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Help please. How many cards and how many batterirs


JSR
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Hi I’m Alaska bound for the first time in years. I bought a new camera for the trip. I am taking a Sony ṚẊ 100v

 

How many memory cards and how many batteries should I take.

 

I will be there for 5 days plus a 7 day cruise.

 

Thank you for the help.

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Without knowing your shooting habits, I can't do more than offer advice based on my own experience. I usually travel with two cameras and about six 32gb high speed cards. Rarely do I fill more than three. I shoot primarily JPEG with 24mp images. Alaska usually means a bit over 2500 images.

 

I wrote an article on the subject a while ago.

 

http://pptphoto.com/articles/viva_frame.html

 

Dave

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I use 2 full frame DSLR's and use Canon RAW. For batteries, I have 4 Canon & 2 cheaper Vivitar. I have a 1/2 dozen high speed 16 & 32 GB cards and a couple of older & smaller cards.

 

Also travel with a couple of 2TB external hard drives

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I am taking a Sony ṚẊ 100v

How many memory cards and how many batteries should I take.

I shoot with similar-sized compacts. On a typical busy day, I'll use two batteries. Only once has three seemed insufficient. Therefore, I bring four batteries. Of course, I recharge batteries between excursions.

 

With cards, it really depends on how you shoot, even more than with batteries.

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I'm a little more cautious with having batteries on hand, even though I rarely need more than two on any given day, I usually have 4 charged and with me, just in case. That's with super-heavy wildlife shooting - when traveling, I can count on one hand the number of times I've even gone to the second battery. Still, it's nice feeling secure that if some amazing shooting opportunity came up, I'd have the battery power needed to cover it.

 

Card-wise, I'm much more conservative - I just don't generally feel the need to bring that much card with me. Even wildlife shooting, where I might run off 2,000 photos in 4-5 hours, I can fit everything onto one 32GB card, since I shoot JPG rather than RAW. I may mix in some RAW shooting while traveling, but my output is much lower in those occasions, with probably 150-400 shots per day being the most I'd run off - so one 32GB card can handle that. Typically, I have the one card in camera, plus one extra 32GB card in the bag.

 

What I tend to prefer is to backup my shots each evening when I travel. I bring a laptop with me, so when I get back to the hotel/ship cabin/etc, I load my SD cards onto the computer's harddrive, and I also bring a portable HD along so I can backup the computer's contents to that. The two cards cover all my travel needs for up to 5,000 photos or so, and I also have two redundant copies of all shots with the laptop's drive and the portable harddrive. If I needed to format a card to get in more photos, I still have double copies of all shots on the two harddrives, so I could if the need ever arose.

 

That said, I do actually have a few more memory cards with me - that I've never used. Mostly, they are my older cards that I replaced with larger ones along the way, but never threw away the smaller capacity cards...I keep them stuffed in random pockets and zippers in all my camera bags, so at any time if I needed to, I can go digging deep in all the zippers and pockets on any given camera bag and find an 4GB, 8GB or 16GB card stuffed in there...probably 8 or 10 of those have accumulated over the years.

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I carry one primary card per expected shooting day (typically not embarkation and disembarkation) per camera plus a couple spare. Card is switched out each day, locked and stored in anti-static case in safe. I don't carry a laptop. Batteries depend on the camera, for the Nikons I carry 3 (1 is a failure backup, I have never burned through charge on 2) but for the sony I carry 4 because lifetime is way less. I also carry 2 chargers for each battery type (Wasabis usually, they are small)

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Yeah, I forgot to mention batteries...

 

I over-carry since our wonderful chunks of sci-fi tech that we use to take pictures are little more then pretty necklaces when the power is gone.

 

I use about two a day on the A6x00 bodies but carry four (the RX100 series should be about the same). One should do on the new camera but I carry three.

 

I want to run out of power before my camera does.

 

Dave

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I am a mad freak when it comes to photography on a cruise. I'm "that guy" with three cameras and four lenses who gets asked "Are you shooting for NatGeo or BBC?" all day long. When we did the Bering Sea Crab Fishermen's Tour in Ketchikan last September and sat in opposing areas of the boat, the captain said to her "I think that guy up there has you outgunned" to which she replied "It's OK, that's my husband". All of that is to say that shooting in RAW up to 50MP and hence 65MB, coming home with 10-15,000 images, our biggest day was 157GB for the two of us, and that was a day that included a small-boat tour of Tracy Arm Fjord and a whale watch in Juneau. Solo, single camera, and JPEG you're probably fine with two 16 or 32GB cards for any given day and probably 4-5 of said cards for an entire week.

 

 

Battery-wise, our big "sports" cameras have big batteries, and I've NEVER drained a battery in a day of Alaska shooting, so I lug a spare around for the fun of it. Our other cameras almost all have vertical grips which hold two of the "smaller" batteries, and I've never gotten any of those below 50%, so in theory those would have been fine with just one battery. Nonetheless, I carry two spares of that size all the time. Mostly the spares are there if a battery should decide to malfunction or fail. I'd much rather go back to the ship with no pictures because my main AND backup battery failed (even if there were more spares in my cabin) than if I left all the spares in the cabin and my one and only battery gave up at that moment.

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A word about taking extra spare batteries with you on your Alaska trip. In case you do not know it, cold can shorten the use of a battery.

 

Years ago we were going to arrive at Hubbard Glacier early in the morning so I went out on the front deck an hour before arrival time to secure a good photo spot. It was Brrrr cold out there with wind coming down off the ice joining with the ships forward motion.

 

Shortly after arriving at Hubbard my battery died from the cold and my spare was laying on the desk back in the cabin. So I lost my spot by the rail when I had to go back to the cabin.

 

Since then I carry my spare batteries in a inner pocket to keep them warm in case I have to change one out when it stops working.

 

Bob

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Doesn't the RX100 have cheap aftermarket batteries? I'd bring at least 3. Maybe even 4 or 5. My GoPro has crappy battery life and I think 3 is barely enough for that. If the RX100 doesn't last too long, then I'd do the same too.

 

As for memory cards, bring extra. If I haven't been to a place before (or in a while), I tend to take about 1200-1500 pictures every week or so. I subscribe to the "just take the extra shot and weed out the crap later" philosophy.

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The posts above are all sound advice for the professional or semi professional photographer who wants to take pictures instead of enjoying AK. For most normal people it is overkill.

 

 

I don't shoot raw, as most of them do. I use a single 32 GB card for the whole trip. I have two batteries. The one that I am not using stays in my pocket to stay warm. In a week I can come home with over 5000 pictures and have never come close to filling a car or running out of battery life. (AS a side note I do have a couple of extra SD cards with me but I have never needed one of them.

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The posts above are all sound advice for the professional or semi professional photographer who wants to take pictures instead of enjoying AK. For most normal people it is overkill.

There's one important word choice you used in your statement. "Instead of." It implies that (for you) taking pictures and enjoying Alaska are mutually exclusive. For anyone (including amateurs) who enjoys taking pictures, they're going to have that camera out a lot.

 

When I visited Alaska, I had a $125 compact camera that couldn't shoot RAW. I took well over 2,000 pictures. I exhausted two batteries on one shore excursion. I've had SD cards crash (which is one major reason to carry spares, regardless of how much or little you fill).

 

JSR has a camera that costs close to $1,000. It shoots 20 MP photos. It shoots RAW. It shoots 4k video. It has fairly small batteries (comparable to my compact cameras). There is at least a realistic possibility that he will burn through batteries and memory faster than I did.

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There's one important word choice you used in your statement. "Instead of." It implies that (for you) taking pictures and enjoying Alaska are mutually exclusive.

 

Agreed. I never have understood that. How are you supposed to enjoy Alaska? Arms spread wide in a trance of existential ecstasy?

 

For me, photography is fun and is an integral part of travel. Even though I can usually recognize and remember where every picture was taken, the images supplement my memory of the enjoyment of the trip. Did I mention sharing with family and friends?

 

Besides, "camera" is always mentioned in the list of things to bring on an excursion and who am I to ignore the advice of travel professionals?

 

Dave

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It's never been an issue for me. While I do look away from the camera often, I can also kind of switch focus from one eye to the other to see the big picture at the same time. Since digital is cheap to shoot I worry less about framing the perfect shot, just multi-fire and edit later, which means my focus is not always on the camera either. This does mean a lot more card and battery usage tho, so its also a matter of style.

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I find photography enthusiasts usually get significantly more enjoyment out of, and appreciation of, a place they are visiting, than 'normal people'. While the average person is holding up their phone every once in a while and firing off a shot they barely pay attention to, or younger folks staring down at their phone screens, the photographer is studying every possible detail around them - the vista, the light, the sky, the colors, the details...everything is being picked up and weighed, considered, and appreciated. For every few seconds spent taking a photograph, most enthusiasts spend many minutes observing the scene, taking in every detail, and looking for the most beautiful moment. Photographers very often have a much stronger memory of a place, to the point that 10-15 years later, we can look at a photograph we took, and using Google maps, pick out the precise spot we stood to take that photograph...even if it's a place we only went to once. I can remember not just a beach I walked, but a particular tree, a piece of driftwood I came across, the temperature, what the breeze felt like - the sounds I was experiencing - and all of that can come flooding back years later simply by looking at a photograph I took...because that photograph was something I put effort into - remembering all the details of place and time so I could capture it just so.

 

No one can appreciate beauty in the ordinary, even in the ugly, like a photographer. Walking down a back alley in a seedy town and noticing how a building's lights are reflecting in an oily puddle in a pothole - or how a decaying building with layers of peeling paint and crumbling concrete takes on a pattern of its own, especially when shadows are playing across the surface - or how a lizard sitting on that decaying wall next to a vine growing across shows how nature is reclaiming that manmade structure. Photographers appreciate every small detail as well as the larger picture of any place they visit. Photography is what makes me take a longer, slower walk, sit down and take in a view, observe tiny things all around me, wait for nicer light or a break in the clouds, watch how shadows and light change the look of a place from afternoon to dusk...rather than rush through a landscape listening to what some tour guide tells me I should notice and ignoring all the rest - letting that beauty pass by through a bus window instead of taking foot and wandering through absorbing the entire essence of a place.

 

While it's possible to appreciate some of these things if you're not a photography enthusiast, it's highly unlikely that a photography enthusiast would NOT appreciate these things. Assuming someone who is into photography is somehow missing out on enjoying a place is to me completely opposite of the reality, as we enjoy, absorb, and appreciate far more about a place than the average person does...and remember it longer.

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I find photography enthusiasts usually get significantly more enjoyment out of, and appreciation of, a place they are visiting...

 

Don 't hurry. Don't worry. You're only here for a short visit. So don't forget to stop and photograph the roses.

 

- Unknown, but very smart person

 

 

Dave

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I find photography enthusiasts usually get significantly more enjoyment out of, and appreciation of, a place they are visiting, than 'normal people'. While the average person is holding up their phone every once in a while and firing off a shot they barely pay attention to, or younger folks staring down at their phone screens, the photographer is studying every possible detail around them - the vista, the light, the sky, the colors, the details...everything is being picked up and weighed, considered, and appreciated. For every few seconds spent taking a photograph, most enthusiasts spend many minutes observing the scene, taking in every detail, and looking for the most beautiful moment. Photographers very often have a much stronger memory of a place, to the point that 10-15 years later, we can look at a photograph we took, and using Google maps, pick out the precise spot we stood to take that photograph...even if it's a place we only went to once. I can remember not just a beach I walked, but a particular tree, a piece of driftwood I came across, the temperature, what the breeze felt like - the sounds I was experiencing - and all of that can come flooding back years later simply by looking at a photograph I took...because that photograph was something I put effort into - remembering all the details of place and time so I could capture it just so.

 

No one can appreciate beauty in the ordinary, even in the ugly, like a photographer. Walking down a back alley in a seedy town and noticing how a building's lights are reflecting in an oily puddle in a pothole - or how a decaying building with layers of peeling paint and crumbling concrete takes on a pattern of its own, especially when shadows are playing across the surface - or how a lizard sitting on that decaying wall next to a vine growing across shows how nature is reclaiming that manmade structure. Photographers appreciate every small detail as well as the larger picture of any place they visit. Photography is what makes me take a longer, slower walk, sit down and take in a view, observe tiny things all around me, wait for nicer light or a break in the clouds, watch how shadows and light change the look of a place from afternoon to dusk...rather than rush through a landscape listening to what some tour guide tells me I should notice and ignoring all the rest - letting that beauty pass by through a bus window instead of taking foot and wandering through absorbing the entire essence of a place.

 

While it's possible to appreciate some of these things if you're not a photography enthusiast, it's highly unlikely that a photography enthusiast would NOT appreciate these things. Assuming someone who is into photography is somehow missing out on enjoying a place is to me completely opposite of the reality, as we enjoy, absorb, and appreciate far more about a place than the average person does...and remember it longer.

 

Not taking sides here, but this discussion reminds me of this:

https://xkcd.com/1314/

 

and this:

https://xkcd.com/1832/

 

Happy pictures, all.

 

Sean

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