PhotographyBlog tells me that Epson has updated their amazing photobank line with the P5000 and P3000. The main difference (besides the price) are 80GB vs. 40GB internal hard drive.
I don’t own one myself, but check out this review from Moose Peterson of the Epson P2000. It is because the Epson is battle tested that I recommend it over the untested Canon version. (Well, that and I know Epson supports Nikon RAW. Though I wish it supported Panasonic RAW. If you’re a “all Canon, all the time, for everything” sort of person and you have a lot of extra 20D/30D or 5D batteries, then YMMV.)
My solution
Some may wonder what I use. The answer is nothing yet. I resort to lugging around a Macintosh Powerbook if I think I’ll be taking that many photos in the field. Ick!
I currently do own an iPod Video 30GB and an iPod Camera Connector, but it is virtually worthless.
If I’m on a multi-day hike again, I’ll have to look into a solution.
All-in-one vs. specialist
Why?
Basically the iPod Camera Connector does not work with USB 2.0 CF readers because it cannot power them. When I transfer across from my Nikon D70 at USB 1.1 speeds, it takes the entire battery of the iPod Photo 60GB and half the battery of my camera to transfer one 4GB CF card! Another small detail is that it doesn’t support preview of the NEF (RAW) images, you have to shoot RAW+JPEG to get preview.
I heard it works with the Nikon D200 at USB 2.0 speed (since the D200 is self-powered). I’ll have to dig up my camera connector sometime and try again.
Please learn from my mistakes: If you need a field-portable photo storage device, buy a photo storage device that does photo storage well and ignore the music/video features. It will be faster, have a better display, support camera RAW preview, and have built-in media readers.
Buy a music player for its music player/video features and ignore the camera capability. If its battery drains because you’ve been listening to music all week, you won’t have to do a Daniel Powter and stop taking photos.
I found this same experience goes with phones. It boggles the mind that someone would want to drain the battery of something essential as their cell phone listening to music. My thinking is that the killer app of the cell phone is…the phone. The other stuff (data/modem, browsing, IM, e-mail, music, video, photos, games) is a “nice to have.”
But then I heard that Nokia launched a 5 megapixel auto-focusing cell phone, so I guess I’m in the minority…
