Photo Safe II Empties Flash Cards on the Go

For photographers who just can't seem to shoot enough when away from home, the Photo Safe II allows the shutter to keep on clicking.

Dumping your digital camera’s contents to a computer and wiping it clean may be the digital equivalent of popping in a new roll of film in the 21st Century, but as any island-bound vacationer knows, it’s not always so easy when you’re away from home. A company known as Digital Foci has cooked up a device known as the Photo Safe II that allows you to unload your memory card and keeping snapping shots wherever you go.

 Functionally, it’s really just a portable hard drive with a built-in card reader and display. Users snap in a memory card, press the one-touch Auto Copy button, and it’s stripped clean at 5.0 MB/s, leaving the contents on the unit’s hard drive. It’s also possible to leave the photos on the card, creating backup copies of images on a friend or family member’s camera. An external display tells you how much room, you have left.

For maximum compatibility, it handles a variety of memory card formats, including CF Type I, xD-Picture Card, MMC, SD/HC Card, miniSD, Memory Stick, MS PRO, MS Duo, and MS Pro Duo. It will also handle all file formats, so you don’t have to worry whether you’re shooting RAW images, JPEGs, or MOVs – they’re all copied.

The Photo Safe II comes in 80GB and 160GB versions, which retail for $139 and $189, respectively. Both are available now.