Hi all,

This might be a question better suited for a smartphone forum, but I like the bike forums better, so here goes.

On my ride home from Alaska a few years ago one of the SD cards from my digital camera got damaged and I lost over 800 photos. Alaska to British Columbia. Bummer. So on my next trip I want to be able to download (or upload) photos from the digital camera to the cloud.

Today I went to two Verizon shops and they were no help. Thier suggestions were actually kind of funny, in a sad, not understanding bicycling sort of way.

My next trip (if all goes well) will be a 6 month/12,000 mile ride to Argentina.

So here's what I want to do...

1) Use my Canon digital camera for the majority of the photos. I don't want to use the phone for photos, as I keep it turned off most of the time because it's difficult to keep it charged while camping. Plus, the Canon takes better photos.

2) Every week or so (when I find wifi) upload the photos from the Canon to the cloud, or Dropbox, Shoebox, etc.

3) I'd like to somehow get the photos from the Canon SD card onto the smartphone and then upload them from there.

4) I won't have a laptop. I'm trying to keep things light, so I don't want to carry a laptop simply to upload photos.

5) I currently use an iPhone, which won't allow me to download photos without a laptop. I get a new phone through Verizon this March, so I can pretty much get whatever phone would work best for the job.

I know some smartphones have a mini SD slot, so I guess I could use an SD adapter and mini SD card in the digital camera and do it that way. I don't know if mini SD's are as good as the regular ones, but perhaps they are. Anyone know?

Or are there any phones that allow one to use an external SD card reader, so that I could simply plug it in and upload photos that way?

Or any other bright ideas?

I'm better at repairing bikes than I am at this technological stuff, so I'd sure appreciate any help or suggestions.

Thanks,

Pat

Look at the Eye-Fi cards. They may do what you want.
WiFi SD Cards: Eyefi Memory Cards: Wireless Photo and Video Uploads from your Camera to your Computer & the Web | Eyefi

There are several cards that will do this. The Eye-Fi was the first I think. No need for cables or anything, the card just does an ad-hoc wifi connection to your phone, and an app on the phone pushes stuff to the cloud.

Go to Amazon and search for wifi sd cards. I see EZShare, FlashAir, EyeFi, Transcend Wifi right offhand. Read reviews there.

Also I would definitely go to CrazyGuyOnABike.com and visit the touring equipment forum. They can give you the scoop on actual use in the field by cyclists; there's absolutely no way that there aren't dozens of people there that have tried this sort of thing on actual tours.

FWIW, I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 through Verizon. For my last tour, I purchased a USB OTG ( On The Go ) cable for about five bucks, and an SD card reader for about ten. I could then just plug them in, pop in the SD card, and the card would appear as a new drive that I could use to upload my photos to Google/Dropbox, etc.

This presumes that you would a) Want to move to an Android phone, and b) Get one with USB OTG support, which not all of them do.

But it's about as flexible a method as you could possibly want--you could even use it to copy photos from one SD card to another, etc.

Wow, that was easy. The EyeFi (or the others) sounds like exactly what I was looking for. I'm hoping to do a little weekend bikepacking trip and if I have time I'll pick one of them up before I leave.

The OTG is another great option. I'm not married to the iPhone, so if the EyeFi doesn't work I can always go the Android route.

Both options sound rather simple. I'm surprised none of the employees at the Verizon shops knew these options. Their best suggestion was to strap a GoPro on my helmet, film all day and grab screen shots from the video. I wasn't convinced I wanted to film ten hours of bike touring a day, then go through ten hours of video each night.

Thanks for your help. That gives me some fun ideas to play with.

Some fairly recent digital cameras - notably Fuji and Samsung - have built in wifi capability and can create their own wifi hotspots between the camera and mobile device. I can transfer reduced size JPEGs directly from my Fuji X-A1 to my tablet or smart phone, via a short range wifi and free Fuji apps. No need for conventional wifi access or Eye-Fi card.

This is particularly useful with Fuji's X-series cameras because a lot of basic editing can be done in the camera from the raw files: conversion to various color and monochrome presets; contrast, dynamic range, noise reduction, white balance, etc.; basic cropping and resizing. It's so quick and easy I do more basic raw editing in the camera than in Lightroom on the PC, or via mobile editing apps.

I've connected my camera's USB port to my Android phone via a USB OTG cable and transferred pix that way. Also transferred routes and activities between a Garmin and the phone. At one point I used a USB hub to connect both a mouse and full-sized keyboard to the phone via the USB OTG cable and it worked surprisingly well for doing emails and such. I think the OTG cable was 99cents on Amazon.