Taking technology with me?

Hi all, am about from lurking.

Read the main page today and the pen drive review prompted me to ask a question I've had for a while.

I'm off to China next march and hopefully a lot more besides. I'm obviously going to want to take a lot of photos, but I'm not sure what the best option is to take along with me. I've had experience of taking a camera on holiday before, I took a normal 35mm (that the normal type?) camera to Bolivia and Peru and it handled it well, got some nice photos and it was fine for porting around, up and down mountains and the like. However, in just 3 weeks I got through 12 films, with associated development costs when I got home :E The sods also lost 2 of my films in the post and one film was damaged when the camera jammed and it got exposed.

So what I'm considering is:

Film camera for really nice, set up photos. Hopefully not using too many films!
Digital phone camera/video camera for everyday snaps and quick movies.

I've got my eye on the Nokia 6600, the advantage being I can imagine there's a way to wrangle uploading photos straight from the phone to an FTP site, or using HTTP upload of the form I've got working at www.nsrtfc.com I'm also being offered this phone very cheaply for various reasons, seems to kill many birds with one stone. Already have a 128mb card for it too.

So Qs,

What can you tell me about directly uploading from phone to FTP or FTP via HTTP?

Is the nokia 6600 any good? (bearing in mind they've all recently been called back for software upgrade, know there was some bad press before) If you're going to suggest another camera phone it must have video function (sounds a laugh) and be pretty rugged, this thing's going to be thrown about a lot!

Would you reccomend ditching the film/camera phone and going with a normal digital camera + pendrive or the like? Can I port directly from camera to storage? Not really sure and I'm also worried about batteries for these things, a mate in South America ran out of the special type that he had (non rechargable) and had to buy whole packets of cheap AA ones in every town he came across, was a really nice Pentax too.

So, have no idea what to do atm, let me have it. Cheers :)

(quick edit, sorry if this is in the wrong forum! This one seemed most relevent)

So got a Orange SPV E200, it uses Windows Mobile 2003. It's a fantastic example of a smartphone and will do everything you need to do.

It should do everything you want, check out www.orange.com and look at it there under products and services.

most phone cameras are horrible, a lot of them have really bad resolution, the best ive had is a SE P800 which is 640x480 and was quite acceptable, but then you can get a cheap camera for like 30 quid to do that. You cant really beat a good digital camera, you can probably pick up a new/old one off ebay for not much and the memory cards are pretty cheap, saving you on films, and you can view the pics while you're there :D
Im not sure about the 6600 but you dont want anything less than 640x480 (even thats pretty crap), however they arent bad outside but lack of flash is crap inside.

Have had experience of the 6600, it does take revelatively good pictures, but nothing special (640x480) the zoom function does tend to mess it up quite a bit. Also, you can only tak 9 - 11 second video clips with it, not sure if that is the defualt software preventing it?

I would say get a decent digital camera, as most now have video functions and will be uber higher quality than a phone.

Will

The camera on the orange phone is fantastic, it has loads of options for the different situations that you are in. I got a 256MB card and you can fit hundreds of pictures on there, plus even a Simpsons episode :)

However if you want photos that are great quality and something to look back on I would advise you on getting a good digital camera.

the orange phone has very poor battery life, the E700 has a good camera but no video recording

The Sharp GX30 has a megapixel camera which is of good quality

I am a member of www.whatmobile.net and everyone there would be willing to help you out!

Ben

Unless the 35mm camera is an SLR, which I'm assuming from your description of it as 'normal' that it's not, then why bother taking a 35mm at all? Why not spend the money you would have spent on films on a decent size memory card for a digital? Or even a camera which can take a 1 GB microdrive?

In my experience, even a 2 megapixel camera will do fine, even for nice shots. If you got a 3 or 4 megapixel, or higher, camera, then so much the better. Just a question of whether you are worried about it getting nicked I guess.

The battery life on the SPV E200 is poorer than most phones yes, but the software update avaliable from the orange site makes it much better.

For a smartphone it's not that bad.

If you want something a bit cheaper the Sagem MyX6/7 family have the same CCD sensor and lens as used in the Samsung E700 and are far far cheaper. Motorola V-series phones take good photos. Stay away from the 6600, SPV or Sony Ericsson for image quality. TBH, you're far far far better off getting a £30 throwaway style digicam as it'll take far better images. Get a few memory sticks if you can find them cheap.

Check ebay out for memory sticks I got a 256MB SD card for £30 the other day!

SLR? Unless you mean automatic windon (which it is) you'll have to go further, all I know is that it takes the normal film in lil reels and takes nice pictures, got a flash but no zoom, a nice basic camera.

Anyway, I've ordered the Nokia 6600 for the princely sum of £65, should I not like it I can ebay it and get at least £250 for it.

I've seen the quality of the digital cameras, its definately a different quality than I got with my film jobby, impressive but almost clinically clean, kinda lacking in character perhaps. I'll have a hunt around for cheap and good ones, would certainately consider one, but I've already had experience of finding batteries in remote places, tis tricky!

As to the 7-11 second vid clips, I've heard that too but apparantly there's a utility you can get to remove that, will hunt for it and report back.

Anyway, any info on storing straight from digicamera to a pen drive, without using a PC so I don't have to carry around loads of memory cards? And also on uploading direct using the 6600 to the internet? I'm after some way of remote storage, that's one of the main priorities here.

Cheers for replies.

digi cam would be best

but for a phone id go with either a 6600, nice phones :D or as mentioned the GX30, which has the best camera goin iirc

I dunno, I guess it depends on the camera as to whether you get any character on it. I've only ever had a 6MP camera, so I guess Im lucky in that, but I took this photo with it, which is my favourite of the ones I've taken. If you then get them printed out professionally, I can't tell the difference myself.

http://server6.uploadit.org/files/ab1385-australia.jpg
(I put a link so people don't get upset by slowdown on 56k modems!)

Oh, and SLR = Single lens reflex = big bugger = one of these:

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/stor...m=2&sm=1&tm=12
(Just chose a random one from dixons to demonstrate)

Where'd you get it from for £65? I'm assuming that was on a contract?

Hi....

To be honest, I wouldn't bother with a phone cam - they can be pretty nasty. Plus, for about £100, you can get a decent 3megapixel Fuji digicam or the like - it'll be automatic, not SLR, but it'll do for most shots, and then you can use an SLR for set-piece shots. Something like Fuji's A210 (you can get it off www.pcnextday.co.uk) is very neat - it takes AA batteries, so you'll easily be able to keep it powered, and then just buy multiple XD memory cards for it, swap em out when they're full. Plus, China might be the other side of the world, but they still have PCs - I've got a friend who lives over there, and I still talk to him via MSN/e-mail and all the rest. Just take the camera's USB cable, and got to a cyber-cafe. Jack it in, then you'll probably be able to burn the photos to CD, or maybe upload them to an FTP site.

Yes, got a nice contract deal, wanted to extend it anyway so works out well for me. Assuming I don't want it I can give first dibs here if you like? Wait a couple of days while I play with it :E

And no, camera is definately more normal than an SLR! Just a lil thing with a slidy shutter protecter.

Ok, thanks for replies. It looks like I'll be searching for a low cost digi camera and stacks of memory cards. Will probably come back when I've narrowed it down to a few.