Transferring pictures from your camera to your computer seems like a simple thing to do. Just connect your camera to your computer using the USB cable that came with your camera right? Wrong. There's a faster way to do it.
There's actually a bunch of ways to transfer your pictures from your camera to your computer. Your Camera's USB port is actually very slow when considering how fast USB should go. You'd average about 5 MB/s. When you have 2GB of pictures on your card that you want to transfer, that is going to take a very long time. USB 2.0 has a theoretical transfer of 480 Mb/s or 60 MB/s (unfortunately you'll hardly ever see that speed). I suggest purchasing a Card Reader. Removing the memory card from your camera, insert it into the card reader, then into the computer. You'll save over half the time. You can purchase cheap ones from many computer stores (don't buy them from the big retails places and don't bother with brand name). I purchased my multi-card reader for $10. I also have 2 Sandisk Micromate SDHC readers which came with my 4GB Ultra II SDHC cards. I always use them for transfering pictures.
As an example transfering 2GB of data through my Nikon D80 directly from USB it took 5 minutes and 30 seconds. Using my card reader i transferred the same pictures in just 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The older pro cameras such as the Canon 5D even run on USB 1.0 which is very slow. Ian estimates about 30 minutes to transfer 2 GB of images from his camera to his computer via USB cable.
There are also devices which you can get for the higher end digital SLRs which can wireless transfer your pictures to a computer via Wifi. After a shot it will automatically transfer the picture over to the computer. I've seen this used at some weddings. The photographer would take a portrait of guests, and it would automatically be transferred to the computer where you can view it.
Normally, I just use my Windows Explorer and drag and drop files from my memory card over to my computer. I actually never install the software that comes with the camera.
Windows also has a feature called Import Pictures which should pop up onto your screen when you connect a memory card or camera. The good feature of this is that it will rename your pictures to whatever you want. Normally pictures show up as DSC_0001.jpg, but with Import Picture you can change your picture title to Vancouver Island 001.jpg or something similar. You just have to give the tag to the pictures you are uploading and it will change the file name of the images. You can also provide more details, you just have to change the settings yourself.
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