Consider purchasing a Micro SD Card of 128-256 gigabytes and insert it into your camera.  Be sure to check if your camera is able to accommodate a card and the maximum memory size it can accept.  If the card get's full, you can simply swap it with a backup card.  This will also give you another form of backup.

How many photos can be saved on a memory card

To help you decide on the SD Cards and Micro SD Cards to purchase, the following table will give you an idea of how many photos each size card can hold.  The larger a photo size, the fewer can be saved on a memory card.  The larger the memory card, the more expensive they will be.

The first step is to connect the camera to your phone.

Direct Connect

As our phone supports OTG (On-The-Go) USB Connections, all we have to do it plug our camera directly into the phone using the charging port and launch the 'My Files' app.

USB OTG (On-The-Go) allows your phone to act as a host for other USB devices such as USB flash drives, digital cameras, mice or keyboards.

USB Cable Types

There are two types of USB Cables and it can be hard to tell them apart as they look virtually identical.  Both cables have the same USB plug at one end and the Micro USB plug or other type adaptor at the other end.

If you plug your camera into your phone and your phone does not recognize the camera as a plugged in USB device other than for charging, you are probably using a Charging Cable and need a Data Cable.

Charging Cable

A charging cable has two internal wires that are used to charge your phone.  When using a charging cable, you will not be able to perform a data sync to transfer photo from your camera to your phone.  In fact, when you run the Files app on your phone, you will not see that any USB Device (Camera) is connected to the phone.

Data Cable

A data cable has four internal wires allowing the cable to be used for charging as well as for syncing data.  So, a data cable can be used to sync photos between your camera and phone while charging your phone at the same time.

When we were researching how to get photos from our camera to our phone, we talked to people at Best Buy and T-Mobile and were told by sales people at both places that it was not possible to do it.  We happened to run across a video on Youtube where someone was actually showing how they could connect a mouse, keyboard and other devices directly to their phone.  We gave it a try and it worked fine.  In fact our phone came with an adaptor allowing us to plug it into the charging part and then plug in other USD devices.

If you camera plug does not match your phone, you may need to purchase an adaptor to make the connection.  Adaptors can be found online for only a few dollars.

Wireless Method

As our camera is Wifi enabled, we gave this method a try and it worked fine but is slower performing the transfer and a little more involved than the Direct Connect method described above.  It also involves downloading an app from the camera's manufacturer to manage the file transfer.

Depending on your camera and phone, the steps to make the Wifi connection may vary, so we will not go into more details at this point. 

SD Card Reader

Another possibility is to purchase an SD Card Reader which can be found online for only a few dollars.  You simply insert your memory card into the device and then plug it directly into your phone.

This is going to work exactly as the Direct Connect method described above it's just that you are plugging the reader into your phone rather than your camera.

If you decide to purchase a reader and your home computer does not have a slot to plug a Memory Card directly into it, with the correct adaptor, you should be able to plug the Memory Card Reader directly into a USB slot on your home computer to quickly transfer photos from a card to the computer.

We mention copying photos to a Smartphone, but this could actually be any Wifi enabled device that will allow you to sync your photos online with Google Photos.  If you are not planning on syncing the photos with Google Photos, you can stop right here once you get them copied over to another device which in this case would not need to be Wifi enabled.

Copying files from your camera to your Smartphone (based on our camera and phone types)

1. We have directly plugged our camera into our phone as described above
2. Turn the camera on
3. Click on the 'My Files' app
4. Click on 'USB Storage 1' to display the cameras file directory
5. Select 'DCIM' just as you would on your computer when your camera is plugged in
6. Select 'Edit' and the click the folders you want to copy to your phone (you can select the entire folder or multiple folders and not just individual files)
7. Select 'Copy'
8. Select 'SD Card' as this is your phones Micro SD Card
9. Select 'Done' to copy the same directory structure matching your camera (You have the option to select 'Create New Folder' if you want the files in a different location)

Note: When you plug your camera into your phone, it may popup an application for file transfers.  For us, we get a 'Smart Switch' appliction for USB Cable Transfer asking us to select the action to take such as send or receive files on the phone.  Smart Switch is an application used to transfer files from one phone to another for example when you purchase a new phone.  If something likes this pops up on your phone, you should be able to ignore it.

Your may get a notification on your phone that a new folder or photos have been found asking if you want to go ahead and sync them with Google Photos.  Click this will take you directly to the location where you can select to perform the sync.

Once connected, you are not using your mobile data or any part of your own plan.  This is how it works if you purchase let's say a Tablet Computer with no internet service, but it does support Wifi.  You simply connect to a Wifi network, then you will have internet access.

The reason we mention this is that if you choose to not use Wifi and instead use your mobile data plan, you could go over your limit and incur additional charges by your service provider or they may slow down your connection speed due to excessive use.

In conclusion, use a Wifi connection to perform the photo sync from your device to the internet and Google Photos.

See our WiFi page for additional information.

If your phone did not come preinstalled with the Google Photos app, visit the Google Play Store and search 'Google Photos' to install it.

Activating the 'Main' sync on your mobile device

Using the Google Photos app on your mobile device, click the main menu icon.  This is the round icon located at the top right of the screen and will contain your account photo if uploaded.  On the next page, select 'Photos settings' then 'Back up & sync'.  Make sure the 'Back up & sync' option is turned on.  This is the main control that indicates you will be wanting to sync your photos when new ones are added to your device.  It does not perform the actual sync, only indicates that you want to.

There are other options on the page such as 'Cellular data back up' that should probably remain off as turning it on will perform backups using data on your mobile plan compared to using Wifi.

Syncing your albums with Google Photos

Scroll down to 'Back up devicee folders' and select it.  On the next page, select the directories you want to backup.  These are the folders you have copied them from your camera.

As photos are displayed on Google by date, you may select the 'Layout' menu option to display them in a 'Comfortable View', 'Day View' or 'Year View'.  In order to group them into meaningful categories, you must create 'Albums'.

Selecting the 'Photos' option displays all the photos you have ever uploaded; this is the original or 'master' photo.  Now think of an 'Album' as a folder where you may group photos together in a more meaningful way.  Placing a photo in an album only moves a reference to the master photo.  It works like this, if you delete a photo from an album, it still remains in the 'Master' photo list but if you delete a photo from the 'Photos' list, it will delete it from all albums having a reference to it. 

Creating a new album

On the 'Albums' page, select 'New Album' to create a new album.  You may then select any of the photos to move into the album.  Remember, a photo may reside in multiple albums as it's just a reference to the master photo.

There are a couple of options to add photos to an album.  When adding, select the date displayed and that will select all photos that were uploaded on that date to be referenced by the album.  You may also select individual photos from different dates to be referenced by the album.

When you are done, select 'Create' and you will be prompted to enter the Album Name.

Repeat the process creating multiple albums for all your photos, organizing them into meaningful categories such 'Eiffel Tower', 'Notre Dame', 'Sacre Coeur', etc.  This can be a bit of a pain as all your photos for the day that were synced will display together and now you must select the ones that go into each album.

• The camera's SD Cards
• The Micro SD Cards used in your phone
• Google Photos

When using your camera or phone, you may use one or more SD Cards and Micro SD Cards so it's important to have backups.  When a card gets full, simply pop in a new one.  Do not erase memory cards as they should be kept as backups until you arrive home and have downloaded all your photos to a permanent storage area on your home computer, CD or some other location.