If you were going on an 18 day trip with your camera and had no access to any power outlets for the duration of the journey, how would you manage your image backups?

Mark

Multiple memory cards posted back home? Eliminates robbery risk. Though they are small enough to hide in a money belt.

Multiple memory cards is a good plan. Pretend they're film canisters and just fill 'em up, take 'em out the camera, and put 'em somewhere safe until you get home.

Possibly daft question but ... how many pictures can your camera take before the battery runs out? That * the number of batteries you have is the maximum number of pics you're going to be taking. These days that may all happily fit on a single memory card.

There are 500GB portable drives that will back up from CF or SD cards on the move.
They seem to be mainly based out of the USA though - I haven't found any in the UK (although I haven't dug that hard) and run to about £200.
For £200, might be better investing in some more CF cards instead?

If you are travelling wouldn't hard drives be more problematic than CF cards. A dropped bag could lose access to all those photos.

That's true, but given Mark's also carrying a load of valuable camera gear which doesn't enjoy drops, let's assume that he's capable of looking after things.

True but you can never tell. It will be something out of the ordinary that will be the problem. As long as the cameras are insured then you can replace that, but not so easy with the photos themselves.

Oohh must renew my camera gear insurance.
Meant to do that about a year ago and still haven't got around to it. Whoops.

Yeah, I never really thought about extra cards as backup.
My camera has two internal CF card slots and can write to both simultaneously, so I might buy some more cards and do that.

Camera battery power isn't likely to be an issue (though is perfectly valid reasoning) as I have enough camera batteries to cover me and they hold their charge for ages and I can shoot loads on one of them.

I will be taking a fully charged iPad with me, powered off, so at a pinch I can backup a couple of the cards and wipe one of the duplicates.

Now I just need to order 5 more CF cards from Amazon. (8+)

Cheers for the help folks.

Mark

I haven't dropped any of my gear in the seven years that I've owned it, thankfully.

Mark

KISS, in operation at all times. (8+)

Mark

+1. memory cards aren't that expensive, and they're easy to store. Good shout, Hev.

I can't claim to be original. It's a tip I picked up from a photography podcast a while ago.

Check it might already be on house hold contents or could be on your travel insurance. You might have to extend the All risks cover or get it included as a special coverage.

Lexar Pro 16GB 800x CF card = £34.19 each on Amazon.
Lexar Pro 16GB 300x CF card = £93.50 each on Amazon.

I'm at a loss to explain how the slower card costs so much more. (8+\

Mark