A Drive for Backing Up in the Field

When you’re done shooting out on location, you’re going to need to back up your images (my own rule is: I have to have at least two complete backups before I ever erase a memory card), and I have two great solutions for you, depending on whether you’re traveling with a laptop or just using an iPad or your phone for viewing your images. When traveling with my laptop (I always take mine on shooting trips—I’m too impatient to wait until I get home), I use a Samsung 500GB T5 Portable SS drive. It’s so crazy small and lightweight; it’s a little bigger than a pack of matches, only weighs 1.8 ounces, it’s fast as blazes, and it’s only around $115. After my shoot, I connect this to my laptop and back up all my images from the day (and, yes, I do this every night, no matter how tired I am, which is not always easy). If you’re not bringing a laptop, then I have another great solution: the WD 250GB My Passport Wireless SSD external portable drive. It has a built-in SD card reader and you don’t need a computer—you just pop your SD card in, press one button, and it backs up your images. Also, it does a smart backup the next time you put your card in, only backing up new shots you’ve taken since the last shoot. Better yet, it has its own built-in closed Wi-Fi network, so once your images are on the drive, you can use its app to view the images on the drive right on your phone or tablet wirelessly, and you can even transfer selected images to your phone or tablet to edit them. How cool is that?! It’s around $199.