better and easier to take more flash cards

[Lightsmith]

In my 12 years shooting with digital cameras and using microdrives, CompactFlash, and SD cards I have lost a grand total of 3 pictures as a result of damaged segments on the cards. And that is with taking on average 2,000 pictures each week. People routinely report having put a CF card through the clothes wash and dry cycle with no ill effects. 192GB in the form of 32GB CF cards has a cube of 1.7" x 1.4" x 0.8 inches and take less space than 3 AA batteries. That is enough data storage for roughly 5000 image files using 14-bit lossless RAW capture with a D800 camera. I keep my cards in a waterproof plastic case that is the size of a smartphone and it stays in an outer case that is fastened to my belt so it does not get lost or stolen.

When my 1GB microdrives cost me $700 apiece I copied files to my laptop and burned backup copies to DVD's I carried. With a 32GB card costing under $50 why would I bother with a backup instead of buying more cards? Solid state flash is magnitudes better in terms of reliability to a hard drive in a dedicated backup device or a laptop. No need to take yet another piece of electronics that needs to be charged every day and needs its special charger/adapter and can get damaged or stolen.

[langier]

+1

In more than a dozen years I've perhaps lost no more than 100 images due to corruption or card failure. Even most of the failed cards most pix were recovered.

That said, I pack 8-16-32 GB CF and SD cards for my cameras, about 500 GB, enough for 4-5 weeks on the road without downloading. However, I'm a little paranoid and back each card once filled to my pair of Hyperdrives and cherry pick the best and download to my iPad.

Usually when I get home, I'll download the cards to my Mac and then crunch the metadata at my leisure. I'll use the pix on the iPad to start showing my work and stash the Hyperdrives away until all the images are edited, captioned, keyworded and backed up.

The drives add size and weight, but a lot of peace of mind that beats shooting film any day.

In the past three years, the MBP stays home and my nights are nearly free to enjoy, relax and sleep!

With cheap, fast, large and reliable cards today, there's not a good reason to do any download and reuse during travel today IMO.

With CF and SD slots in athe D800, a pair of same-capacity cards with mirroring set, one could back-up while shooting and save more time, space and effort. Just a matter of marking the cards and stashing them safely away.