Anthony On Photography

What's Important to You?

I spent a good part of May 2006 traveling, so my blog languished in the meantime. I took both my D200 and my S2pro with me whilst I traveled through Peru, and I had a very good time.

When I left the United States, if anyone had asked me what the most valuable thing I carried with me was, I probably would have named a lens or perhaps my D200 camera body. However, as the trip progressed, the cameras and lenses became less valuable to me. No, not because they got damaged or destroyed, but because something else became even more valuable than those items--something I would not have expected.

I first realized this when another traveler told me that she couldn't take any more photos because her memory card was full. I offered her one of my compact flash cards and she accepted it--and it allowed her to keep taking photos.

So by the time my trip was nearing its end, I began running out of high-capacity cards. And that's when it occurred to me that the most valuable things I had were my memory cards, both blank ones for taking photos and particularly the filled memory cards with once in a lifetime photos. By the end of the trip, I would gladly have sacrificed my cameras to save the memory cards.

When traveling, some photographers will use a backup device to clear cards. These devices can cost hundreds of dollars. While a backup device is good, I think it's cheaper and more efficient to simply carry more high-capacity cards. These days, a decent 2 gig card runs around $75 on sale, so carrying plenty of memory is easier than trying to backup 1 card repeatedly while on the road with questionable power sources.

So what's important to you when you're on vacation, photographically speaking? These days, memory cards are the same as negatives. It's your memory cards that magically gain in value on every trip.

posted by Anthony @ 4:48 PM