*** From the Archives ***

This article is from August 24, 2004, and is no longer current.

Bit by Bit: On the Road with Digital Storage Devices

In generations past, photographers knew to carry an adequate supply of film, and then, after exposing the film, keep it safe until it was delivered to the processing lab. On an assignment lasting days or weeks, this meant carrying lots of film and protecting it after exposure in a camera bag. The inestimable value of already-exposed film made it necessary to carry the stuff around for the duration of the assignment, working to keep the exposed film clearly marked, and the fresh film handy for loading in the camera. Leaving exposed film in a hotel room, putting it in checked luggage, or storing it in the glove box of a car was a formula for disaster.
Once, while shooting in Europe for several weeks, I devised a system of mailing exposed film home using the French postal system’s handy self-sealing shipping boxes. When I had accumulated four or more rolls of exposed film, I would stop at a post office, buy a shipping box, package my film, and send it off — by surface mail to avoid X-rays. Though there was no guarantee of its delivery, my faith in basic postal systems was great enough to entrust my film to them, and it worked. By the time I returned home, all of my mailed boxes were waiting for me. This would most definitely not work today.
With the emergence of professional digital cameras, photographers have moved away from film to solid-state digital cards as their electronic version of film. Though significantly smaller and easier-to-store, media card-equipped digital cameras create a new kind of problem: where to download images and where to store them when you’re on a long-term assignment.
Rocket Science!
On Monday, June 21, I was one of thousands who witnessed and documented the successful flight of SpaceShipOne (see Figure 1), the first privately financed, civilian-piloted flight into space (it flew to 328,491 feet altitude). In all of my life I have never seen so many professional journalists in one place — hundreds (maybe thousands) of them — all armed with digital-still and -video cameras. The cacophony of all those shutters was nearly deafening as the diminutive spacecraft touched-down.

Since I shoot for documentary purposes — not breaking news — I tend to shoot (or at least keep) more photos than my colleagues, which gives me a greater store of material later than those journalists who are shooting for tomorrow’s paper or tonight’s news broadcast (my work on this project will ultimately be part of a large-scale documentary). I observed my fellow-photographers shooting in rapid-fire sequences, then later in the news center watched as they chose the best two or three images and sent them off to the home office. That kind of work is a luxury that I don’t have; instead I chronicle the day before the event, the day of the event, and the day after, filling-in background photos of the planning and the debriefings after (see Figure 2), and I have tens of gigabytes of images when I finish the day.


Figure 2: Investor Paul Allen, pilot Mike Melvill and designer Burt Rutan stand by SpaceShipOne after the successful flight in Mojave, California, June 21, 2004.

So the question for me is, as always, how to retain all those raw images while continuing to shoot to — and past — card capacity?
Comparing Camera Strategies
I’ve discovered and experimented with several options for downloading and safeguarding images taken with digital cameras:
1. Carry enough memory cards so that photos can stay on the cards until you get back to the office. This is a solution only for the rich, as purchasing enough cards to do so, in my case, would put me in penury. When I go out on photo assignments, I currently carry $1,200 worth of Compact Flash cards, and the risk of theft or loss of those cards is real (when not in the camera I keep them in a little wallet in my pocket). More significantly, I shoot in Raw mode, and each photo weighs in at over 7 MB of information. With 1-GB cards, I can store about 125 photos per card, limiting me to about 500 photos total. In two or three days I run out of space – usually sooner.
2. Off-load photos to a portable computer. I occasionally fill two or three Compact Flash cards in a single day, forcing me to move images off memory cards and onto my PowerBook during the course of the shoot. This is not a problem, except that the PowerBook then becomes the most valuable thing in the world, as it contains all of my work while on the road. As a result, I cannot risk leaving my laptop in a hotel room or in a car, and I’m reluctant to carry it for weight and risk reasons. With this offloading-strategy I am clearly on the horns of a dilemma.
3. Visit Internet cafés. As I travel, I often see storefront operations that provide public access to the Internet. Many of these shops will transfer the images on memory cards to CDs for a fee. On a recent day in Venice, Italy, I passed two Internet cafés, each offering to transfer digital images to disc. The price was six Euros (about $7.50) per disc, and they promised immediate service. This is a great option because the discs can stay in my camera bag, I don’t have to carry the PowerBook everywhere, and the security of the data on the discs is very good. CDs are not affected by X-rays, they weigh nearly nothing, and each one holds about one hundred of my raw images.
Another option with Internet cafés is to send photos from the café to a host server back home (.Mac accounts are accessible from anywhere). With broadband-connection speed, transferring a few images to a server is quite practical. Transferring much more than that, however, is impossibly slow. Sending a CD’s worth of images would take hours, and would be expensive at the per-minute rates of Internet cafés. On my recent trip I sent four raw photos to my local newspaper from an Internet café in Austria. I felt confident that I had been successful as I paid my 11 Euros ($8.75 for the Internet access, $5.00 for the coffee), but later learned that the café’s network had blocked my files due to their size and subsequently never sent them! The coffee was very good, however.
4. Use a portable digital storage device. Last year, while doing a week-long assignment in Yosemite for “Boys’ Life” magazine, I used a storage device called a Mind Stor (read my previous story “Play the Digital Photo Game!” for more). I had paid nearly $500 for this device, and it worked well, but I found it unacceptable overall because of its speed and terrible battery life. The company went out of business, and I later loaned my Mind Stor to a friend to use on a trip to the Galapagos Islands. I “forgot” to get the Mind Stor back when he returned from his trip.
Pocket Storage
But technology improves over time, so I again pursued the idea of portable digital-storage devices, and on several recent assignments I used some of the latest generation of pocketsize storage. Where Mind Stor was weak, this new generation is strong. I now carry a small device in my camera case that provides ample storage space, includes some modest editing capabilities, and which is secure enough to store my images while I continue to work. Since it is with me while I work, it provides a depository for field storage, and I don’t fear its theft from my car or hotel room.
At the flight of SpaceShipOne, for example, I shot a total of 442 photos, slightly more than the capacity of my available Compact Flash cards. I had one of these drives with me and transferred two cards’ worth of images to that unit. Then, I used my PowerBook to edit the images down to a few that I posted on news services and two that I sent to the local newspaper for which I shoot as a stringer.
After carrying one or more of these units for a month, I have become quite fond of them, and have learned to trust them as field-capable storage units (one device even lets you view short video clips, and two play back music). Because I was using several different brands, I started to call them all by the same name: “gadget.” Compared to my rather miserable experience with the first generation of device, the gadgets all performed nicely, their batteries lasted a reasonable amount of time, and their functionality was excellent.
The Gadgets in Action
The first of the three gadgets I tested was SmartDisk’s FlashTrax, a versatile disk storage unit in capacities up to 80 GB — enough for a professional photographer on assignment. The unit I tested had a 40GB drive, and this worked well for me over three weeks of intense field photography. The second gadget I used is Epson’s P-1000, which is the same size as the FlashTrax with similar functionality but with only 10GB of storage. The third gadget was the Belkin Devices Media Reader for the Apple iPod. I borrowed my wife’s 40GB iPod for this experiment, and loaded that unit with photos from my camera over a period of days. Nikon has the new CoolWalker MSV-01, but it wasn’t available in time for this article, so I will have to test that unit later.
Across the board, these storage gadgets are slow to transfer raw files and high-resolution images from the Compact Flash card to their internal disk. In their defense, they do a lot of work while making the transfer, converting Raw files into viewable images and creating small thumbnail images for indexing. The FlashTrax and Epson both have a simple operating system and file protocol that is similar to a Windows PC. Epson assigns image numbers 1-2-3 over the more cryptic DSC_5409.NEF or …JPG files. This scheme makes it easier to work with images in the viewing window, but it’s frustrating trying to find the images by their original numbers when the P-1000 is connected to my computer as an external drive (see Figure 3). Despite the renumbering on its screen, the files on the internal disk have the original camera-generated names. So I might be looking at image 89 in folder 20040626.001 but seeking image DSC4352.NEF when looking at the directory from my PowerBook.


Figure 3: The Epson P-1000 shows up as an external USB hard disk when plugged into a computer. The dates folders are created by the device automatically when you insert a Compact Flash card into the gadget. With the exception of the naming schemes, the FlashTrax and iPod behave the same way.

Another drawback is that the process of transferring images from the card to the gadgets can be painfully slow, especially when compared to transferring images from a Compact Flash card in a Lexar FireWire card reader. Figure 4 shows the details:


Figure 4: The time (shown in minutes) to transfer 50 images from Compact Flash to each of these devices is significant, and the time needed to move them to your computer is also significant (except for the iPod adapter). Bold shows the best time in each category. Transfer from a FireWire card reader is provided for comparison (using Image Capture creating previews).

The speed improves when these gadgets are connected to a computer. When connected, the gadget shows up on the computer as an external hard disk with images in folders. The Epson and the FlashTrax operate as USB devices, while the iPod is connected via FireWire to the computer with its supplied dock.
To a working photographer, the issue of transfer speed, card-to-gadget, is very significant. If you are using the gadget to be a repository for images, and working in a journalistic event, you must allow time for the transfer to take place. In my experience over the course of more than one month, each card of approximately 100 images took between 8 and 15 minutes to transfer to the gadget’s internal storage. Assuming that you have a back-up Compact Flash card (or two), you can continue to shoot while the transfer takes place. Staring at the flashing LED that ticks-off the time while your card is transferring images only seems to make the transfer go slower.
SmartDisk FlashTrax
Overall, I liked the FlashTrax best of the units I tested — adequately fast in both transfer from the card to the gadget and from the gadget to the computer (see Figure 5). Its screen is nice for simple review and editing of photos. Battery life is quite good, and recharge time is fair. For photojournalistic use, I strongly recommend carrying an extra battery ($69.95) to carry in your camera bag, because a dead battery will really spoil your day.


Figure 5: The 40GB FlashTrax with its clamshell LCD panel open. Images can be viewed, deleted, or copied from this window (screen image simulated). The quality of the LCD panel is good, but images appear slightly soft when viewed on it. Overall, this is an impressive gadget.

FlashTrax will store and play short video clips from most consumer digital cameras, playing the sound through a tiny speaker in the front (I did not try this, however). A clever additional feature is that it stores and plays MP3 files, which you can listen to via the speaker or a headphone jack on the side.
The 40GB version I tested has the capacity to store several days’ worth of images, and I never ran out of space while working. Even in high-pressure situations, the 40GB model should have enough space for most shooters. The additional $200 for 80GB may be worthwhile to those shooting with very high-resolution cameras such as the Canon 1DS or the Kodak 14n.
To transfer images from a Compact Flash card to the FlashTrax, all you do is insert the card into the opening in the front of the unit and push a single button. Immediately, the device springs to life and transfers images from the card to a folder. The folders are automatically named with the date and letter (20040812a-b-c, etc.), so there is no chance that one folder will overwrite another. You can activate the transfer without opening the LCD viewer — which conserves battery life — and the unit shuts off when finished. A flashing LED indicates that it is busy with the transfer.
I reviewed my images every afternoon, and occasionally passed the gadget around on planes and busses for others to see. I explained how to use it (click on the up and down arrows) and others were try it without difficulty. FlashTrax offers the option of presenting a slide show on any NTSC or PAL television set or digital projector (cable provided). This would be a valuable tool when working with a client team on a photo assignment.
The clamshell design protects the LCD panel from scratches, and the card receptacle opening in the front is convenient (though I lost the rubber grommet the first day).
Belkin Media Reader for iPod
For those photographers who already own an iPod, this device can be a nice addition (see Figure 6). At only $109.99, it’s a bargain. However, I found that as my Raw and TIFF camera files ate up disk space, making it necessary to sacrifice some music files in order to store a lot of photos.


Figure 6: The $109.99 Media Reader for iPod. This connects to any of the recent iPods with a built-in dock connector (but not the iPod mini). Compact Flash cards, and others, inserted in the unit on the left are copied to the iPod (display simulated here). To retrieve them, just plug the iPod into its dock, and then open the iPod as a disk from the computer. There is no image preview.

The device is well made and very sturdy. It supports CompactFlash, Smart Media, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, and others card types. The transfer rate from the Compact Flash to the iPod was, in my opinion, unacceptably slow (about 1 minute per 7.5-MB image). On the other hand, the transfer of images from the iPod to the computer was stunningly fast.
With no preview or editing of images, one must treat this device as a method for offloading images from memory cards only, and it does that well. In the field, a photojournalist would be smart to carry extra memory cards – and to be patient while the images are transferred.
Epson P-1000 Photo Viewer
Epson has parlayed its skill in making beautiful LCD screens for projectors, applying them to preview panels on printers, and now, as the display screen on this device (see Figure 7). More colorful and detailed than the LCD panel on the FlashTrax, the Epson is as its name implies truly a Photo Viewer.


Figure 7: The Epson P-1000 Mobile Photo Viewer has a gorgeous LCD display (simulated here) and an internal disk of 10GB. Controls are nice, and performance is good. Overall impression: very nice, but a bit slow to transfer images from memory card to the unit, and then on to the computer. Ten gigabytes is too small for a working photojournalist, but more than adequate for the prosumer photographer. Sharing images on this device is a pleasant experience.

I would like to see greater capacity, as 10GB is not enough for me to shoot for several days, or even one event like the SpaceShipOne flight. I would fill this unit very quickly in practice.
Speed of transfer is not as fast as the FlashTrax, but much faster than the Belkin Media Reader. Speed to the computer, when connected as a USB drive, is also slower than the FlashTrax. Neither of these is serious enough to discourage its use, however. It’s important to remember that transferring images from camera memory cards to any of these devices takes time, and a back-up memory card could save the day.
The beautiful LCD panel on the Epson gadget is surface-mounted, and there is no protection for it. The unit comes with a nice carrying case, though, which is a necessity in the field, or the panel would get scratched.
Battery life is good, and recharge time is also good. I had no difficulty with the battery dying prematurely. A second battery might be an option, though it isn’t easy to change in the field (it looks like it might be a portable phone battery). Epson does not list the battery as an accessory in its product literature.
The Epson will connect to a television set or digital projector in NTSC or PAL for slide-show presentations, and it connects directly to a USB CD writer and several Epson printers so you can print directly from the P-1000 without a computer in the circuit. The device supports both Print Image Matching, Epson’s breakthrough gamut-enhancement technology (licensed by many camera manufacturers) and exif print, used by numerous digital cameras to “order” prints directly from the camera.
It’s very well engineered, a truly handsome product, and a nice addition to any serious photographer’s camera bag. If image quality is the issue, then the P-1000 is the obvious choice for field recording and display of digital images. If capacity is the objective, it is not the best choice.
After field-testing three of these units, I am convinced that professional photographers can profit from their use. The value of having a reliable, portable storage-and-editing device is tremendous. For “prosumer” photographers, the benefits are even greater; these gadgets allow photo-sharing in the field (you can pass them around for others to view your photos).
Read more by Brian P. Lawler.

  • anonymous says:

    This is a Q more than comment. The ipod + adapter obviously requires software. Why can’t an action be written to allow the ipod to use the Lexair Firewire cardreader directly, rather than a device not using firewire?

  • anonymous says:

    Have the Nixvue Vista from Jobo; worked perfectly. Used at hotel in evening — had enough CompactFlash cards for a day’s shooting (not a professional, but take a lot of pictues).
    Can be bought from manufacturer as “rebuilt” and guaranteed for much lower cost.

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