FireWire cf crd reader apparently:D
 
I use a card reader as I think the USB connector to the camera is less robust than the card slot but I use SD. I don't know if I'd feel the same if I used CF with all those tiny pins....
 
I use a card reader for two reasons, speed after a trip away it's just easier to empty the 8GB cards that way and also for convenience the card reader is permanently plugged in so no looking round for cables and the battery never goes flat in it.
 
I use an external reader. I use a laptop, on my lap, so having a camera dangling off it from a cable isn't good!
 
I use an external card reader, sometimes I just use the camera but one time I had y old D70 connected through USB and I totally forgot about the cale, got up from my desk to get a cuppa and tripped over the USB cable sending my camera to the floor, destroying my lovely 18-70mm :-(

From that point on I tend to not keep the camera near the computer but put it away it belongs.
 
Both, My CF on the DSLR gets removed and plugged into a reader.

However the bridge camera I now have for product shots (always set up) when on the tripod means I have to remove camera from the shoe to get to the card slot, so I just leave the usb next to it to plug straight in.
 
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