Travelling with a digital camera

Hi

I am planning a trip throughout Southern Europe including Italy. France, Spain and Greece. I am also going t o Morocco, Turkey and Egypt. I plan to backpack or maybe go on some short term bus trips staying at youth hostels. My dilemma is that I am taking my digital camera and one 250 Mb flash memory card. As I am bound to fill that flash memory card from time to time I am wondering whether there are places I can burn the contents of the flash card onto a CD so I can then empty the flash card and use it again.

Has anyone had any experience with any places that allow you to burn CD'd ?

I travelled with a digital camera myself last year, but ended up with a pile of memory cards. However, if I had insisted I'm sure most cyber-cafes will help out.

The one place where I DID this was in Chania, Crete. The cafe is called 'Kathodon' and is situated in the old town. Western Crete is well worth a visit:

Dear Robert,

I had the experience last summer using my camera in Bolivia. I tried but I had problems trying to pass the photos to the computer after installing the driver.

Anyway you have to find a cybercafer where you can find permission to install a driver/software if your camera use it.

Many many cybercafes, most of them, have CD burn service.

Regards,

Aitor

I'm going to be starting a long trip soon as well, and one thing I thought about doing was buying a couple more 256M cards, and then whenever I fill one, mail it to a friend back home, who will then download the photos and post them to my site, and send the card back to me c/o a postoffice wherever I think I might be. I thought about doing the CD thing, and I still might do so as a backup, but I'd be worried about breaking/damaging/losing the CDs, particularly since we might be gone for quite a while.

Has anyone tried this? Think it is unrealistic?

Cheers,

-b

Seems pretty scary to me.

I'd rather mail cheap and replaceable CDs than expensive and potentially irreplaceable memory cards. Heck, make 5 CDs and send them back different ways.

Some places you'll be able to electronically transfer the data back for a reasonable charge. A full CD-ROM would cost about $5 worth of computer time in Singapore or Malaysia, cheaper than reliably mailing it and absolutely guaranteed to ensure the safety of your data.

just spent 2 months travelling around asia.....took 5,000 high quality photographs.... and all with 3 smart media cards, 64 MB each. my secret... the X-DRIVE. for about 200$ i bought the x-drive and its a laptop harddrive in a case with slots to insert digital camera cards (flash, smart media, memory stick) i have a 40 gigabyte hard drive in it now, but you can change it, so maybe i will put a 120 gigabyte drive in it. works perfect. best thing I ever bought for travelling. and you can also hook it up to any USB port and use it as a storage device, not just digital photos...

'> just spent 2 months travelling around asia.....took 5,000 high quality

That's a lot! does 5000 shoots are really necessary, personnally traveler and photograph, I do not consider that the number of shoots is relative to the quality of the pictures, if you want to 'think' every picture to give it meaning the 'japanese atitude' (just an expression) that concist to shoot over all the time do not seems so the best way. By doing this you also risk to do not have the consideration of peoples that you take pictures and you also might miss the sharing time spend with them while you ask permission to make picture...

I thought doing the X-Drive thing; the problem, though, is that if you some how damage the drive (or even get it stolen), you've lost all your photos. For a couple months it's probably fine provided you're careful, but for an extended trip, it's too much of a risk/worry (at least for me).

I think the ideal device would be a box that takes a memory card and a CD-R, and burns a CD for you...and of course can run on batteries so you don't have to worry about lugging a power converter kit around with you everywhere.

-b

Go to the big gaming places, but go in the morning before the shoot-em-up kids show up. They make the most money and have the best infrastructure.