[at-l] Digital Photography and Thru-Hikes

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 12:43 PM 9/28/2005 -0400, Steve Miller wrote:
>I'm planning on carrying my digital camera on next year's thru hike and 
>would appreciate suggestions on downloading the images from those who have 
>gone there before.
>
>In the old film days, I could just drop the roll in the mail and let my 
>wife develop them at home.  However, I'm not too keen on mailing a 3/4 
>inch square chip home, risking the loss of 300+ images.  And even if I 
>did, my wife would need a way to access it as currently I just download 
>from the camera to my PC.
>
>I've seen some photo centers that will dump the data to CD.  Many seem to 
>do it in conjunction with printing images (their profit center I 
>suspect).  I don't really want any prints, just to be able to dump the 
>files and clear the chip, and sending a CD home seems ideal.
>
>Have others found most trail towns to have digital photo centers with CD 
>burners?  If not what have you done - short of carrying a boxful of memory 
>chips?
>
>170 days 20 hours 16 minutes!
>
>"No Chance" Steve

Well, there are several options.
You can keep all your photos with you by carrying something like the 
FlashTrax (http://www.smartdisk.com/eWeb/smartdiskus/www/>. They also make 
a portable hard drive (the PhotoChute) that connects directly to your 
camera via USB. It's cheaper but doesn't have a screen so you can't look at 
your photos on the device. You'd have to connect to a computer to browse 
the pictures. If you want to make CDs from your camera Delkin makes a 
DVD/CD burner that will work directly from flash memory cards 
<http://www.delkin.com/delkin_products_burnaway_dvd.html> and here's an 
interesting article with a review of one solution with a list of 
alternative devices that you could research 
<http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/tripper/>.