Use a hard drive device like the Epson P-2000 to increase photographic image storage capacity

The Epson P-2000.
Click to enlarge.

Bicycle Touring and digital photography work well together in many ways. While on tour you are likely to be exposed to numerous scenic sights on a daily basis and often the sights appear at a time when a short rest is welcomed.

Unfortunately two aspects of digital photography can make things difficult. These two aspects are power consumption and photo capacity.

Power consumption can be tackled by using a camera that can take standard AA batteries, obtaining an ultra fast powercharger to allow more recharged batteries in as little as 8 minutes (making a lunch break recharge in a restaurant an option) or using an alternative method like solar, wind or even pedaling power to get the batteries recharged.

Photo capacity is trickier than it would first appear. The obvious answer is to just pick up a few more memory cards. With more cards you have more capacity and a reduction in dependancy on one card always working. Unfortunately even though memory cards are much cheaper than in the past the costs still add up.

One variable in determining your required capacity is the number of pictures that you take on a daily basis. During my Round Lake Erie tour I took an average of 8 pictures a day. Going around Lake Huron the number climbed to 33 per day. It will be interesting to see what happens when I go around Lake Michigan.

As the cards fill up a solution I've used in the past is to look for a photo processing shop or an internet cafe and burn CD copies of the images on the cards. I had to do this twice during the Lake Huron tour despite carrying 3.0 GB of cards.

The Epson P-2000 cover with a CD for size comparison.
Click to enlarge.

Another alternative is a device like the Epson P-2000. This device contains a 40 GB hard drive, an integrated SD and Compact Flash card reader and a LCD screen. The LCD screen is actually more important than you would think at first glance!

With just a card reader and a hard drive you can transfer the files but how safe are you going to feel about deleting the pictures off your cards if you have no idea if the pictures transferred safely or not? The integrated card reader allows you to determine this very easily. This LCD screen has fantastic display quality making it very nice to use for selecting pictures that you want to keep.

This device like many others of the same type also allow you to play/store mp3, video clips and other data files. When connected to a PC it appears as an external hard drive allowing you to easily transfer files over a fast USB 2 connection.

I've been using the device for a short time now without any problems. The display capability is very nice and the controls are easy to use. It will be interesting to determine how well it holds up to the rigours of a long distance bicycle tour. An update will follow once 2000 touring kilometres have passed.

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