A word About Accessories

This is actually several words about just a few accessories. The number of accessories you could consider for your DSLR seems to increase exponentially by the month. Today I'm writing about flash memory and data transfer. Even if you're not a photographer a flash memory can really be handy. For the photographer it's a very handy way of making sure some images get where you need them to be quickly. I use this 4gig flash drive from Ativa.

I've used it in several ways. One day I was loading images from a morning shoot on to my notebook during a lunch break while my wife was on another floor of the house trying to feed information about the project we were covering to some news media. My phone rings and it's Paula asking if I can quickly pick a couple of good shots and get them up to the floor she's on so she can put them on her computer and send them to some people. Zappo! I reduced the file size on the notebook and then was able to quickly load a few images on to my flash drive and run them upstairs to Paula where we loaded them on to her laptoop and she got them on their way to the news media in about 15 min. One of those images was published.

You might also want to use the flash drive as a handy way of backing up your files. You can get a 4 gig drive for around $20. For that money it's a great convenience even when I'm just transfering files from my side of our home office to my wife's side.

You already know you need memory cards (plural) to do digital photography so let me just mention a suggestion or two. Don't give in to the urge to use just one huge card, say 32 gigs, because you can just shoot all day or week on that one card. I say that for 2 reasons; first because you don't want your entire shoot to be lost if something goes wrong with that one card. It's rare but sometimes they do get a bit funky and, secondly, you can use different cards as an organizing tool even if it's only to use a different card each day during a trip. I use 4 or 8 gig cards and carry several to be safe. Even on the industrial shoots it's not often that I'll put more than 4 gigs worth of image files on a card.

Also pay attention to the speed of your cards. The card won't allow your camera to transfer files to the card any faster than the camera's processor but you'll want to take advantage of that maximum speed. A card speed of 133x or 155x is probably as fast as your camera can do even with small files. If you shoot RAW you'll find that there isn't much difference in transferring single shots but the size of the file you're shooting will affect how many files you can fire off in burst mode. Your card speed may also come in handy when transferring your files from the card to your computer or other storage device.

Last thing today is the card reader. You can get a multi-format reader that you can easily pack with your camera gear or computer and connect through a USB port for around $25-$35. 

I recommend the mulit-format reader as a fail-safe. You may not use more than one format today but you may find other formats useful in computing or photography or who-knows-what down the road.

My compact camera, the Canon SD780 IS, uses the SD format cards and my full size bodies use the CF format cards. If you're carrying a reader that can handle the major formats you may just be a life saver for someone else who's less prepared.