Welcome to Ann Torrence photography - travel, landscape, nature, people from Utah, the west, rural western U.S., national parks and international locations. Ann is writer of photography tips and and travel stories and essays.

Camp near the confluence of Prairie Creek and the Nahanni River. Solar roll, weighted down with rocks, is charging batteries.

I've taken my cameras to many wild places, and I had even rafted the Grand Canyon with one in 1998. Back then I shot with film and my camera gear fit into a small ammo can. Gearing up for the Nahanni trip posed three new challenges for me - digital media storage, powering the camera and digital vault, and keeping everything dry and accessible.

Media storage

Using the D70, I estimated I'd shoot about 1 GB per day (in fact, I shot 12.6 GB in 12 days). I either needed to buy a ton of compact flash (at $100 per GB at the prevailing price in 2005) or find a different solution. I studied the portable media storage device and chose an Epson 2000. I bought it for this trip. and one reason I chose it was the battery life. In my tests, I managed 10 transfers from one GB chips on a single battery charge. One of my traveling mates used 2 GB chips and she only got about 5 transfers per charge. A caveat on battery life: I didn't use the P2000 much to review my pictures on the trip, but I did confirm that the first and last images on each chip copied safely before I erased it. On a mission-critical trip, I would now bring two units.