Traveling: How many memory cards and should I back up?

[Tailgunner]

I've got a couple big trips planned this year and was curious as to how many cards is enough? And does anyone use the second memory card slot as a back up on vacation trips (provided your camera has dual slots)? I'm using a D800 so the files are large (my photo files are generally around 75MB). The D800 has two card slots, CF & SD and I can get roughly 400 images per 32GB card and 800 with 2/32GB cards. Using one card as a back up mean only getting roughly 400 images per card change. I don't mind changing cards and buying extra cards. I'm just trying to gauge if this is a good practice or not.

My card stash:

Ordered: 2X CF Pro Lexar 32GB 1000x speed rating read/write 150MB
Ordered: 2X SD Class 10 32GB 90MB

Have on hand:

2X16GB Pro SD Class 10 90MB
2X16GB CF (misc non Pro cards)
1X misc 32GB SD 30MB

Thinking about buying:

2X CF Pro Lexar 16GB 1000x/150MB cards to go with my 16GB SD cards.

That would give me 2 sets of 32GB cards and 2 sets of 16GB cards equaling roughly 1200 images with back ups. Each trip is a maximum of 5-7 days.

 

[Trblmkr]

If that were me, that wouldn't be enough. I can fill up one 32Gig card on one 3 hour shoot. If was doing something like you, I'd take my laptop to dump the photos to at the end of the day.

 

[Derrel]

Do you travel with a laptop, and are you able to back up onto flash drives?

 

[table1349]

Take laptop along with a small 500gig or 1Tb portable drive. Shoot to cards, back to hard drive.

 

[JoeW]

I've got a couple big trips planned this year and was curious as to how many cards is enough? And does anyone use the second memory card slot as a back up on vacation trips (provided your camera has dual slots)? I'm using a D800 so the files are large (my photo files are generally around 75MB). The D800 has two card slots, CF & SD and I can get roughly 400 images per 32GB card and 800 with 2/32GB cards. Using one card as a back up mean only getting roughly 400 images per card change. I don't mind changing cards and buying extra cards. I'm just trying to gauge if this is a good practice or not.

My card stash:

Ordered: 2X CF Pro Lexar 32GB 1000x speed rating read/write 150MB
Ordered: 2X SD Class 10 32GB 90MB

Have on hand:

2X16GB Pro SD Class 10 90MB
2X16GB CF (misc non Pro cards)
1X misc 32GB SD 30MB

Thinking about buying:

2X CF Pro Lexar 16GB 1000x/150MB cards to go with my 16GB SD cards.

That would give me 2 sets of 32GB cards and 2 sets of 16GB cards equaling roughly 1200 images with back ups. Each trip is a maximum of 5-7 days.

I don't know where you're going and what you shoot like. I'll share my experience. We took a family vacation to Northern California...did Yosemite, SF, Muir, Big Sur. I was shooting 300-450 exposures per day (as RAW/NEF files), would copy them to a portable hard drive each night and then overnight do a cloud backup/transfer of the files, then reformat the card (once I'd confirmed that the copy to the hard drive worked). I had two cards in the two slots of my body plus I had an extra 3 cards. My philosophy is that sometimes you get a bad card. Or the transfer can't happen (no electricity or internet that night or no time to do it).

I understand using the 2nd slot as a backup when you're shooting a wedding or as a photojournalist where there is no "do-over" of a big event. But if you're someplace where you're shooting a lot of exposures (let's say...Yellowstone...or a safari trip in Botswana) then you're going to have your hands full keeping track of which cards are the "backups".

One last point--two philosophies on card size. On philosophy is to get a huge card so you aren't having to swap cards (and expose the guts of the camera to dust or moisture). The other is to shoot with nothing bigger than 16 MB b/c you don't want to have 2-3 days of killer photos and then...lose the card...or discover it's corrupt. It's the difference between putting all of your investments in one mutual fund or splitting it among 3.

 

[D-B-J]

San Disk 256GB ExtremePRO CompactFlash Card, Up To 160MB/sec SDCFXPS-256G-A46


Five of those.

 

[Tailgunner]

Thanks guys!

I ordered a portable 500 GB external HD. I'm going to play with it and my current photos to see what I can expect it to hold.

 

[table1349]

Approximately 6,800 photos.

 

[lucian]

I have a EZDigimagic DM-120 (it's and older unit). It will burn your CF/SD card to CD or DVD. I burn my card to a DVD, verify same on my laptop then, for important stuf, burn a second DVD. You can burn to each disc more than once. When the disc is full I get a "Disc Spamming" then use a new blank disc. My version runs on an AC/DC adapter, or 4-AA, or it can be used in the card with a cigarette lighter attachment/cord.

The nice part about this is you can get CD/DVD almost everywhere you go. You do collect discs this way but they do have their good points.

Affordable Backup Device - Battery CD burner - Budget backup device

 

[robbins.photo]

I've got a couple big trips planned this year and was curious as to how many cards is enough? And does anyone use the second memory card slot as a back up on vacation trips (provided your camera has dual slots)? I'm using a D800 so the files are large (my photo files are generally around 75MB). The D800 has two card slots, CF & SD and I can get roughly 400 images per 32GB card and 800 with 2/32GB cards. Using one card as a back up mean only getting roughly 400 images per card change. I don't mind changing cards and buying extra cards. I'm just trying to gauge if this is a good practice or not.

My card stash:

Ordered: 2X CF Pro Lexar 32GB 1000x speed rating read/write 150MB
Ordered: 2X SD Class 10 32GB 90MB

Have on hand:

2X16GB Pro SD Class 10 90MB
2X16GB CF (misc non Pro cards)
1X misc 32GB SD 30MB

Thinking about buying:

2X CF Pro Lexar 16GB 1000x/150MB cards to go with my 16GB SD cards.

That would give me 2 sets of 32GB cards and 2 sets of 16GB cards equaling roughly 1200 images with back ups. Each trip is a maximum of 5-7 days.

Well haven't been on a trip yet myself since I got back into photography, but I am planning a short trip this summer and when I go I'll be taking my laptop - I'll dump the camera to the laptop and I have an external drive to backup to when needed.

 

[sonicbuffalo]

I've got at least 3-32GB Sandisk flash cards and every night I would back up to my computer and then my Seagate 1 TB (I have 2 of them) hard drive backups. I feel secure.