Travel - Photo backup and Cellular

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hsvhel

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#143403 14-Apr-2014 08:56

Hi all

I have a question around peoples experiences with traveling and both cellular plans and photo backup's.
We are traveling around Europe for 6 weeks and I see that Vodafone (Prepaid Sim) are any easy choice for the short time we are in London, but who have people used around the greater Europe regions?
This is only for emergency communication back home if needed and can be limited to powering on to check voicemail.
I will be taking my ipad also and relying on hotel wireless for e-mail.

Touching on ipad, I was planning to use this to back-up my photos and also use Dropbox when available as a "double" back-up.
I have tested the camera adaptor and it works well, the ipad also has enough room to backup the SD.
Has anyone used other services methods that you would recommend?
I'm open to suggestions in other methods, this is the fist time we have gone abroad for an extended period!

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#1024708 14-Apr-2014 09:36

Why don't you use Wifi at your hotels for both?

davidcole

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#1024710 14-Apr-2014 09:37

I have an eyeFi card, this is a card that communicates from a camera and all the photos are imported to an smart phone - similar concept to what you're doing manally with the camera connection kit. But one feature that I really like about it, is their PC software which can take images from your smart phone (and therefore those imported from the eyefi) over the internet. It means they're at home, and for me backed up in triplicate.

But what I will say, is I had 1gb a day on optus when I went to australia. I was taking about 100-200 photos a day - I was never able to send all of those home with the time it took, nor the amount of data I had available.

You, like me however, will have the advantage that your photos will be both on your smartphone (ipad) and the SD card in your camera - I'd probably recommend this.

There are other options for uploading other than dropbox if you don't have enough allocation - flickr offers 1 tb of storage now - nothing stopping you creating a new account just for backing up but personally I'd rather they were home.

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timmmay

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#1024713 14-Apr-2014 09:44

I recently spent 3 weeks in Thailand. I backed up my SD card using this device to my phone, from there I used hotel WiFi (3 different hotels) to upload all the images to dropbox as well as to a portable USB3 hard drive. I used DropSync Pro on my phone, which worked well. That RAVPower device is ok, a bit fiddly but gets the job done. I uploaded 15GB in 3 weeks, sometimes overnight, sometimes just when we were laying about the hotel

I wonder if a WiFi SD card in my camera could talk directly to my phone - anyone know? That'd be much easier.

davidcole

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#1024720 14-Apr-2014 09:50

timmmay: I recently spent 3 weeks in Thailand. I backed up my SD card using this device to my phone, from there I used hotel WiFi (3 different hotels) to upload all the images to dropbox as well as to a portable USB3 hard drive. I used DropSync Pro on my phone, which worked well. That RAVPower device is ok, a bit fiddly but gets the job done. I uploaded 15GB in 3 weeks, sometimes overnight, sometimes just when we were laying about the hotel

I wonder if a WiFi SD card in my camera could talk directly to my phone - anyone know? That'd be much easier.

An eyeFi card (and there's one by transcend) that is an SD card with wifi. It connects to defined SSIDs or if it can't find it it starts its own AP for your phone to connect to and pull the photos off.

Makes for a double hop as you pull the photos off the card, then transmit from the phone to home/cloud etc. I think I got mine for about $99 for a 4 gb - they have an endless memory mode which means if you hit 50% space used, and it's confirmed a photo has been transmitted successfully it's removed. I think you can get them a bit cheaper now. There is a mobi variant which must be paired with a phone, but the original ones can be paired with a phone or a computer.

timmmay

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#1024723 14-Apr-2014 09:57

Thanks David. Might have to get one of those for the next holiday - $100 for a 32GB version, which is heaps of space even shooting 20MP RAW.

hsvhel

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#1024928 14-Apr-2014 14:46

Cheers guys
I will look into the above mentioned options. The Wifi at hotels I am guessing wont exactly be fast so all photos may not be an option but that is OK.
The phone SIM was basically to touch base with family and arrange to meet and small things like that, with a prepaid UK SIM, that's no issue. when we travel out of UK into Europe it seems there are many different carriers and not one main that covers most.
Also a UK sim is about 3Pounds a day "roaming". Just checking if in anyones experience there is a better option.

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timmmay

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#1024932 14-Apr-2014 14:49

I was surprised how fast the WiFi was in the hotels I stayed in. I was staying in medium to high end hotels, the slowest I found was 50KBps upload, some places I got 300KBps upload. I think slow NZ internet makes us thing everything will be slow.

Having said that the internet in Samoa was so slow it was unusable.

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sdav

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#1024969 14-Apr-2014 15:58

I treated Maccas like a wifi beacon in Europe. I did all I had to do there in terms of checking emails, backing up photos etc...

hsvhel

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#1025578 15-Apr-2014 13:38

Maccas it is then!!
How did you find Internet access in Europe in general?

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rayonline

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#1025685 15-Apr-2014 16:32

Not much use just roam your Vodafone NZ sim and use WiFi but check if free with the hotel first. Note that you don't get Data Angel (on prepay) .. or pickup a local SIM if you want more like GPS daily. You should be able to pick up a EU wide SIM but dunno which.

For backup, iPad ok if that works for you but, you can get portable HDs with SD card slots etc .. powered by batteries. But unless you are a dSLR user etc ...

Geektastic

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#1025875 15-Apr-2014 23:06

hsvhel: Hi all

I have a question around peoples experiences with traveling and both cellular plans and photo backup's.
We are traveling around Europe for 6 weeks and I see that Vodafone (Prepaid Sim) are any easy choice for the short time we are in London, but who have people used around the greater Europe regions?
This is only for emergency communication back home if needed and can be limited to powering on to check voicemail.
I will be taking my ipad also and relying on hotel wireless for e-mail.

Touching on ipad, I was planning to use this to back-up my photos and also use Dropbox when available as a "double" back-up.
I have tested the camera adaptor and it works well, the ipad also has enough room to backup the SD.
Has anyone used other services methods that you would recommend?
I'm open to suggestions in other methods, this is the fist time we have gone abroad for an extended period!

I carry multiple portable HDDs (3 usually) and back the images up each day to them as well as on my Macbook Air.

Then I carry each drive in a different bag when moving and lock at least one in the hotel safe when staying at one place for a while.

sdav

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#1026288 16-Apr-2014 15:43

hsvhel: Maccas it is then!!
How did you find Internet access in Europe in general?

It wasn't too bad - some hotels had it free... It was pretty difficult in Eastern Europe at times... but then that was Eastern Europe. I wouldn't totally rely on McDonalds for everything though. I took my iPad and used it as the external HDD. I took SD cards and never deleted them. So I had SD card versions, some on my iPad and some backed up to cloud storage. I only backed up the ones to cloud storage that I really didn't want to lose.

hsvhel

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#1026882 17-Apr-2014 13:58

Thanks guys
That helps me with a pretty good game plan.

Thanks
Rhys

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