How to take lots of photos while abroad for a long trip

Thanks for the suggestions! Can anyone tell me approximately how much I am likely to pay to have a 512Mb card transferred to a CD?

Some of the previous comments said otherwise, but my personal experience in Europe three years ago (London, Paris, Dublin) was that about half of the internet cafes I went to didn't have usb access on the computers. Often the computer towers were enclosed in some sort of cupboard or cage, or the tower wasn't even located near to the monitor/keyboard so that customers couldn't access it at all. Just make sure you ask if you will be able to use the usb, before you pay ahead for your internet time.

Thanks, justkevin. I was about to ask a similar question, and now I have two 1 gig cards on their way.

My younger sister is travelling around Europe right now with her digital camera. I bought her a Flickr pro account and once every week or two she sits in an internet cafe for an hour and uploads her latest photos (the bulk upload tool is great). She then transfers them to her iPod, so she has two copies stored away in different places. Even a 1gig photo stick gets filled up pretty quick when you're travelling, and this way she can photograph to her hearts content. She has never had a problem finding a cafe with USB access for her camera, everywhere seems to have it. The cool thing about flickr is that we get to see the photos back here at home. I consider that worth the $30 or so I spent buying her the account. She's gone for a year or two though, so YMMV. Film can be a pain to carry around, and doesn't like being heated etc. When my boyfriend travelled in Europe pre-digicam-era he found dealing with the increasing rolls of film the most annoying part of the trip. So my vote is for a mix of online storage and a portable storage device. Spread your risk and share your photos with your family.

When I went to Europe (for only two weeks, mind you) last fall i faced this same question. After sitting down and adding up the prices for 1GB memory cards and sticks (I have a Sony that uses both memory sticks and CF cards) I decided that the iPod was a better deal and a better alternative for me. I was quite happy with how it turned out. But yes, you get a little paranoid about losing it once you start putting pictures on it. I rarely used it for music, and remember that you can't easily get music OFF of it if you want to clear up space (you have to get it to a computer, etc.). At the time I paid $299 education for a 20GB iPod color screen. $30 more for the camera connector. That was $330 for 20 gigs of storage. It turned out very well. BUT... keep it charged. Moving a lot of photos from camera to iPod kills the battery. And you can't charge and transfer photos at the same time. On the whole it worked out very well for me to use the iPod for this purpose, and hey, now I have an iPod I use every day. :)

I'm going to leave for Europe in a couple months as well, and decided on getting http://www.mymediagear.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=49&products_id=49. The price seemed absurdly low compared to similar models, but I ordered it 2-day Fedex (which was only marginally more expensive than standard for some reason) and tested it out to make sure it was legitimate. It seems like a good answer to my needs. It acts as a portable HD or card reader (there's a switch on it to choose), so you could easily take it to someplace with a computer and double-check that the files are there, or burn a CD from it. I considered getting one huge compact flash card, but the cheaper (large) ones aren't as speedy, which was important to me. While CF is a pretty standard format, I would also not recommend buy lots of media for something proprietary like Sony's Memory Stick. If you switch camera models down the road, you'll need to buy lots of new media all over again. For the record, I also have an iPod with the memory adapter, and am not satisfied with it. It drains the iPod's battery quickly, and I never felt confident that the pictures were transferred. This experience is for the Belkin one and a 3rd generation iPod. One more option for you to consider would be something like the http://www.creative.com/products/pmp/demo/zenvision.asp. It's a portable media player that has a built in memory card slot that you can use to transfer photos to the device, and actually be able to see them to make sure (check out the 'Plug & View' icon for an example). There are other dedicated storage devices that have screens for viewing, but I considered this as an all-purpose entertainment thing that I could use on the trip (bring a couple videos for the plane ride, delete them to make room for photos, still have a decent mp3 library to have for listening, etc.).

Oh - and what Civil_Disobedient said about the charger voltage. My charger happens to be rated for everything from 120-240V, so all I needed to pack was tip adapters. Look on your charger for the specifications - there's no sense in using a bulky converter if your charger can take the native voltage.

When I traveled in Europe, I decided to simply buy enough 1GB cards for my purposes. This ended up working splendidly. I didn't really consider the consequences of losing them, though, but some of the other suggestions in the thread address that. Not having to lug the laptop around was only part of the reason I did this, though. The main reason was that I never wanted to be out somewhere and run out of memory for a shot. With 1GB cards, that doesn't happen. In addition to the cards, I bought two extra batteries. I kept one in the room charging, one in the camera, and another fully-charged one in my pocket.

PercussivePaul, I've been in Europe (and Asia) and the going rate for burning a CD is somewhere between $3 and $6 or $7. I guess with the Euro so high, it might get to $10. Some will let you bring your own CDs for a cheaper price. So I guess if you're shooting an entire CD worth everyday, this plan would get pretty expensive. And then there's the problem of storage. 5 CDs are small. 25 starts to get annoying. You could mail home the disks. It bears mentioning that CDs are not a long term storage solution. For 2 months, you'll be fine. But if it were a year long trip, you'd want to have someone at home copying the files off of the disks as they came in.