Burning digital photos to CD/DVD

[its_ying]

Just got myself a dSLR camera along with a 1GB compact flash card for my Hawaii cruise.

 

At the highest setting (what else would I take with a dSLR?), I can shoot about 116 shots.

 

Just wondering if there are facilities on the NCL ship Pride of America where I can download the photos and burn to CD/DVD?

 

Alternatively, do the ports have digitial photo shops to burn them for me? I am on a 7 night Hawaii cruise.

 

Thanks

 

Ying

[ute_fan]

I don't know the specific answer to your questions, but I'm going to repost a warning from a couple of years ago. We had neighbors who went to Alaska and had the ship (not an NCL ship), which did have the capability of transferring photos to a CD take care of transferring theirs.

 

When they got home, there had been some sort of glitch, and only about 20 of their more than 100 photos were on the CD. Since they had re-used the memory card, many of their pictures, including the ones from Glacier Bay were lost. I'm sure that doesn't happen frequently, but if you choose to have someone transfer your photos, have them close the program they use for the transfer, unplug the camera from the computer, and then have them open your CD back up so you can verify that all the images are there.

 

I managed to delete my own once during a transfer, so I'm very conscious of the fact that it's easy to do. My preference is to buy an extra memory card, but if that's not practical for you, just make sure you verify that they did transfer correctly.

[shoreguy]

I would look into mass storage options - In Hawaii with only 116 shots you will be burning CDs everyday.

[electricron]

You should also reconsider taking your digital photos at the maximum resolution. 3, 4, or even 5 Megapixels should suffice, and increase the number of photos that 1 GB card can hold.

 

Here's a link that informs how many photos per megapixels per card.

http://www.card-media.co.uk/memory+info.htm?page=vp2260b

 

Depending on your camera, the highest resolution is only required on photos you plan to blow up to very large sizes. For normal 3x5 and 3x6 inch photos, 2 to 3 Megapixels are more than enough.

[futaba951]

The higher the res the longer the download as well. If you want to e-mail any pix at later time you'll need to resize the pix as upload time will be loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. If you go with a lower res, the pix will still look great and on a 1g card you should be able to get 1000 or more pix on it. I do work for HUD and use a really low res on my cameras because of upload time onto their website and I get 1330 shots on a 128mb card.

[zackiedawg]

Though true that you don't need full resolution for printing at most sizes up to 12x16 (4-5MP will suffice), do consider what full resolution DOES give you - the ability to crop the photos later and still maintain high resolution.

 

If you shoot in, say, 6MP (2816 x 2112 pixels)...and you get home to look at your shots on the computer, and maybe despite your zoom lens find that the lava flow looks a little more distant than you would like - you still have the option to crop the photo to 4MP (2304x1728 pixels), effectively 'zooming in' by that amount...roughly equivalent to another 1.6x of zoom. And you'll still have a 4MP photo after cropping, printable with full detail and sharpness at 8x10.

 

If you consider the cost to transfer photos to CD/DVD on ships - just 4 or 5 burned CDs are not much more of a bargain than simply buying another memory card for your camera. Nowadays, 1G cards are selling for $45 - 70.

 

Another option to consider - a portable DVD or CD burner. I've owned one for years, and it has come in very handy. The CD versions are available on Ebay for under $50...they function as portable DVD players as well, and give you the flexibility to burn your own CDs...which means you can burn as many copies as you want of each memory card. Worried about A CD getting damaged or lost? Burn 3 copies. Want to give photos to friends, or people you met on the ship? Burn them a CD to take home. Most of these burner systems can span over several CDs...so if you have 1G of data, and a CD only holds 800MB, it will prompt you to insert a new CD to burn the remainder of the card. And they are very portable - about the size of a CD walkman, and can run on battery or AC. And even better...unlike the ship-burned CDs, the portable players plug into your cabin television so you can scroll through the CD after you've copied your photos to make SURE they are on there before blanking your memory card. Look for brand names Addonics or Roadstor, etc. either new from electronics stores or Amazon, or used on EBay. They are cheaper than harddrive storage systems, and give you some extra security of being able to burn multiple copies.

 

You've got several options - relying on the ship to burn them for you would be my 3rd choice after buying more memory cards or getting a portable burner or harddrive.

 

Hope that helps.

[jerhardt]

I always bring 2GB worth of memory and my 40GB iPod with me, then I never run out of space on a 1 week cruise. I usually leave my DSLR home, and bring my prosumer point and shoot - a little less bulky.

 

I concur with zakiedawg on shooting at Max resolution all the time, and heck if you can, shoot in RAW (if your camera supports it, and you have gads of space).