I'm a recent subscriber to the Daily Photo Tips with Chris podcast, and listened to the "Camera or Card Reader" edition the other day and wanted to add my thoughts to it.

In addition to Chris's reason to use a card reader rather than camera to transfer images - which was primarily speed of transfer - I have a few more

  • preserving the safety of my camera - having the camera tethered to my laptop by a cable adds something to get caught - resulting in a (admittedly small) risk that my camera or my laptop ends up on the floor. Well, I say it is small, but it is something that I've done which resulted in the camera having to be sent away for repair. Not something I want to repeat
  • when shooting an event a card reader can be uploading photos on to a laptop whilst the camera, with a different card in it, can still be in use. Additionally, if you find yourself with an assistant, this is a job that can be delegated
  • battery preservation - although my d80 battery lasts a long time, every transfer of images uses power

The final recommendation is the same, get a good USB2 card reader and use that for image transfer. In fact, as I write this, I have a SanDisk MicroMate attached to my laptop transferring images.