You should be able to check your pics in the field with your digital camera. I do the card swap thing as well, but i also like to check them in the field when I'm there in case I need to make any adjustments (like you, my hunting land is about 3.5 hours away from my house, so I can't just go right back there if something is off). One thing I do to make sure my camera can view the pictures from the trail cam is to format the card with my digital camera (btw, if you do video on your trail cam, chances are your digital camera won't be able to view that)...that tends to head off compatibility issues between the two.