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123webguru News Desk
Vacation Tips: What Your Camera Needs
AS visions of vacation come into focus this summer, it's time to get your digital camera ready for the road, too. While digital cameras can free you from lugging loads of film, they also tend to run out of two things when you're away from home: power and memory. Here are some tips on coping with both.
Pack Enough Power
Because of their liquid-crystal-display screens, automatic focus and flash, some digital cameras can be greedy little pigs when it comes to battery life. Keeping an eye on your battery is important, as you don't want to see a panicky power message in the middle of your bus tour of London.
Many digital cameras run on AA batteries, either the rechargeable type or the disposable cells you can buy at the drugstore. Other digital cameras come with their own rechargeable batteries supplied by the manufacturer.
Alkaline batteries are often the least expensive, but they also have a comparatively short life compared with other battery types - just a couple of hours sometimes in heavy flash situations. Many manufacturers are now making AA-size batteries designed just for power-mad digital cameras, and these could give you more shots between battery changes. Energizer, for example, estimates that its E2 lithium batteries can last seven times as long as ordinary alkaline cells, but they do cost more, around $5 for four AA batteries.
Rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries cost more (about $15 to $20 for a pack of four AA cells), and you need to buy a charger, but they usually last longer in the camera and cost less over the long run - if you remember to pack the charger, that is.
You will also need to consider plug adapters and possibly voltage converters if your vacation takes you to places with electrical standards different from those in North America. Check the power adapter or manual that came with your digital camera or battery charger to see what voltage and frequencies it can handle.
(There's a chart of international electrical standards at www.travel-island.com/technique_standards/plug_ins.html.)
Plug adapters slip over the prongs of your power cord to make it fit in a foreign socket, but they don't usually convert the voltage. You can buy voltage converters and inexpensive plug adapters in travel stores or electronics shops like Radio Shack. If you're going to several countries, the Kensington Travel Plug Adapter ($20) can save suitcase space; the small barrel-shaped device has push-up prongs that fit the outlets in 150 countries.
Thanks for the Memory
It's great to get away from the desktop, but sooner or later your camera's memory card is going to fill up.
The simplest solution is to buy a few additional memory cards to swap in and out of the camera. Memory cards can be expensive and easy to lose, though. Another option is to find a gadget to serve as an image vault so you can dump the photos from your memory card for safekeeping.
Several companies make image vaults (also called digital photo viewers), and in addition to copying and storing photographs from a memory card, these tiny hard drives can display your photos, too.
Devices like the Archos AV420 or the SmartDisk FlashTrax typically store 20 or 40 gigabytes of photographs and are much easier on the spine than hauling around a laptop. Prices run from $280 to $500, so it's a considerable investment.
If your camera uses Secure Digital (or SD) memory cards to store its images, you can also use PalmOne's new LifeDrive device as an image vault. Promoted as a "mobile manager," the hand-held LifeDrive (about $500 at www.palmone.com) has a four-gigabyte hard drive with an SD card slot. In addition to storing photos, the LifeDrive can play music and video files and can even connect wirelessly to the Internet so you can browse the Web and send e-mail messages on wireless networks.
Another photo storage option is the iPod. The color iPod Photo model works with a snap-on widget called the iPod Camera Connector ($30), which lets you connect the camera's U.S.B. cable to the iPod. Then you can copy your images onto its hard drive and even view them on its screen.
The iPod Photo also has the power to display your photos on a television screen after you connect the two together with a special Apple audio-video cable. But you will not be able to show your photos on the big screen until you have connected the iPod Photo to your computer and synchronized the images, which will probably happen when you get back home (unless you take your laptop).
You can also copy photos onto a regular iPod if you don't own the fancy Photo model. Belkin makes two different gadgets for transferring pictures to an iPod: the Digital Camera Link ($80) and the Media Reader ($100). The Digital Camera Link connects directly to the camera. With the Media Reader, you pop your memory card out of the camera and insert it into the device to transfer the photos onto the iPod. The photos cannot be seen until you connect the iPod to your computer and transfer them.
If You Bring the Laptop
Toting your laptop to stash the photos on your camera's bulging memory card does have some advantages. For one, if you use an online photo-sharing service like Shutterfly or Kodak's Gallery and can find an Internet connection, you can share your vacation photos before you even get home. And e-mailing photos to friends from the hotel gives you the chance to send personalized postcards without having to buy stamps.
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