Travel laptop/options to download and view images

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KimM

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My 13" PC (no, I won't consider a Mac) travel laptop has started to have issues with the ports and needs to be replaced. I want something this size or smaller to copy from cards to external hard drives. So it would need at least 2 ports (sigh). I have a small 4 port hub I can also use to get around this issue. I would like to be able to import to LR as another form of backup. My workflow is to dump each camera card to an external temp file. Using Fast Raw Viewer, I cull that file to another external hard drive and then import that file to LR thus giving me 3 copies. Are there any tablets that would be smaller/lighter for travel? Thanks for your input!
 
14 in. Asus zenbook is what I've been using for 3 years. Small as most 13 in laptops and very light. I've stuck with 1080p screen because it's so small. 1TB ssd is adequate for downloading one copy of files and culling. USB-C port is super fast for writing to external hd.
 
Kim, not trying to hijack your thread but I would be very interested if Dan could/would elaborate a bit more on his zen book? I suppose that would be in line with your question?
 
No macs? Sorry, but on the go I use an iPad Pro ... the Retina display is superb...then I have two options. 1. Wi-Fi. I send from the camera directly.this only good if it’s a small number of raw or jpeg ...it’s slow, or preferred 2, wired. I use a usb-c to dump from the camera directly. Then I plug in a 2T scandisc ssd drive and back up to that. Small, fast, secure.
i don’t like laptops at all. Once back home, I simply plug the ssd drive to my NAS and dump it in a few minutes, easy peasy.

Patrick...I am sufficiently intrigued and enamored with the idea of tablet but have some questions. If I used the IPad Pro will it be a file format that will go back to my home PC/tower without issues? I am assuming you have to format the SSDs you are downloading to for Mac OS...??? Assuming that will seamlessly work, the other questions are about the your process. I think I am understanding that you dump the camera card to the IPad through an usb-c and then copy that from the IPad to another external. Many thanks for sharing your solution!
 
I use an HP Elite Dragonfly which I like a lot. Fairly light weight but powerful.
Thanks Karen! The specks look good for this one. Do you find the 256 GB of storage enough? Do you mind sharing what software you use for processing and how it handles it? I don't usually do much editing on the road but sometimes it is nice to have.
 
14 in. Asus zenbook is what I've been using for 3 years. Small as most 13 in laptops and very light. I've stuck with 1080p screen because it's so small. 1TB ssd is adequate for downloading one copy of files and culling. USB-C port is super fast for writing to external hd.
Thanks Dan! My first laptop was an Asus. Good laptop. The USB-C port makes this attractive.
 
Kim, not trying to hijack your thread but I would be very interested if Dan could/would elaborate a bit more on his zen book? I suppose that would be in line with your question?
I want to know more too Bill...thanks for asking! Good to see another Kansas person on here! Spring migration over at the Bottoms is starting to cook!
 
Patrick...I am sufficiently intrigued and enamored with the idea of tablet but have some questions. If I used the IPad Pro will it be a file format that will go back to my home PC/tower without issues? I am assuming you have to format the SSDs you are downloading to for Mac OS...??? Assuming that will seamlessly work, the other questions are about the your process. I think I am understanding that you dump the camera card to the IPad through an usb-c and then copy that from the IPad to another external. Many thanks for sharing your solution!
Kim I use an iPad all the time for editing and uploading RAW files. It works great. And believe it or not the Photo App does a really nice job for quick edits. Just make sure that on the SSD that you connect to the iPad, it is formatted in FAT32 or exFAT if you want to connect to PC.I personally have never used the iPad with a windows machine but it should work as described.
 
I want to know more too Bill...thanks for asking! Good to see another Kansas person on here! Spring migration over at the Bottoms is starting to cook!
FWIW - I "upgraded" from an Asus machine to the HP. The 13" HP was more powerful and lighter. "Lighter" (even by just .75-1 lb) was important since I was traveling to Africa. You can get various configurations. I have a 1 TB SSD....which is more than adequate to run PS CC, Libre, ......and a few other apps and 16 gb of RAM. I prefer NOT to process on the road, but I do like to peak at especially good images! LOL! I bought mine in 2020 from B&H. . There are probably slightly different models available today, but I highly recommend the HP.

I rely on my two Sansung T5 - 2 TB external HD's for image backup. Then I re-format cards and get ready for another day! I use a simple USB hub so I can plug in my 2 external HDs and my card reader. Backing up is not a problem. Let me know if you have further questions.
 
Kim, not trying to hijack your thread but I would be very interested if Dan could/would elaborate a bit more on his zen book? I suppose that would be in line with your question?
Not sure what else to say. Specs of new ones will be different. It's been durable and reliable. Aluminum case. Only laptop I've had that the TouchPad has been trouble free. I've traveled a lot with it and use it as my navigation laptop on our boat. So it spends 40-50 days each summer afloat.

FWIW when I was doing research prior to buying this laptop I looked up failure rates for all manufacturers. I used to be a reliability engineer. Apple has the lowest failure rates but not by a wide margin. There's no meaningful difference in reliability of any of the PC manufacturers. So any feedback from friends, bloggers, etc, about the most trouble free brand is purely anecdotal.
 
What is your budget? There are a large number of decent machines in that size/weight range that you could consider. Price will help you to narrow down your choices. On the budget end, for example, Lenovo offers their Yoga 700 series. If you have a decent budget, then they have the X1 and Dell has their XPS13 and HP has numerous models as well. Also, there are Surface Pros at all prices if you want that kind of arrangement.

--Ken
 
I want to know more too Bill...thanks for asking! Good to see another Kansas person on here! Spring migration over at the Bottoms is starting to cook!
Kim totally unrelated to this thread but I was viewing your pictures on your Flickr account. Twin Falls, Buffalo River we were just there last week & I posted a picture on this site that I had taken, but it’s nothing like yours! Yours is outstanding. But in the Flickr account the waterfall & pool that follows Twin Falls - do you mind telling what the name & location of that is? Your pictures are gorgeous. You’ll have to let me in on your secrets! Arkansas is beautiful. Thanks Bill
 
I have a Dell XPS 13 which is one of the smallest, lightest 13" PC's with 1080p screen. Excellent battery life. Has all USB C or Thunderbolt ports and 1 TB internal ssd with 16 GB RAM. I download directly from my Z7ii using a USB-C to USB-C cable to both internal ssd and also to an external Samsung T7 USC-C drive. It goes pretty quickly.

I also have Lightroom and Photoshop on board and can do modest processing. No GPU. The laptop's screen is fair/good but you will miss your large, calibrated monitor from home.
 
Kim I use an iPad all the time for editing and uploading RAW files. It works great. And believe it or not the Photo App does a really nice job for quick edits. Just make sure that on the SSD that you connect to the iPad, it is formatted in FAT32 or exFAT if you want to connect to PC.I personally have never used the iPad with a windows machine but it should work as described.
Thanks Ralph! I think I will investigate this further. My daughter has an iPad so I could experiment. Are there times you wish you had a full laptop when traveling?
 
FWIW - I "upgraded" from an Asus machine to the HP. The 13" HP was more powerful and lighter. "Lighter" (even by just .75-1 lb) was important since I was traveling to Africa. You can get various configurations. I have a 1 TB SSD....which is more than adequate to run PS CC, Libre, ......and a few other apps and 16 gb of RAM. I prefer NOT to process on the road, but I do like to peak at especially good images! LOL! I bought mine in 2020 from B&H. . There are probably slightly different models available today, but I highly recommend the HP.

I rely on my two Sansung T5 - 2 TB external HD's for image backup. Then I re-format cards and get ready for another day! I use a simple USB hub so I can plug in my 2 external HDs and my card reader. Backing up is not a problem. Let me know if you have further questions.
Thanks Karen! Our processes sound similar. I am thinking either the Dell or the HP 13" if I go laptop so hearing what you have is helpful. Next decision will be graphics card. Sometimes I like to process an image that is good on the road if we have down time. I am realizing I hadn't accounted for those days on some trips where we are inside for various reasons.
 
Not sure what else to say. Specs of new ones will be different. It's been durable and reliable. Aluminum case. Only laptop I've had that the TouchPad has been trouble free. I've traveled a lot with it and use it as my navigation laptop on our boat. So it spends 40-50 days each summer afloat.

FWIW when I was doing research prior to buying this laptop I looked up failure rates for all manufacturers. I used to be a reliability engineer. Apple has the lowest failure rates but not by a wide margin. There's no meaningful difference in reliability of any of the PC manufacturers. So any feedback from friends, bloggers, etc, about the most trouble free brand is purely anecdotal.
Dan thank you for sharing your research on failure rates...it was something else I would have done.
 
What is your budget? There are a large number of decent machines in that size/weight range that you could consider. Price will help you to narrow down your choices. On the budget end, for example, Lenovo offers their Yoga 700 series. If you have a decent budget, then they have the X1 and Dell has their XPS13 and HP has numerous models as well. Also, there are Surface Pros at all prices if you want that kind of arrangement.

--Ken
Thanks Ken! I am a buyer who looks for the middle of the road. Functional, but don't need all the bells and whistles. In this case, I think it amounts to enough power to last a while through ever increasing demands of processing software. Size for portability is the biggest consideration for me. I had looked at the Lenovo series as well as Dell and HP. Surface Pros seem to be more expensive for the same thing. Just beginning to figure this part out.
 
Thanks Ken! I am a buyer who looks for the middle of the road. Functional, but don't need all the bells and whistles. In this case, I think it amounts to enough power to last a while through ever increasing demands of processing software. Size for portability is the biggest consideration for me. I had looked at the Lenovo series as well as Dell and HP. Surface Pros seem to be more expensive for the same thing. Just beginning to figure this part out.
Its a balancing act between size, CPU, RAM, screen quality, battery life and keyboard just to name a few. If you have a monitor and/or desktop, you can afford to cut back in a few areas, but as drives and RAM are being soldered in these days, there is generally little that you can upgrade so this makes the process a bit more difficult (something that money often can solve).

--Ken
 
Kim totally unrelated to this thread but I was viewing your pictures on your Flickr account. Twin Falls, Buffalo River we were just there last week & I posted a picture on this site that I had taken, but it’s nothing like yours! Yours is outstanding. But in the Flickr account the waterfall & pool that follows Twin Falls - do you mind telling what the name & location of that is? Your pictures are gorgeous. You’ll have to let me in on your secrets! Arkansas is beautiful. Thanks Bill
Many thanks Bill for your kind remarks on my images. I am always happy to share whatever I can. I am not entirely sure what image you are referring to but if you could be more specific, I will share the location. The images from this album were from my fall trip so that maybe part of why there is difference. In addition, Arkansas has numerous water falls but only when it buckets, which it did the day I arrived and my first day out in the field. I shot in the rain. A.l.l. day. It was brutal but saturates colors nicely. This was my first effort at scouting an area I was unfamiliar with and was really worth it. I will return each fall if the rain has been sufficient.
 
Its a balancing act between size, CPU, RAM, screen quality, battery life and keyboard just to name a few. If you have a monitor and/or desktop, you can afford to cut back in a few areas, but as drives and RAM are being soldered in these days, there is generally little that you can upgrade so this makes the process a bit more difficult (something that money often can solve).

--Ken
Exactly! No way to upgrade. I am in a quandary about 16 or 32GB of RAM and I have pretty much decided to go with 1 TB of storage because of software I use - Topaz AI and Adobe plus Helicon, Fast Raw Viewer. I keep my travel laptop stripped down to this and am surprised at how much space just this takes. I don't store any images on my laptop or minimal jpegs for sharing on FB or email. Any thoughts?
 
Thanks Ralph! I think I will investigate this further. My daughter has an iPad so I could experiment. Are there times you wish you had a full laptop when traveling?
Kim, I just bought my first DSLR in 2019. So , sorry to say, haven’t done much traveling since I bought it for obvious reason. But I did use it all the time with my Canon XS-40 All-in-One Superzoom. The furthest I have traveled since COVID has been no more than 50 miles from home. But honestly, I possess Luminar(similar to LR) and and Affinity Photo(similar to Photoshop) and unless I have to do some major editing I find the iPad a much faster tool and a pleasure to use. Depending on the type of iPad you have all you need is a $30 adapter. With the correct adapter I can upload both my SD cards and my XQD cards right into the photo App. When I do travel I just use the iPad . Their is a separate adapter that I use for small drives that require extra power. You could also use the cameras Bluetooth or WiFi but I don’t bother with that. Take your daughters iPad and email it a RAW file, then play with the editing app. I think you will like it. Keep in mind that I use a D500 so my experiences may be different than yours if you are dealing with larger files.
 
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No macs? Sorry, but on the go I use an iPad Pro ... the Retina display is superb...then I have two options. 1. Wi-Fi. I send from the camera directly.this only good if it’s a small number of raw or jpeg ...it’s slow, or preferred 2, wired. I use a usb-c to dump from the camera directly. Then I plug in a 2T scandisc ssd drive and back up to that. Small, fast, secure.
i don’t like laptops at all. Once back home, I simply plug the ssd drive to my NAS and dump it in a few minutes, easy peasy.
Are you doing any PP on the iPad no if so what are you using...or is it mainly a copy the photos and get them out to the external drives for backup thing? I’ve always carried my laptop when traveling but we were in t(e RV so we were ‘home’ every night. Now that we are out of t(e RV will either be traveling via car or air if there’s water between here and there...so I need to rethink and decide whether the laptop is necessary. I haven’t used LR cloud version much due to lack of capability compared to the classic version...and syncing to the Adobe server on the road would be problematic anyway due to upload speeds at the hotel anyway...but to get them on the blog while on the road some PP will obviously be necessary.
 
Exactly! No way to upgrade. I am in a quandary about 16 or 32GB of RAM and I have pretty much decided to go with 1 TB of storage because of software I use - Topaz AI and Adobe plus Helicon, Fast Raw Viewer. I keep my travel laptop stripped down to this and am surprised at how much space just this takes. I don't store any images on my laptop or minimal jpegs for sharing on FB or email. Any thoughts?
I would go with 32GB if you can and if it does not break the bank. I have a Lenovo Yoga as a secondary machine with 8GB and I have a desktop with 24GB. More laptops are now coming with 16GB standard, which was not the case when I picked up mine. It is fine for office duty, but for photos and using software like LR, 8GB is a bit tight. As time goes on, I suspect that 16 will be the new 8, so I would get 32 if you can. Lightroom likes RAM to a point, and 32 should cover you unless you are working with really large files.

--Ken
 
It’s the files you download. Raw and jpeg. The Files app reads the card as if it were just another data source. If you use the photo app, I’m not sure if it converts, but I will check.

No formatting needed. The scandisc ssd, you plug into the iPad or mac And the files are visible .
With the new IOS 14.4, the photo app imports both RAW and JPEG. I shoot RAW and import it directly to the Photo App. Very straight forward. You can then begin to edit immediately if you want. You can also preview and select which ones you want to import. One issue I noticed only occurs when you import JPEG and RAW at the same time. This only occurs when you shoot both RAW and JPEG on the same card at the same time. So what I do is use one slot for RAW and one Slot as a backup in JPEG format. If you don’t shoot JPEG than just ignore of of this. I have 256gigs of storage on mine.
 
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