Wilderness Expedition Backup?

[conimc]

Hello. I leave for a 21 day Grand Canyon river trip in 2 weeks. I shoot with the A7RII. I've purchased the largest battery pack I can find to help with recharging these (I have 7!) batteries that don't last for very long, let alone 21 days! I might need to purchase more...

 

I've looked high and low for a battery pack that also has a card reader that would transfer images from my memory card to a portable hard drive, formatted for mac for back up purposes. I couldn't find anything for under $500. Yikes. There's plenty (RAV, most notably) for pc.  I'm considering just using the cards (I have plenty) to store the images on, but feel like I'm walking the high wire without a net. 

 

I'm out asking everywhere I can think of for other solutions. Anyone?

[jonneymendoza01]

Western digital do a backup hdd where you can slot in your sd card or wireless transfer to it for 150 pounds

 

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[JonathanStewart]

7 batteries won't even come close to lasting you that trip.  I've got a 24000 mAh battery backup, but in reality it's only good for 3-4 charges.  

 

I take long treks, around 2-3 weeks, and with the A7R2 figure on about a battery a day, more if you're doing time lapses.  I have 20 batteries, most of which I got on ebay from China for about $6 each.  They work fine -- not as well as the originals, but close enough. 

 

You might also consider a photovoltaic cell from somebody like Goal Zero, which you could use to trickle charge your USB battery and then fast charge your camera batteries at night.  Just make sure that whatever you use, you test out before you go, to make sure either all the batteries are good and can hold a charge, or that your solar cell has enough oomph to charge the USB battery during the course of a day. 

 

I don't backup data on my treks, which I guess could be dangerous, but I've never had a card failure happen out of the blue (oh, bring extra cards too, just in case you unexpectedly fill up).  I've had one or two cards fail, but it seemed like there were warnings beforehand, like the camera would say card not compatible or something like that. But those were older cards, and from Samsung, not the premium cards from SanDisk or Lexar, which is what I use now.  You might just consider bringing your laptop, and only launch the thing up once every couple of days to backup your photos.  I actually did just that on a trip to the Amazon a few months ago. 

[Marolou]

Hi conimc,

JonathanStewart is right. I always use a card reader (like Lexar USB 30) to import my photos directly into LR on my PC.

Somtimes during late evening I find the time to work on my photos, selecting, deleting, rating and framing. It's always good to have a backup (peace of mind :-)).

 

It happened with one card not being able to be recognized by my Mac and (although I could see the pictures on my camera). I had to recover them with help of a tool. But as Jonathan mentioned, normally no problem with flash cards.