Photos/Timelapse on a Trip

August 30, 2012 6:41 PM

I'm going to be taking a five-day motorcycle ride, and would like to do a few things with digital photos along the way. Canon S95, Gopro, tablet questions inside.

Still images: I have a Canon S95 which I like and will be taking. I would like a way to grab specific images from the card (I have an 8GB card in it, so for my purposes I can easily hold every photo I'm likely to take without having to offload them), re-size and/or crop them, and upload them to my blog along the way for my friends to gawk at. I have the camera set to take 5MP photos.

The places we're likely to stay will be unlikely to have in-room wifi but may (hopefully will) have internet available somewhere. I'm guessing at lousy bandwidth hence my desire to edit the images before uploading.

I have a HTC Evo V (3D) on Virgin, but my experiences with it so far have been less than exceptional from a data/coverage viewpoint, and we're going to be in out-of-the-way places. I do not expect to see more than a bar or two, if that, along the way.

I have access to an iPad (wireless only) and a Windows 7 laptop, which I could bring if they would help me in my quest, and I've been considering a Nexus 7 which I could buy and purchase if it would help.

Given my hardware and the likely restrictions on how much bandwidth there is likely to be, how would you suggest I upload roughly four or five pictures a day to my blog? Can my Canon talk to either tablet I mention? Is there simple photo editing software for either tablet (crop, maybe fiddle a bit with levels, etc.)? I have photoshop already on the laptop. I don't mind bringing the laptop but it's considerably bulkier than the tablets...hm, having typed this out, I'm going to be bringing the laptop, aren't I?

On another note, I'm going to buy a Gopro camera. I think I can wire it into my bike for power, but what I'd ideally like to do is capture a frame every few seconds and put together a time-lapse at the end of the trip. Does it have this capability? If not, what's the likelihood of being able to capture 30 hours of video to grab stills from when I'm back home (5 or 6 hours of video a day--I can offload at the end of each day to whatever tablet/laptop I bring, assuming it can do that), and what model/extras/geegaws would I need? I'm anticipating a power adapter and mounting system already.

posted by maxwelton to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

If you were going for a month or two I'd say differently, but for five days, I'd consider just saving it and doing the editing when you get home. Take the highest-res pictures the S95 can, don't bother blogging, don't do editing on the road.

The GoPro reports here that it can do six hours of 720p/30FPS video with power and a 32GB card, and also that it can be made to take timed shots, though the spec is unclear about what that means. I'd consider buying the largest, fastest memory cards you can afford, but somebody else who either has or knows the Hero cameras really well should answer that, not me.

So take the pictures, shoot the video if you can, but otherwise don't worry about it; travel and have fun.
posted by mhoye at 7:07 PM on August 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, don't diminish your enjoyment of the trip by dicking around with unfamiliar photo editing or uploading procedures. Your blog readers can suffer through a 5-day hiatus, and if they can't, fuckem.

Enjoy the ride!
posted by spacewrench at 7:36 PM on August 30, 2012

We've used the GoPro (HD Hero, not the newest one) to make timelapse movies of long trips in the car using the timed photo setting. In our experience, you can get about 3 hours of making timed pictures out of a fully-charged battery. My motorcycle-riding husband tells me that you'd need to get an additional housing for the GoPro that allows USB-in to get power from the bike, but this housing isn't waterproof. Another option would be to get the extended battery add-on; we don't have one but they claim you'll get double the battery life out of it. As far as turning the pictures into a movie is concerned, my husband recommends MPEG Streamclip.

You should be able to use the iPad Camera Connection Kit to offload data from SD cards to the iPad at the end of the day. Editing and uploading a few pictures each day shouldn't be a problem at all - there are lots of apps that you could use to do the editing. You may not be able to upload the pictures directly to your own blog without using an app (that may or may not exist, or maybe using a post-by-email feature?) or putting the pictures on something like Flickr first. '

Have a great trip!
posted by eendje at 2:03 AM on August 31, 2012

Apple's iPad camera connection kit will let you load photos onto your iPad where you can edit them: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A/apple-ipad-camera-connection-kit

Most blog hosting platforms will have an easy way to upload from your iPad, but you should work that out before hand.

good luck!
posted by ccoryell at 3:48 AM on August 31, 2012

You can't say that you are going out for a five day ride without saying where... that's akin to the MeFi rule of pet questions without pictures. Are you starting from Whidbey and staying in the NW?

I'm sure you cannot be so far out of civilization that there won't be a McDonalds or Starbucks with free Wifi to do your blog updates and such. When I went to Hawaii last month, I bought a 32 gig card and could not even touch a quarter of the capacity... but then I got to caught up in the experience to actually run much video.
posted by Jazz Hands at 5:56 AM on August 31, 2012

Another option for uploading photos on the road that's probably overkill for you is to put an Eye-Fi card in your S95. It's an SD card that also has WiFi. You can pair it with an iPad to get the photos off it, there's also a service where it will upload photos directly via some public WiFi nodes. It's a bit expensive and fiddly, but it's pretty neat tech.
posted by Nelson at 8:21 AM on August 31, 2012