Photo Storage on a Cruise

[Laurie S.]

What is the best/easiest way to handle a large amount of photos on a cruise? In the past, I have always traveled with my laptop and I download them to it. But, on my upcoming cruise next January, I don't want to carry the laptop. I typically shoot 400-500 pictures a day and we have seven diving days. I'll be shooting RAW and JPEG. Should I just buy a good supply of cards, or is there a good way to transfer them from the camera to a portable hard drive?

 

[James R]

Lots of cards or your laptop are the best options. Why RAW and JPEG? Wasting space with the JPEG, IMO.

 

[John A Lewis]

Good question. Most cruise lines have Internet/business centers on board now, so if yours does, check and see if the computers there allow for storage upload to Dropbox or Google Drive. Then you would only need a portable card reader that plugs into a usb slot to transfer your images.

OR, you could use that card reader to transfer the images across their computer to another usb storage drive like the WD My Passport. Have a 2 TB unit myself.

If you are a true belt-and-suspenders type, you could do both. Hope this helps.

 

[James R]

I wouldn't count on having enough bandwidth available to upload to dropbox (or similar).

 

[tamas970]

WD My passport wifi: the same time, you can share the pics via wifi with the buddies who brought smartphones/laptops along. Plenty of space (2TB), enough for 4k videos too.

Accessory Review: Western Digital My Passport Wireless: Digital Photography Review

 

[Laurie S.]

Thanks, I found the My Passport drive on Amazon, that's perfect!

 

[Altamira]

If on a cruise ship, you will find that most cruise lines will not allow you to plug any usb devices into their computers (afraid of having viruses uploaded into their system), and most do not even have a usb port that you can access on their computers. That, combined with the unbelieveably and notoriously slow wifi speed and unreliable reception, make trying to send/share photos, especially RAW, an absolute nightmare on a cruise ship.
My recommendation, after taking thousands of photos (RAW included) on a lot of cruise ships, is to take your laptop (you will thank me), upload the photos into the laptop, and then copy them to a flash drive. That might seem excessive, but after losing sd cards and flash drives, I like having non-replaceable photos on three separate storage devices.

 

[Damselfish]

Lots of cards/USB drives/backup hard drive are all options as long as you have a way to transfer to the device. But I'd give the laptop another thought - it's a better way to look at your pictures than the camera screen and see what you might want to do differently, in time to actually do something about it. Maybe even do a little basic processing and show some things to the non-diving folks. If the issue is your laptop is big/heavy/expensive, you might want to consider a small one mostly for travel. You may not have as much power as your regular laptop but you can get something perfectly adequate that's not very expensive. And a very small/light DVD burner to go with it and have plenty of storage.

 

[ScubaMarc]

i use my android phone with a OTG usb HUB and connect the camera and usb flash drive to the hub and copy directly over from the camera to the flash drive. If you use a hard drive and not flash drive, u need to find a way power the drive. The hub does not have enough power to power the hard drive.

Here is a hub with power, mine did not have the power.
Amazon.com: Kirin Charge Charging Charger Micro Usb OTG Hub Host Cable Cord Adapter Connector with Power Powered for Android Smart Phone Tablet Samsung Galaxy S3 S4 S5 Note 2 3 4 Edge HTC One M7 M8 Desire 820 826 eyes Sony Xperia Z1 Z2 Z3 Compact Goo. Read the reviews first.