My initial thought is to look into a solar trickle charger for my spare battery when out in the wilderness for a couple weeks. I'm also weighing whether to get a hyperdrive cf backup solution or to just stock up on cf cards (the prices seem to be dropping).
Anyone have experience with longer trips out in the wilderness while using a dSLR? I'm shooting with a Canon 1D Mark II and the battery life has been excellent. On my 12 day trips in the past the batteries with aggressive shooting have lasted several days, but required 3-4 charges over that time.
Thanks in advance... I'm very interested to hear what others here are doing in such situations.
I have two batteries and the downside with a number of batteries is the weight. It probably wouldn't be that bad to have 3 batteries, but if another solution works then I'm open to it.
If you take a solar charger won't you still have to take the charger from home to plug the battery into? Seems to me that combo will weigh more, and take up more space, than a third battery. As far as cards vs. portable hard drive go, fifteen or twenty 1 gig cards will cost almost as much as a P-2000 and weigh far less.
I`m not sure that I would want to take the Epson P-2000 on the back country trip but if you did you can review, enlarge and edit your shots on the P-2000. I bought one after that peice of junk, aka (road store) went nuts on my Fla trip. If there is anyone out there that needs some way to down load their cards go look at the Epson P-2000 and its big brother the 4000, not sure of the # on big brother. The screen on the 2000 is the best I have ever seen on any product. It takes about 10 minutes to learn to use the thing and you can build albums and run a auto slide show that is really cool. The P-2000 is some of the best money I ever spent on a photo product. Jim, have fun on your trip!---Good Hunting
You didn't indicate how many images you think you would make on a two week trip, based on your previous outings. But my guess is that you could easily shoot perhaps 15-20 GB over that time. My wife and I shot about 15 GB in one week with two 20D's (Raw mode). We had three batteries per camera, five 1 GB CF cards, and the Epson P-2000. Yes, the P-2000 is heavy (about a pound including the battery), but it is far cheaper than the equivalent storage in CF cards. Although the prices have come down on the CF cards lately, they are still around $50 to $60 per GB, depending on the size of the card and the speed. (We shoot with Extreme III's). We paid a little under $400 for the P-2000 after rebate, and that holds 40GB, or about $10 per GB. BUT, I still think you need the charger, because I would not have confidence that the P-2000 battery would last two weeks with repeated downloads. Of course, you could always opt for a spare battery for the P-2000 as well (another 1/2 pound). I don't have any experience with the solar chargers, so don't know how much they weigh with the associated electronics. But I do like the thought of the power redundancy with a charger in case a critical backup battery fails, or I shoot more than I planned, or I use the P-2000 too much for viewing, etc. etc.
Following up my earlier post, I'm pretty sure you would need a small power inverter to combine with a solar charger to plug your battery chargers into. The Canon and P-2000 batteries are charged off of AC which is converted to the voltage and amperage the device requires. Solar chargers normally output 12V DC. So probably all the spare batteries would still weigh less than the combo charger and power inverter.
Re using the P-2000 for editing, enlarging, and slide shows, that only works on JPEG's. If you shoot RAW, you can view the images, but zoom and slide show features don't work. We still love it for its storage and viewing capability, and the image quality is very nice.
Charlie
Posted by Graham Bailey on April 11, 2006 at 7:27 AM
I've just got back from a long trip away where i had only occasional access to power. I used the P2000 and found the battery lasted pretty well if i was just using it for storage. My main worry was that if anything did go wrong with it I would lose all my photos, whereas a faulty CF card would only lose 1GBs worth.
If your headed somewhere sunny then something that may be worth looking into is www.asapsolar.com - a new company that make solar backpacks. One of the people I was with on the trip had one and it seemed to work pretty well.
Discussion
8 repliesAnyone have experience with longer trips out in the wilderness while using a dSLR? I'm shooting with a Canon 1D Mark II and the battery life has been excellent. On my 12 day trips in the past the batteries with aggressive shooting have lasted several days, but required 3-4 charges over that time.
Thanks in advance... I'm very interested to hear what others here are doing in such situations.
Guy
You didn't indicate how many images you think you would make on a two week trip, based on your previous outings. But my guess is that you could easily shoot perhaps 15-20 GB over that time. My wife and I shot about 15 GB in one week with two 20D's (Raw mode). We had three batteries per camera, five 1 GB CF cards, and the Epson P-2000. Yes, the P-2000 is heavy (about a pound including the battery), but it is far cheaper than the equivalent storage in CF cards. Although the prices have come down on the CF cards lately, they are still around $50 to $60 per GB, depending on the size of the card and the speed. (We shoot with Extreme III's). We paid a little under $400 for the P-2000 after rebate, and that holds 40GB, or about $10 per GB. BUT, I still think you need the charger, because I would not have confidence that the P-2000 battery would last two weeks with repeated downloads. Of course, you could always opt for a spare battery for the P-2000 as well (another 1/2 pound). I don't have any experience with the solar chargers, so don't know how much they weigh with the associated electronics. But I do like the thought of the power redundancy with a charger in case a critical backup battery fails, or I shoot more than I planned, or I use the P-2000 too much for viewing, etc. etc.
Charlie
Following up my earlier post, I'm pretty sure you would need a small power inverter to combine with a solar charger to plug your battery chargers into. The Canon and P-2000 batteries are charged off of AC which is converted to the voltage and amperage the device requires. Solar chargers normally output 12V DC. So probably all the spare batteries would still weigh less than the combo charger and power inverter.
Re using the P-2000 for editing, enlarging, and slide shows, that only works on JPEG's. If you shoot RAW, you can view the images, but zoom and slide show features don't work. We still love it for its storage and viewing capability, and the image quality is very nice.
Charlie
If your headed somewhere sunny then something that may be worth looking into is www.asapsolar.com - a new company that make solar backpacks. One of the people I was with on the trip had one and it seemed to work pretty well.