jstar Loc: Western MA

I recently bought a new desktop (windows 8, lightroom) I am going on vacation and I bring my laptop (windows 7) I take a lot of photos in RAW, with a 36mp camera. My question is what's the best way to store the photos and then get them into my main computer when I get home?

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

Hey jstar, typically I will store my photos on my laptop then transfer them using a flash drive or Dropbox when I return home. This way I can make sure I got what I wanted and enjoy them while I travel. If you want to bypass the laptop though and have a fast internet connection you could go right to Dropbox or one of its clones. Either way, it is pretty easy. Enjoy your trip and post some photos here. Steve

Haydon

If you have both computers on a network you could share folders on both computers and drag and drop the files.

jstar Loc: Western MA

I just looked into dropbox. Thanks. Between that and a few flashdrives, I think I'll be fine. Thanks again. I'll post a few when I get back

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

you don't necessarily have to wait until you get home to get hem into your home-based computer, or into your hard discs at home.

Having traveled with laptops and traveled wih IPads, for me the choice has been simple since an app called " Go to my PC" is availablefor the iPad and for downloading in my Dektop PC back home (which MUST BE LEFT TURNED ON WHILE YOU ARE TRAVELING.)
You also need a Dropbox account with access by both your iPad and your desktop PC.
So....
make your pictures,

download image files, (jpegs or RAWs)from camera or SD card to iPad,

Do your first edit in iPad, and discard your throw-aways,

Upload the keepers from iPad to Dropbox.

With " Go to My PC" get your P.C.'s desktop visible on your iPad ( you are now controlling your PC back home from your iPad...as well as all its applications, files, and attached hard drives)

Using your P.C. download the keeper images from Dropbox to P.C. and put them into whatever back-up files in hard drives that are accessible from your PC.

AND, if so inclined, start PP on images you made that day.

yeah...it's a whole new world for the traveling photographer!

and be aware that there are IPads with 128 Gb !

Dave in SD

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

Use a portable hard drive. Take it with you and hook to laptop while traveling, then when you get home, just hook it up to the desktop computer!!

schuchmn

Just make sure you have more than one copy stored before you reformat your memory cards.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

As you likely know, Lightroom provides the functionality to store a copy of your image to a different location during import, so when I'm on the road with my notebook, I will import the photos to LR on the notebook, and have it put a copy on a small (160 Gb) portable drive that I have. This way, I can view the photos I take while on the trip, and play with them to some degree. It also gives me two copies of my images before I re-format the card.

When I get home, I simply connect the small drive and perform an import on my primary LR installation (my desktop PC). It works well for me.

An alternative is to simply carry a sufficient number of SDHC cards and carry them back home full of images. They've gotten cheap. My concern with this is that it's the ONLY copy I have of those images. But, even then, you can copy the images to the notebook for safe-keeping.

Good luck. You'll figure out what will work best for you.

amehta Loc: Boston

I believe jstar is already on vacation, but I'll add my $0.02.

The most important thing, as some have mentioned, is to have 2 copies of all the pictures you care about. I don't want to spend the time sorting/filtering while on vacation, so I have 2 copies of all the pics.

The first question is how much storage do you expect to need. The RAW images from the D800 are about 45MB (14-bit compressed), so 1000 pictures would require 45GB.

Then there are basically 6 options for storage:
1. memory cards
2. laptop hard drive / tablet storage
3. external hard drive
4. flash drives
5. online storage (like Dropbox)
6. storage back home

If you won't fill your memory cards, the easiest thing is to keep the pictures on the cards and copy them to your laptop. If you don't have enough space on your laptop, then flash drives would be good for the second copy, they cost less than half as much as the same size memory cards.

If you will have good network access, then #5 or #6 are options, but I find that is rarely the case. Remember that upload speeds are generally 1/10 the download speeds, and it may not be reliable. Who wants to deal with that hassle? And if you have good network, maybe you need to find a more remote place to vacation. ;-)

If you will fill your memory cards, then an external hard drive is the best option. I was recently in Australia and New Zealand for 5+ weeks, taking about 7000 pictures, so I used 2 external hard drives.

The other thing that really helps with RAW 24-36mp pictures is a USB 3.0 or Firewire 800 port, USB 2.0 is painfully slow. If your shooting lower res jpegs, USB 2.0 is manageable.