It’s a bit of an irony that the best gadgets for taking photos are the most frustrating to back up.
With a couple of taps, any traveler with a cheap smartphone can start automatically saving their travel shots to cloud services like iCloud or Google Photos. Throw in a low-cost USB adapter for Lightning or USB C, and they can copy photos to a memory stick just as easily.
The serious photographer with a high-end DSLR or mirrorless camera, however? They’ve got more hoops to jump through, especially while out in the field where conditions are tough, time is short, and carrying a laptop can be impractical at best.
Often, those with the most to lose from not backing up their photos are the ones least likely to do it regularly. With a bit of preparation and the right gear, though, keeping those valuable photos safe can be simple and speedy, even when your laptop is thousands of miles away. Here’s how to do it.
Back Up Straight From the Camera
Most high-end cameras, and many mid-range versions, now come with some kind of Wi-Fi ability built in. Exactly what that lets you do depends on the model, but typically, it at least means you can connect to an app on your phone or tablet.
Generally, you’ll set a wireless network name and password on the camera, then connect to that network from your other device. Sometimes you can connect both gadgets to an existing network instead, or use Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi.
Regardless, once you’re connected, the app will then let you send some or all of your photos from your camera to your device. Unless you’ve got many hundreds of them to move across, the copying usually finishes in a minute or two.
If your camera supports it, this is a simple way of keeping on top of your photo backups. Since it takes so little effort, it’s easy to do before bed each night or when you’re about to head out in the morning.
For professional photographers (especially those shooting in RAW mode) or shutter-happy amateurs, the limiting factor is free space on your device. While there are ways to add extra storage to those devices, if you’re looking to back up tens or hundreds of gigabytes of photos (or are traveling without a smartphone or tablet), you may want to keep reading.
Back Up From Your SD Card
If your camera doesn’t have Wi-Fi support or the above method doesn’t suit for some other reason, there’s a flexible alternative: backing up from the SD card.
There used to be a few different companies catering to people who wanted a portable hard drive with an inbuilt SD card reader that didn’t need to be connected to some other device to work. These days, however, not so much.
The company behind the Gnarbox 2 has gone out of business, and the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro has been discontinued. That’s a shame, as it was one of the rare portable drives that let you automatically back up an SD card just by pushing a button on the front of the drive.
That doesn’t leave much in the way of dedicated solutions, but there’s a slightly less slick option that will cost you a whole lot less. The RAVPower Filehub does a few different things, one of which is letting you use the inbuilt card reader to copy files from your SD card to a USB stick or portable drive.
A button on the side automates the copying process, and because the Filehub has its own battery and software, it doesn’t need to be connected to a laptop or phone to work. It can even act as a (small) emergency USB charger if needed. We reviewed it here.
Sure, it means you have to carry two separate devices, the Filehub and your choice of storage, but you’re not talking about a lot of size or weight even so. It’s also far cheaper than either of the dedicated gadgets mentioned above, so even if they were still available, this would be a better option for many people.
Back Up to a Phone or Tablet
If you’re traveling with a phone or tablet, you can also back up your SD cards directly to them. It’s a cheap and cheerful approach, since you’re not paying for extra storage. Just make sure you’ve got enough spare capacity on your mobile device to store everything!
- For those with an iPhone or iPad, Apple makes a Lightning to SD Card reader. Plug one end into your device, the SD card into the other, and use the accompanying app to copy the files across.
- As long as you’re running at least iOS 13, you’ll get more flexibility with Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 adapter. It lets you plug in any USB accessory like a hard drive, memory stick, or card reader, and copy files backward and forward. Depending on what you’re connecting, you may need a cheap powered USB hub as well.
- If your Android device has On-The-Go (OTG) support, you can plug a simple USB C or micro-USB card reader into it and use a file manager app to copy the photos across.
- There are also combination card readers like this that come with Lightning, micro-USB, and USB C connectors to use with both Apple and Android devices.
So there you have it. While backing up camera photos requires a bit more effort than those taken on a phone or tablet, it doesn’t have to be a huge pain in the you-know-what.
As long as you’ve got some charge left in your gadgets, all of these approaches will work no matter where you are. There’s no need to find a wall socket, internet connection, or anything else.
Just backup and go, safe in the knowledge that a stolen camera or corrupted SD card isn’t going to completely ruin your trip.
Main image via Robert Cooke, Filehub image by RavPower.
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Having lost a bunch of photos cos I messed this up, I have to say this is a very useful post. Thank you.
Good point! But a serious photographer may not be using SD cards. Many grown-up DSLRs shoot to compact flash cards. Which call for a different solution.
Not necessarily – it’s possible to buy external CF card readers almost as easily as those for SD cards, and the direct camera-to-phone option will work either way. There are fewer choices for sure, although I’d expect most current ‘grown up’ cameras to have wifi these days.
What’s the difference between the RAV file hub and the ASUS? Do you also need a SSD as well as SD card for the RAV?
The Asus has an inbuilt SSD. The RAV doesn’t have storage of its own — it’s essentially a bridge between whatever gear you have (your phone, an SD card, a portable drive, a USB stick etc). You don’t have to plug an SSD into it, but you can.
The Samsung T5 looks great. I’m quickly running out of space on Android phone with micro SD, Canon with regular photo SD card, mp3 player with voice recordings, Macbook Air with digital art and photo/video edited files all of which need to get off devices to free space, let alone back up. How to manage? Do I need a separate SSD for each device/ file format? How do others manage such confusion? Thanks
If it was me, I’d try to use the Macbook as the central place where I back everything else up to (the SD cards from the phone and camera, plus the MP3 player if that’s possible), and then send everything from there to external drive. You’re least likely to run into file format concerns that way.
I’m looking for a way to backup my photos while on safari (Canon 5d mk 3, 1 sd card & 1 cf card) may not have access to WiFi, not built in on this camera. If I use one card as a backup it reduces the number of shots I can take. I’m happy to buy a portable hard drive, it would be handy for other things but I’m not sure how I could do the back up without a laptop which I don’t want to buy. Hope you can help.
You don’t say whether you’re traveling with a phone or not. If not, I’d suggest looking at the WD MyPassport Wireless mentioned in the article — it lets you back up an SD card without needing a laptop or phone.
If you have a phone or tablet with you, just pick the iOS or Android camera-to-phone option I mention in the article — as long as you have enough space on your phone to back up your photos, it’ll be a cheaper alternative. If you don’t have enough space, the Gnarbox is an alternative option, which also lets you plug in a USB CF reader, so you can back up both SD and CF cards.
After getting ios 13 on my iphone se, along with the apple usb 3 adapter, I now use an amazon basics powered hub, a 2tb ssd drive and a usb card reader to copy/backup files. It’s ridiculously easy and I don’t even need to power the usb 3 adapter (just power the amazon hub)… good times!
Thanks James — yep, the addition of proper file management support for USB devices on iOS 13 has made a big difference. I’ve added a mention of this approach to the article. 🙂
I would recommend one of these very affordable hubs https://amzn.to/3fe1CRY
It comes with sd card slot and USB ports on which you can connect external hard drive without having to spend a bomb on wireless hard drive. Simply plug your mobile phone to the USB C port and use any android file manager to copy from SD card to hard drive.
You can even stream movies stored on the external storage from mobile phone to TV screen through the hdmi port.
Most importantly, it is very portable the data transfer rate is really fast.
It’s a shame Gnarbox has gone out of business. My gnarbox broke, and then the app dissapeared from the app store leaving it bricked. Unable to contact support
LaCie Rugged Boss SSD is a good alternative, if you can find one. $470
From their web site, “When you need to back up, review, and manage content in the field—without a laptop—there’s a special Rugged for that—Rugged BOSS SSD. Short for Backup On Set Solution, our BOSS drives let you directly back up files from SD cards and other USB devices and monitor transfer progress, capacity, and battery life via the built-in status screen. But the real game changer? The LaCie BOSS app. To view and organize footage on set, simply plug your iOS or Android mobile device into the drive, pull up the app, and get to work.”
Yeah, I was going to recommend this as an option, until I discovered that it’s basically impossible to find now. Seems to be a common theme with these sort of devices at the moment!