Storing Images on Long Trips

When you go out for a trip of several days or weeks, how do you handle image storage? Do you carry enough memory cards to last you the whole trip? Do you carry a laptop with you? Do you carry a portable hard drive? I have two systems. If the trip lasts less than a week, I take two 16 GB cards and two 8 GB cards. At night I review my shots on the camera and delete the obvious losers. For trips lasting longer, I take my laptop and copy my shots over to it. I also take blank DVDs and burn them, giving me an immediate backup of my photos. I don't have a portable hard drive. I'm about to head to Sichuan, China for two weeks. I'll be needing to travel as light as possible. I'd like to avoid taking the laptop. What do you suggest?

I usually take my laptop, a 15'' MacBook Pro, which is not too heavy and external harddrive(s), preferably Firewire 800.

I backup to a netbook and a Wolverine Portable HD that has a built in card reader and viewer. Epson and Sanho also make them. I also have a 32 GB flash drive and several Western Digital portable hard drives that I can take if I think I'll need more space or if I don't want to bring the netbook and will have access to a computer then bring a card reader and I can download to the portable HDs and/or the flash drive. I make sure while traveling to have 2 forms of back up and to carry them separately.

Craig,
I try and carry enough memory cards so I never have to erase and re-use any on one trip. Foe example, on my last Africa trip, I took 120 GBytes of compact flash (used about 80 GB). With memory cards getting cheaper each year, this becomes easier.

If I can I also take a laptop (varies in weight, even a netbook at under 3 pounds). If the laptop is too much weight, I take one of those storage devices like an epson P5000. If that is too much weight, then it is CF cards only. With the larger screens on the modern cameras (last !2 years), it is more reasonable to edit
in camera.

Roger

I use a Color Space UDMA 320 Gig and a lap top. I copy the images from the Color Space to the Lap top so I have 2 copies when traveling. If the lap top proves to be too heavy for the weight restrictions of a trip I would just use the Color Space. This has not yet occurred in many overseas trips.

On my last trip to Africa I used a Toughbook laptop and a portable USB 2.5" hard drive. I had Downloader Pro set up to transfer from the CF card via a USB card reader to both the hard drive of the laptop and the USB drive at the same time, thus having 2 copies of every image. The portable drive was kept separate to the laptop in case of loss/theft of one or the other. This was a cumbersome but secure setup and somewhat dependent on vehicle or mains power to recharge batteries every couple of days or so. The Hyperdrive is looking like a good option worth exploring to avoid carrying a laptop.

one of the nice features of lightroom is when your downloading your images it has a box right there to also copy to a 2nd location, so I download them to my laptop HD and an external one at the same time

and I make sure the laptop and the external HD are packed in separate bags just in case they lose the luggage :)