Backcountry storage solution for dumping Express Cards?

Buck Forester

Buck Forester

Well-known member
I'll be shooting with a Sony EX1 in the backcountry on multi-day backpacking/kayaking trips and I was wondering if there are any portable battery powered harddrive solutions for dumping Express Card footage into. For my digital photography I use an Epson P2000 which reads my CF cards... I'm thinking there must be something similar for Express Cards? I prefer not to lug around a notebook just for the harddrive if I don't have to. Thank you.
 
This is just a guess to help, but since the EX1 works the usb side where the camera is a device you should do a search here on the USB on the go drives that Barry Green tested on the HVX200, The usb on the go drives from what I remember were hosts so it seems like it might work to download to. The HVX liked firewire and there were no battery operated firewire drives available other than the made up rigs some have done but there were plenty of battery operated USB drives available.

The one downside with this method is you will have to stop shooting to download off the camera.
 
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That sounds like a good alternative to getting a macbook. How big are these portable
USB drives on the go?
 
Here's a suggestion: Get enough cards to cover your expedition.

After the expedition, sell the surplus cards.

It's not a cheap solution. But it avoids having to power up another device and risk moving data to a hard drive mechanism that's not mirrored.

If you have to move sensitive equipment, check out Pelican cases. I actually swam photo and video gear to shore on a couple of assignments, and depend on them whenever I have to take gear out on small boats.

Just curious: How are you going to recharge your camera and other batteries?
 
I agree that with long record times on sxs, if you can afford it buy enough cards and then you can sell them but not knowing how one shoots and for how long that could seem unfeasible.
I just did a search for li-on operated USB on the go drives and there seemed to be a ton of these over a year ago. But it seems that it hasn't been popular and I feel they won't be around much longer. Heres just a couple I found :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817113009

http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USBG-OTG25&cats=172&catid=172,177,140,161

Can't vouch for usbgear and can't say if these will work with the EX 1 or do what the original poster needs. And theres the issue of the usb drives battery time.

I always feel like these kind of treks would be better served with a canon A1 shooting on tape. But there have been critical comments about how HDV handles water shots so...
 
Are you kayaking in whitewater ? what class river ? III ? IV ? V ?

Water + electronic equipments = calling 1-800-hope-I-have-warranty

If you go up in elevation, you would have battery problems with the cold weather. Otherwise, Look into getting portable solar panel chargers.
 
Thanks for the responses! It appears my best solution is to carry the extra weight of a notebook computer. I go on week+ wilderness trips and I plan on shooting a lot of footage so I don't think carrying lots of surplus cards would be practical (or affordable). Shooting on tape would be more practical but I need/want the image quality and features of the EX1.

To answer some questions, the kayaking I do is more multi-day touring in a sea kayak than whitewater. As for battery charging, I plan on using multiple solar chargers and I hope there are some that are compatable with the batteries I'm needing. I'm looking into that as well (if anyone has any solutions in that regard, that'd be cool!). It's all about wilderness adventure. I've been fortunate enough to have my photography published in Natlional Geographic Adventure, hopefully Nat'l Geo HD will also like my hd footage. We'll see!

Thanks again!
 
Your problem isn't an easy one to solve, because everything I can think of adds weight or bulk to what you have to take.

A small laptop is a good idea to store the files, but you are depending on the hard drive to survive the trip. That means a good waterproof case for your laptop. You might want to get a second USB drive for a second copy of the files, just in case the laptop's hard drive dies.

There's also the USB Flash drives that come in 8 GB (about $100) and 16 GB (about $200) sizes. It's expensive, but not as expensive as having a stack of SxS Cards.

Depending on the number of hours you plan to record, extra batteries may be less weight than solar panels. You'll have to consider what's the life in hours of a set of batteries compared to how big the solar panel has to be to provide enough power to charge the batteries. There are a lot of variables here, but the panel must put out at least 1.5 times the total amp hours of current you plan to draw each day. The biggest problem is, what if one or more days are overcast?

I can say more, but I'd need to know:

How many hours of footage do you plan to shoot each day and how many days will be be on the trip?


Sincerely,

Bob Diaz
 
Buck...

For power you might want to look at a small Honda generator.

Solar power might be difficult if you're surrounded by trees, or if the daylight is taken up with rafting. If you have the panels mounted on your kayak you can figure out how much power you'll need to charge the batteries against the amount of energy produced by the panels on an average day.

But if your only chance to recharge batteries falls into the evening or twilight hours you'll be powerless without a generator... pun sort of intended...

The EU series of generators are quiet and the 1000-watt model is fairly lightweight. Less than 30 pounds. And the amount of fuel required is proportionately small.

Packing the computer and hard drives in well-protected cases should be enough. If it survived UPS, FedEx or the postal service, it'll survive a trip down a river.

Of course all this equipment isn't going to fit into a single kayak. Hopefully you either have a couple of other people helping. Or you have a support vehicle or boat available.
 
Mucho appreciated-o the el responsos. I actually do more backpacking than kayaking, so my concerns are more for backpacking. When I'm kayaking weight is not as much of an issue. Hauling all this gear around in my backpack is my main concerns. I already carry ungodly-weighted backpacks in the wilds with my photo gear, which includes a full size tripod and two slr camera bodies and a variety of Canon L glass lenses and a myriad of filters, film and batteries.

Now I will be adding my Sony EX1 to the mix, as well as a Sony PCM-D1 audio recorder, and related batteries, filters, and matte box and such. Oh, and a Sony HC7 as a B camera, but that's pretty small.

I often go on 9 day backpacking trips. For hauling the video stuff I may be stuck with 3-4 day backpacking trips, max, simply due to power concerns. As for how many hours to shoot, well I'll shoot a few hours a day worth of footage. As said earlier by someone, my best bet might be to invest in a lot of batteries and SxS cards. There are portable roll-up solar panels, but they do require good sunlight (not always available in the wilderness, ha!) and I'm not sure how they work with a proprietary battery (I know they can charge standard batteries like AA, etc.).

I have a lot to learn, no doubt. I do have the passion and desire, the physical ability, some decent resources to invest, and knowledge about lighting and pointing recording devices at pretty stuff... but the technical side of this is where I'm 'focusing' my attention because it's a new challenge figuring it all out . Determing what I need both in the field and editing at home to get the visions in my head onto my screen is consuming all my 'free' time at the moment.

For editing I'm getting a new Mac Pro, two 3.0 GHz Quad-core chips, 12-16GB memory, Caldigit HDpro 2.6 TB raid, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 graphics card, 23" and 30" Apple Cineman Displays, and I'm leaning towards a Matrox MXO for monitoring, or maybe go for the Aja lo HD (I'm still deciding), Final Cut Studio, Adobe CS3 Photoshop. I'm splurging for a Panasonic TH-50PF10UK 50" plasma in my home studio just to see how the footage looks on a large screen. I've already got an audio studio setup as well, so the audio monitoring is taken care of.

This is not for client work, it'll be my own productions. And I better make it profitable or my wife will kill me. Ha!

If there are any recommendations on equipment or editing gear choices, I'm all ears because, despite many hours of spending time on forums, and Google, and mfg websites, I feel clueless about the real-world workflow. Gracias.
 
aschocken, gracias senor! THAT is something along the lines I've been hoping for! Thank you very much for the link. This forum rocks!
 
no problem- let us know how it goes. looks like i might be shooting a trek in march with the ex1, though there may be some cushy mountain lodges with electricity involved!
 
DXmetal, good idea, but at this point I'm not shooting anything specifically for any programs. I just want to make sure my footage is high enough quality that it could be an option down the road. I'm shooting for my own production as well as hd stock nature footage.
 
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