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Media Data Storage Hardware

NYT on Photo Storage Devices 69

Posted by timothy from the like-totally-massive dept.
prostoalex writes "New York Times reviews hard-drive-based photo storage devices for digital photographers on the go: 'The photo vaults in this roundup - the Epson P-2000, Jobo GigaVu Pro, Archos AV420 and SmartDisk FlashTrax - present a wide range of choice in size, shape, bells and whistles.'" (Pogue also discusses Apple's and Belkin's devices to use an iPod for the same purpose; I only wish Apple's worked with the non-Photo version of the iPod.)
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NYT on Photo Storage Devices More

NYT on Photo Storage Devices

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  • If wishes were horses timothy (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, then you'd have something to ride. Apple, shockingly, wants you to buy their photo capable device and isn't going to give you a feature for free when they could make you pay extra for it.

  • None of these... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by demondawn ( 840015 )
    Really made me want to run out and buy something (but then, I'm not a professional photographer.) It seems to me, though, that what a photographer might really want is a CAMERA with a nice big screen to see the pictures that have just been taken, and with a BUILT-IN hard drive to take lots of high-quality pictures. These products all seem like just boondoggles.

    • Re:None of these... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Zapraki ( 737378 )

      It seems to me, though, that what a photographer might really want is a CAMERA with a nice big screen to see the pictures that have just been taken, and with a BUILT-IN hard drive to take lots of high-quality pictures.

      At first glance, that does seem like the most logical solution. Eliminate the middle man.

      But there are two reasons I can think of why it seems unlikely for this type of solution to be pursued anytime soon:

      1) For pros: In a word, BULK.

      Adding that extra-big screen and hard drive to the c

    • In addition to making a camera bigger and heavier, adding a HDD and Bigger Screen would kill a lot of batteries, which adds another consumable product that weighs a lot. Carrying More batteries is NOT fun.

      Medium Format Digital cams usually have a tethered HDD for storing gargantuan files (The Hasselblad Digital SLR at 22MP generates a 140MB file).
    • Most pro Digital camera's have a 1.8" LCD on the back.. This is enough of a screen to see if you've over-exposed, under-exposed, got your whitebalance correct, and check shadows. That is about it. There is not enough real estate on the screen to see detail. A serious photographer doesn't want to take the time to check every shot, you will setup a few test shots, look at them, dial in the camera, then shoot away. From then, you wait until you load up photoshop to see how they really look.

      The idea of a

      • of course, my girlfriend, the real photographer (I just play one on TV) says that one handy thing about the LCD screens is discreetly passing them around weddings with order forms.. I found this line hilarious. but that is because i am on my fourth can of labatt blue dry 7.1....ymmv. Honestly.....mod parent up!
    • I think there is a point is to have small, dedicated narrow-use devices where each device does it's job very well. This way, you can mix and match product features and have more flexible means of lightening up by not taking certain devices with you.

      I'm not convinced that merging all these things is a good idea. A hard core photographer is concerned about lense quality, sensor quality, available third party lenses and so on in the camera. Products that merge a lot of functionality and have a camera in th
    • well.. I don't see too many pros actually wanting to buy a camera with a built in 400gb honker, maybe something at the end of a cord that you'd keep in your vest or something... and a pro would already have a camera that he fancies(or can afford). and well, a pro would know what he's shooting, the screen is more useful for amateurs in that regard as a feature(no more missing heads from family pictures.. that's the biggest thing digital photographing has done).

      these products are for you, or me, on a holiday
    • It seems to me, though, that what a photographer might really want is a CAMERA with a nice big screen to see the pictures that have just been taken

      No. A big screen to make sure you got the shot right? A professional photographer knows how to use a light meter and/or the histogram. A big LCD is for morons. What a professional photographer would like (as a professional photographer) is a giant, big-honking viewfinder, because it's damned-near impossible to quickly and accurately focus manually with the
    • A built in HD is a terrible idea. Why? Because it will break. It will break and all the images you've been taking for the past weeks will be gone. Forever.

      Ok, so you stick in a 4GB solid state memory card instead of a hard drive with moving parts. But who in the consumer market needs that much storage? No one. Who in the professionals would? Lots, but they don't want to store it in the camera. They want to take the card out, and immediatly start backing it up in a photo storage wallet like the one
    • It's easy to learn what professional photographers want and it isn't big screens on their cameras. Oddly, at least some of them want these devices even though taking a computer and enough flash storage makes them irrelevant. Photo pros as a group are not the smartest or most computer literate people. Many of them use macs.

  • Belkin Media reader (Score:4, Informative)

    by randalx ( 659791 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:08PM (#12257869)
    The Belkin Media Reader works fine with a non photo iPod. You can't view the pics, even in grey scale, but it does list the number of pictures stored. I can confirm this since I own one and use it all the time. :-)
    • Alas, it is regrettable that many people have gotten to confuse the available features of the various iPods. I work in a university campus computer store and we deal a lot with selling iPods and Apple products in general, it's now become common practice for all of us (the staff) to have to go through about a 5 minute spiel about the features of each iPod and what you can actually do with all of them, which to many of the student's surprise, is quite a lot.
    • I believe they meant the new Belkin device that automatically transports pictures from your digital camera to your iPod via MiniUSB port. That one was slated only to work with iPod Photos I believe, but I could be wrong.

  • hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:12PM (#12257894) Homepage Journal
    as good as these kind of devices get, I can't help but wonder if a sub-notebook would be a better choice in terms of flexibility, I know for sure i'd rather take my ibook complete with it's software bundle rather than try to play with one of these kinds of devices and potentially lose photos.
    • That's what I do when I'm away (although it's not a sub-notebook, just a normal laptop). Dump the cards on it, at night when you're at the hotel (or whatever), you got a nice and big screen to preview, sort, and anything you want. It also burns CDs (in case your laptop gets stolen, or it falls and the HD dies or whatever).

      Last I checked, these were almost as much as a used laptop, their battery life was hardly better, and most didn't even come with an AC adapter in case the batteries were dead (which was b
    • While subnotebooks and smal laptops are useful, they in no way come close to the usability of the dedicated photo storage devices.

      I have a NixVue Vista, and while it's a little bulky I can carry it pretty much anywhere I carry my DSLR. That's simply not true of even a subnotebook unless you want a backpack all the time - and I do not.

      Also, lets you you take a subnotebook. How many hard drives do you have to keep pictuers on? One. That is not sufficient. So the best solution is to carry a subnotebook

  • Memory cards delicate? I don't think so. (Score:5, Informative)

    by adamfranco ( 600246 ) <adam@nOspaM.adamfranco.com> on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:14PM (#12257906) Homepage
    From TFA: WHEN you really stop to think about it, memory cards are a pretty delicate storage format for something as important as your digital photos.

    I couldn't find it on their website, but I recently read an article in (I think) Popular Photography [popphoto.com] where they did some "stress testing" of memory cards. The results? most of the cards withstood submersion in water, drops, baked, frozen, and being run over by cars. As long as they could still be connected to a reader, the data was usually OK.

    Contrast this with a hard-drive-based storage solutions which are comparatively extremely fragile. Now, this isn't to say that I'm not going to purchase a HD-based device for a month-long trip this summer, but the cards are vastly more durable, just not as big or as cheap/GB.

  • Bells and whistles? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:16PM (#12257919)
    That's awesome. I'm a photographer of bells and whistles.

  • Archos AV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Remik ( 412425 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:21PM (#12257940)
    I've had an AV480 for about six months, and it's changed my life. Imagine all the great things that Tivo does for you, and then imagine that you can take your Tivo anywhere. My commute has disappeared thanks to being able to watch the previous night's Adult Swim. I'm not stuck watching crap movies on planes, and I don't have to make any excuses about why I didn't make productive use of my time (the main reason I didn't get a laptop...working on the way to work isn't my idea of a good time).

    As a photo vault, I haven't given it much of a workout. It certainly does everything it claims to do, but it's best for those who have cameras that use CF type I, as I think worrying about an adapter would be too much of a hassle.

    -R
    • Yeah, I got an av420, its smaller cousin. Amazing. I've been travelling for 4 months and its thripped as a video player/recorder, mp3 player, and photo storage device. And it fits in my pocket.

  • Archos support both PAL & NTSC video (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andyvan ( 824761 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @06:40PM (#12258015)
    I have the Archos, and found it incredibly useful on a recent trip to Germany. A German friend had some video he had recorded, and I was able to dub it onto my Archos (PAL format).

    When I got home to the US, I was able to view it in NTSC format, and have since put it onto a DVD.

    I also used it to off-load 2 different cameras, watch a movie, and listen to music.

    Oh, almost forgot, I also used it to record a concert via the microphone, and to record a couple of tracks from an LP via the line-in.

    I didn't miss having a laptop at all, though I do have a PDA to do laptop-like stuff.

    -- Andyvan

  • iRiver (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nukem996 ( 624036 )
    My iRiver H40 has the feature to hook up to any USB mass storage device show a file manager and then you can copy the files/directories you want over to it. If its a digital camera and the pictures are jpg/bmp(which most cameras do save as) you can even view them. The hole player is shown as a USB mass storage so on Linux/Windows/Mac you can just copy files over and not go through some crappy software *caugh* iTunes *cough* If you upgrade the firmware to the international version you can even view avi movie
  • I'd like to see someone make an interface between digital cameras and internet-capable cell phones so that one could simply transfer the image to the phone which in turn uploads it to a web server or sends the images as attachments via email. The only problem with this is some cell phone companies charge per megabyte and thus it could get expensive.

  • Problem with Apple & Belkin devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by j79 ( 875929 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @07:16PM (#12258208)
    A major issue with Apples iPod accessory, as well as Belkin's is the transfer speed from card to iPod!

    It takes about 4-5 minutes to transfer roughly 110 MB of information (iPod device - a bit faster with belkin..) While this may not be an issue with casual users of digital cameras (who only have a 128 or 256 card), people who use higher end dSLR cameras with 1GB cards will find they have to wait 45minutes for a transfer!!

    Even worse is the battery drain caused by using these devices! That little iPod harddrive was not meant to be spinning for 45 minutes straight!

    So for professionals, definitely stick with the dedicated media wallets. Much faster transfers. Larger LCD screens (for certain models), and you won't be killing your iPod battery charge which means more music when your on your shoots.
  • If you don't care about a nice colour screen or the ability to play video consider an Archos Gmini 220 [archos.com] or 120 [archos.com]. They can play MP3 and WMA files, record MP3 files and copy files from a CompactFlash card. If you want to read other flash formats you can get a fairly inexpensive adapter. The 220 can display JPEGs but the monochrome LCD sucks. The 220 is under $200 US and the 120 is even cheaper.

  • I'm a cheapskate... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @07:16PM (#12258213)
    Spending $500 for one of these things seems a little out of my price range.

    A few weeks ago, I ran across cheap enclosure for $20 that's battery operated, holds a 2.5 inch drive and also has a compact flash slot. I tossed an old 10GB laptop drive in it and that was it. I'm not sure who makes it, but I found it through Yahoo shopping.

    Sure, it's the opposite end of the spectrum from the Epson and Archos, and it's pretty low tech (doesn't show the photos, copies the *entire* CF card to the drive, not just the pictures) Still, it works good for my purposes and my wallet is much, much fatter.

  • Another comparison site (Score:2, Informative)

    by tarm ( 583789 )
    Here [fhoude34.free.fr] is another comparison site that compares the usual things like speed, and screen (if there is one) as well as things that other promotional sites often forget to mention like battery life and autonomy. I found it really useful when I bought mine, but it hasn't been updated for a while, and doesn't have some of the more recent models.

  • Kanguru Media X-Change 2.0 (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you are looking for a portable device only for Photo Storage, and can do without "bells & whistles" like a viewing screen, then check out the:

    Kanguru Media X-Change 2.0 [kanguru.com].

    I've been using one for several years now, and it's enabled me to get, what some refer to as "the money shot", on several occasions.

    Supports Compact Flash, Smart Media, Secure Digital, Multimedia Card, IBM Microdrive, Sony Memory Stick

    Available is several sizes, and reasonably priced as well:

    • Media X-change 2.0 20G
      • $179.95

  • Too expensive, not needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lemuel ( 2370 ) on Saturday April 16, 2005 @08:45PM (#12258724)
    The devices looked interesting until I saw the price. Most of them cost more than my camera, and the flash memory getting cheaper having a separate hard disk device just doesn't seem worth it. The screen on my camera may not be as nice, but at that price it is good enough.
  • There is some term I forget what it was but it allowed my girlfriend to plug her camera directly into her 40 gig mp3 player on our trip. This was obviously very useful as a backup medium.

    Increadibly she could naviage in the file system of the mp3 player from her phone and inside the phone from her mp3 player. So she could play mp3's on her camera.

    Camera olympus z-4040.
    Mp3 player is iriver h-340
  • Slower than hell, very short battery life, crashes often (usually taking the card with it) and tends to kill its hard drive.
  • The FlashTrax in this review are awful. I brought one, It has apalling battery life, about enough for 5 or so 256 meg transfers.

    The units are highly unreliable. Mine has the habbit of inverting its screen so it looks like a cheap 1980s VGA screen. This requires a reboot.

    They periodically stop during transfers resulting in a broken directory that can't be deleted. They have a fragile and thouroughly unreliable USB connection. I have destroyed my desktop by not shutting the machine down in the correct or
  • Transcend has a couple of products in this space that I find relatively compelling: The Digital Album, and the PhotoBank.

    I'm about to spend a few weeks in Britain, carrying a digital SLR and a few lenses. I'd love to take my iBook, but it's hard to justify the weight and space for a sightseeing trip where I'll be walking and taking the train a lot - given the weight and space I'm devoting to camera, I just couldn't see taking the laptop. I looked into a lot of devices - I really wanted to go the iPod route
  • What I do is use my older work laptop. It still has some life in it, and is used as my day to day "throw around" PC for commuting to/from work, and for photography trips.

    Advantages: Cost me nothing (was already a sunk cost), Large screen for editing as well as viewing. USB2 transfers. Decent though not generous battery life.

    Disadvantages: Not as portable as a little photo tank, and you do have to wait for it to resume from standby.

    I've found this particularly useful for zoo photography. My girlfriend and
  • I went on a 3 week trip to Madagascar last fall with my 2 Nikon DSLR's and a Flashtrax 80Gb device. I took 6 512Mb CF Cards for the days shooting and at the end of the day I copied them to the Flashtrax device. Even in this very poor country main power was available in most places so the battry life was not really tested but I took a couple of spares for the two days we were in an area where there was no power. I also took an Ipod compatible Solar Panel. This trickle charged my various batteries during the

  • Screenless photo vault? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm in the market for a device like this for an upcoming trip to Europe. The problem is that I don't want a screen; I'd much prefer just an LCD display for status messages. I'd much rather have a smaller, cheaper (especially cheaper!) device with improved battery life, and if I want to review the pictures, I can always do it on my camera before archiving the photos to the device.

    The review only mentions portable devices that have a screen, and I haven't come across many screenless options. The only one

  • I travel with a laptop, but never take it out of the house (or hotel room) where I'm staying (I do have a security cable for it). As long as I unload the pix from my camera every evening, and recharge it for that matter, I've hardly ever filled up a card. I mean really, I can put about 60 shots on my camera, and while I'm out and about I like to live, rather than be continuously clicking away.

    So is there really a serious need for a product like this? Wouldn't the cost be better spent on a larger card fo
    • Old hardware, but I filled a 128MB card with over 200 photos just at one wedding. Newer hardware would probably fill a 512MB card with the same number of photos.

      If I think I'm going to need more space, I have a PocketPC with a CF slot and an SD/MMC slot. I've got a 512MB SD card and another 512MB MMC. Given the relatively low res of my Kodak DC260, I could probably take 1,600 photos before I ran out of space. It's a bit slow, so taking that many photos would probably take a full day.

      Given that the DC260

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