The question comes up often in class “What options exist for storing my images when I am away from my computer for long periods of time, but don’t want to lug around a laptop?” The answer? …
Your options are really good, actually, and there are a number of devices on the market. There are three categories of these devices : record-retrieve, record-retrieve-review and multi-function. record-retrieve devices will download the images from your media card and provide no functions to review your image from the device. Once connected to a PC, the images can be copied onto your PC or reviewed the computer while still on the device. record-retrieve-review devices will allow you to review the images on the device themselves. These may also allow you to playback slide shows on the device and will allow you, once connected to a PC, to review and retrieve the images to your computer hard drive. The last type, the multi-function devices are more likely to allow the reviewing of images and video, playback of video and sound, playback of mp3 music files, and support a number of different formats for image review including RAW images and histogram data.
- SmartDisk
- Smart Disk Photo Bank, and the
- Flash Trax XT.
- Epson
- Digital Foci
- Image Tank
May 4th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Hi Teddi & Keith,
We are really enjoying the class thus far. After reading the vacation tip post and reviewing the options I am curious which one you would recommend. I see that some do not have the capability to store RAW images, correct? Please offer any suggestions you may have.
Thank you!
Emily Vera
I think I posted this in the wrong place, earlier… sorry!
May 7th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Emily -
Good question. We can’t *recommend* any of them, only give you our experience with what we have used. We have the Vosonic 8360. We bought the bare device, purchased our own hard drive and installed it. The only reason we did this is to get a hard drive which we would have a warranty on greater than 1 year, and also have a hard drive which we know something about.
Almost all of the devices will store whatever is on your card. The problem is will they be able to display it.
The Vosonic will actually display RAW images, which was a compelling feature for us – it’s not clear whether the others display RAW, but many of them are coming on board with that functionality. Your best bet is to check the details of the device if that’s an important feature for you.
The best thing to do is decide which device fits your budget and then decide the features you want like RAW viewing, histogram, wireless transmission, etc. From there your choices will probably be pretty clear.
A good resource for getting views “from the trenches” is http://www.dpreview.com. Go to their forums and search for the device you’re interested in. Folks are pretty honest on there ( sometimes brutally so ).
Thanks for the comment! Good luck!