Well let me tag onto Garth since he seems to be the only one sensibly
not trying to persuade someone to substitute a cheap, moosey 5 pound
laptop for something that that is small and weighs about half a
pound. This on a list where people moan about digital cameras that
weigh a few more ounces than an OM. :-)
Virtually all of these device display a little file system that
allows you to see whether the pictures have been loaded onto the
disk. Some of the more expensive ones have displays of varying
quality so that you can visually verify that there is an image there.
The way I understand it most use the jpg generated by the camera for
its LCD to display the image on the storage device. A very few
decrypt raw files and then only for a few of the more popular cameras
and models.
The JOBO does look intriguing, but visits I made in the past to the
JOBO site and the number of refurbished prior models is unsettling.
The Epson does not seem to have a lot complaints and that is probably
the one I would get if I were getting one now. I use a Flashtrax
which has a large, but coarse LCD, middling speed, sort of
unintuitive controls, and operating system, but it does the job and
will display ORF files. It is about the size of an old fashioned pulp
fiction paperback and not much heavier. It has a cover to protect the
lovely LCD(joke) and a snap on battery if you need spares in an
environment where you can't plug it in. It had some initial quality
problems when it first came out but the company was quick to correct
them and feedback for it was pretty good on the storage forum on
dpreview before the limited attention span there got caught up with
newer ones on the market.
http://smartdisk.com/eWeb/smartdiskus/www/staticpages/FlashTrax1.asp
I don't think that speed is really of the essence with these things.
No one should be operating with one memory card. They do fail from
time to time and you need a back up card. So the full card can be
dowloading to the storage device while you continue shoot with your
second card.
I have to admit that a laptop with a small drive is probably ideal
from the safety standpoint, but geez you have to draw the line
somewhere. And if safety is a paramount concern I think I would
rather carry two of those little storage devices than a laptop plus a
drive.
My two cents.
Winsor
Long Beach, California, USA
On Jul 6, 2006, at 6:52 AM, Garth wrote:
> NSURIT@xxxxxxx wrote:
>> What portable storage devices are folks using that support Olympus
>> Raw
>> files? Apparently the Epson P 2000 doesn't support .orf.
>
> Bill, all of the devices I've looked at don't seem to support .ORF,
> but
> that doesn't mean you can't use them as *storage* devices -- it just
> means you can't preview the images on the device's built-in viewing
> screen. I've looked at the Epson ones, but the one that truly
> intrigues
> me (and is supposed to be available later this summer) is the "Jobo
> Giga
> Vu PRO evolution," reviewed by Rob Galbraith here:
>
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