From: Simon Plant Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 11:58
Hi,
I'm wondering whether to buy a laptop or a portable storage unit to download cf
cards onto.
I'm going to be shooting raw on the 1ds mk2 with 2 x 2gb cards.
People I know with laptops don't tend to use them on location as they are a
pain and not much fun on the beach !
The SmartDisk FlashTrax looks a good compromise or may be the new Apple i pod.
Any suggestions?
Dear Simon,
I use both on location but it depends on your location. If I'm up the mountains I am not going to take the laptop, it is physically stupid to do so, so I carry the FlashTrax. It is unbearably slow and only handles about two full downloads before battery failure but it is a lightweight portable solution. I hear others concerns about storage failure but so far so good. It is always scary deleting camera cards after download but you do have a zoom facility on the FlashTrax to check focus and accessibility. If I'm doing "car based" locations then I will often take a laptop and keep it in the car mostly. However, with two, three or four large microdrives I always tend to shoot cards and download to my laptop at the hotel, B&B, Tent later that evening!! Has worked for me for last four years (laptop option anyway- Flash Trax only since last Feb).
HTH - PS In my experience I would NOT go for the biggest most expensive laptop - it is usually only for doing cataloguing, renaming and archiving work and I never use it for colour adjustment or editing work, the screens are pretty basic. I use an iBook which is neat & compact. I'm not prepared to carry � 3000.00 of G5 Powerbooks around, vulnerability, space, weight etc.
FWIW
Glyn
Art Photo Wales www.artphotowales.com 0845 2262034
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