I am wondering if you can ship things to the next port. Being on the World Cruise for 4 months I want to be prepared to replace a bad camera or computer in case one fails. Could one arrange for one to be shipped to the next port?

Warren, I think it might be easier and cheaper just to buy a new one in port? I know that is what I do when something breaks and depending on which part of the world you are in, most times you can find the item in port. Unless you are at, say, Christmas Island :)

You can have things shipped to a port but we were not given the list of port agents for the trip. And there might be a customs issue in some countries.
Karen is right though - it is probably simpler to buy a replacement along the way if necessary.

Peggy

I think I could find a Nikon in Hong Kong or Sydney but the Christmas Islands? Actually I would thinking about shipping a laptop with the software installed that I need. Maybe I'm being paranoid about hard drive failure. Do they rent laptops?

Thanks again for this info. Just trying to be prepared.

Warren, maybe you could just bring two laptops if you already have them with the software that you need.

I'm not that paranoid :)

Bring one of those little external hard drives with everything you need on it.

That's a good idea, Pam. Warren, I would be too afraid that we wouldn't make port at the location where my item was being shipped. Skipping ports due to weather or seas is more common than you would think.

That's a good point. The ship skips a port and you own something that you don't have. I have one of those external drives. The reason I bring this up is that I had a meltdown on last cruise. I updated adobe photo editor before I got on the ship and it went nuts when I got on the ship. Started erasing photos. Long story.

Just trying to think ahead.

Warren, maybe you could just bring the essential software cd's that you want to use. If your photoshop goes nuts, then you can delete it and reinstall it.

Missing a port is not an issue as far as a package is concerned,it will get forwarded on to a port where we do stop.
I travel with an external HDD as well as some of my program CDs.

If you are looking for a photography solution for backup, I would highly suggest Smugmug. You can upload via the ship fairly fast and it can be used as offsite backup. If you have a pro account you can also have SmugVault as an offsite backup solution too.

In 2007, I backed up my WC photos to CD-ROMs. This year I plan to upload them to Picasa and to a 16GB thumb drive.

Warren:

During the World Cruise 2008, my camcorder failed when in NZ and I phoned home to my daughter and she got another one on Amazon.com and shipped it to me via Regent Voyager Agent in Osaka via USPS as a gift therefore no duty, etc. All went smoothly and I was one relieved chap as I do a lot of videotaping. Shipping was perhaps $40.

I kind of forget the scenario of problems that my daughter encountered before the Postal Dept. assisted us but it was quite a bit more expensive via competitors or others such as UPS could not ship electronics to Japan. I did make sure that delivery time allowed for any delay.

I looked for a replacement camera in Cairns I believe and they were PAL and not NTSC and they were expensive.

Hope this helps.

Cheers! Ray
P.S. Amazon couldn't ship it to me direct.

I've ordered like some a 60GB external drive. So first they go into that and them the laptop with Lightroom 2 as a photoshop program. Then into my old Emerson that I have to send home with the checked baggage just in case everything else got lost.

It's the laptop with photoshop program that I worry about crashing. Worse case is that I would have to start all over managing the photos when I got home if that happened. Which would take forever. That's why I might buy another computer with Lightroom installed or rent one from Regent and try to download Lightroom.

I shoot RAW which are much larger files than jpegs which was why I was asking how fast the internet was. On my last cruise on Silverseas it was so slow that I could only get a couple of jpegs out at a time. I was just hoping that the industry has improved Shipboard Internet service also.

Thanks Ray, That's a plan. Just have someone buy it, load the software and ship to Regent's Agent. But Karen is right sometimes they skip ports so it would have to be a 3 day stop in a major port.

Warren,

I shoot RAW - I am a professional photographer. The most efficient way to deal with your photos while travelling is to use two portable drives. Offload the CF Cards to one and then use light room to export jpgs to a 2nd one and burn the CD at the end of that. Use Windows Explorer to copy the RAW to one of the drives as backup. Otherwise, I have been able to upload finished jpgs without a problem to Smugmug. Not the RAW files though. Workflow on board for long periods of time is an issue with RAW.

Kathy, are you speaking Klingon? ;)

That's a lot of work Chatkat. Lightroom does export the internet jpeg version for websites and email easily when your shooting Raw. My camera will shoot jpegs and Raw at the same time if I want it too.

I really had a hard time sending 3 or 4 pics in an e-mail even keeping the file size really small from the Silverseas so I am hesitant to use somewhere online for storage until I can get access to high speed connections in the ports.

Plus I want to relax and enjoy myself. Just back it up everywhere I can. Not fret too much on what can go wrong.

Yes.

Warren - the solution is to have two portable drives or burn cds or both. It's not that much work really. I do it every day. Especially with Lightroom. But don't import your photos first. Copy them from your compact flash. Then copy the directory to the 2nd drive before you import in case the Lightroom has a problem.

Karen -

Priceless. I needed that this morning....

Tina

I usually really tick off people that I'm traveling with because I'm always waiting for something to download into something else. If you ever lose an important picture that you will never get back because some gadget failed you never forget it.

Kathy I'm using Apple. The last PC I took on a cruise was lucky they don't let you shoot skeet anymore on cruise ships, it would of made a fine target exploding into pieces which it richly deserved.

There is a huge trend back to PC in the photo community. Sorry you had a bad apple. And I have implemented my workflow because I had lost photos from using Adobe Elements several years ago. I also lost images from export direct from a card into Lightroom. I now copy the files to a folder and import from the folder leaving the images in the folder along with the catalog. And I usually do the download/copy thing and leave it while my husband is doing something that won't cause conflict

Kathy I was using a small Sony laptop which wasn't powerful enough to process all these pictures, which was part of the problem. I did switch to an Powerbook and after learning the operating system I am pretty happy with it. Never had a problem with Lightroom but I download directly from my Nikons. Lightroom runs circles around Elements. It's a true pro program.

The other lesson I learned is never do major updates to anything when your at sea. Wait till you get home if all goes wrong it will be easy to fix. I just load the security updates.

While it's a simple way to transfer photos from the camera direct, if there are any power issues, you can ruin your camera and damage the cards. It is much better to download using a card reader. They're less than $25. You can buy two or three card readers and download from multiple cards into the same folder at the same time.

Oh yeah a power failure during transfer will ruin your day among other thing but using a laptop with batteries I'll avoid that. It does take awhile downloading a 100 pictures and I usually leave the room, hold my breath and hope everything will be okay. But it's never let me down yet.

I spent 6 months getting comfortable with the Apple operating systems and I not going back. I still have never gotten over Windows 95. Apple is not perfect by any means but I like it now and I can get better tech support when I get stumped.

I carry backup camera too, in case the big one goes down. I have always had Nikons and have never had one break on me. Knock on wood.