Toronto Photography Meetup Group

some thing that you can just stick your CF card in, and up load at the touch of the finger?

and exchangeable hard drive at the same time ?

any one know of any thing like/similar to what im saying

hyperdrive

Hyperdrive UDMA - bought mine (without a drive, have a spare laptop drive) from Filmplus.

Why not just buy a Netbook?

Epson P6000/P7000, bit pricey, but has great display for liveview/tethered shooting

I'm very tempted to pick up a netbook myself esp with the single carry-on policy when flying to the US. That means I can no longer carry my camera bag AND my laptop bag. My laptop is too big (or I've got too much camera gear) to fit in my camera bag.

With all my mem cards, worst case scenario if I use them all up, I will have at least 200GB of storage space on the netbook to dump images to.

I've found that having a laptop with internet access is one valuable tool when on vacation. I can look up things to do, see and directions etc. Well, I can also email back pics of the beach to the friends back home.

USB OTG devices aren't like the ones mentioned so far!

USB OTG is a smaller box with two USB connectors...one for the "copy from" device, and the other is the "copy to" device.

That's different from the photobanks mentioned above...photobanks have a built-in card reader and hard drive...the "display" may be as simple as two LED lights (Power and Busy), a basic LCD display that gives you the status, or a full colour display that can also show images.

Having used both a USB OTG device and various photobanks, the photobank is much easier to deal with on the road as the only cable you have to worry about is the power cable (if the battery is low).

With the USB OTG device you have to have a cable to the OTG device from the card reader, another cable to the hard drive from the OTG, and then if the hard drive doesn't have it's own battery you need another cable to the wall outlet.

OTG's aren't meant to be used in the middle of nowhere, whereas a photobank you can use anyway as long as the battery holds.

I can't be bothered to carry a laptop with me. Not even a netbook.

I bought this from Vistek:http://www.vistek.ca/store/FramesPhotoDisplays/241026/digital-foci-photo-safe-ii-250gb-midnight-blue.aspx
I'm quite happy with it. Very small and light.

Recently I've seen this as well:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.781
the price is attractive but I have not tested it.

don't think anyone mentioned anything about devices that need a usb connector.

i got a colourspace hyperdrive udma last august.



went to film plus which was the only retailer in toronto that seemed to have one to check it out. unfortunately it was just cheaper to order from the company website. i picked up a 500gb 2.5" sata hdd from canadacomputers. i'm very happy with it. small, compact, light, simple GUI, reliable and the battery lasts (enough). only complaint is i wish it cached the thumbnails. i'd fully recommend it.

unfortunately, the epsons seem to have much better screens (actually photos look much better on that than on an actual computer which can be bad in itself), they can play movies but they can suffer from long bootup time... so the hyperdrives aren't the best in everyway.

in retrospect there were some times when i wished i got a netbook, the lack of internet on vacation had a big impact. after returning from vacation and researching about locations, that knowledge woulda added alot to the trip experience.

The OP mentioned "on the go storage device" in the subject which is USB OTG.

Re-reading the text though it's obvious after the fact this is not what the poster meant.

That's the middle of the night.

If you are going to also use this device to show your portfolio, then the Epson is a good choice (even a used one). However, they are pricy compared to everything else that is available out there. One complaint I do have is the battery, I really wish it would last longer. Plus, you cannot transfer photos from the device to your computer without having the AC power connected.

Not meaning to hyjack this thread, but does anyone have an Epson device? And if so, do you have any secondary batteries for it ... the Epson brand is hard to justify at $59 US from B&H or $95 Cdn from Vistek.

Almost forgot to mention, you can replace the drive on this device. I have a P-3000 which is a 40 Gb and I found that it can be replaced with a 100 Gb drive. Now that my warranty is up, I'll have to ghost the drive and replace it with the larger one.

I shoot with Nikon (D70) in RAW and carry 4GB cards. When the cards are full or I've finished shooting for the day, I dump the cards to my Epson P-2000 AND to a Hyperdrive Colorspace. When I get home, I transfer the files to my iMac by date and rename them. Then I use Aperture for editing. After time, my desktop hard drive becomes full and I backup my negatives and Aperture projects to DVD/USBDrive and delete the files from my computers. Weekly I backup my computer.

I prefer to have the smaller 4GB cards in case they get damaged etc. I dump the cards to two devices because then I have an immediate dual backup on me at all times. I only delete files from the portable storage when they become full. My portable storage devices are for backup only. I do not use them to display my "portfolio" or as media devices for music or video (the Epson P-2000 can do this but I don't like it). My portfolio and other media are stored on my iPod Touch 32gb, Blackberry, and on my website.

I would prefer to have a second Hyperdrive but I already have the Epson P-2000 that was purchased new, and I wouldn't even touch it if I had the second Hyperdrive. The Hyperdrive is also much more compact, faster, has better battery life, and you can easily upgrade the harddrive just by putting a new one into it. (Personally I regret buying the Epson P-2000, I bought it for portable video but it has been very difficult to convert video that will playback properly - always had audio/video sync problems. Don't know what the newer Epson's are like but why bother when the iPod Touch is available.)

A netbook is okay, but I'm never going to do any photo editing on the road. I save it for the desktop iMac at home.

What I would really like to see (read as PAY A LOT OF MONEY FOR) is a Nikon Portable Storage Device that can connect via wireless to my Nikon cameras (from the D70s upwards) so I can control my camera settings and preview my images remotely, just like running a tethered computer. It would have to be a flatscreen device with controls mounted on the side of the screen (not touchscreen commands because I want to use it with gloves on). It should also run on the same batteries I use for my camera so I don't have to carry around another recharging device. I'd be willing to accept that such a device would not also be able to remotely control my lens (zoom, focus) or tripod mount. .

Epson P3000 ... works well, nice screen, no complaints.