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Saturday, 24 April 2010

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Thanks Marc. Great news, just what I have been waiting for. Come on tax refund.

Marc, would you possibly be able to inform us at what speed the import takes place?

I used to have an iPod camera connector back a number of years, but the USB1.1 transfer speed made using it an exercise in frustration. If the iPad connection actually happens at reasonable speeds, I'll be up for one. It'll be the (multifunction) equivalent of the Epson ingesters.

Thomas Pindelski has posted timings and file structures on his blog - iPad Camera Connection Kit.

Would this constitute a recommended solution for those who have an iPad anyway, or do you feel it is a solution in itself?
Doesn't seem as good as my netbook/external hard drive solution for photo back-up in the field and I run a full copy of Lightoom on the netbook. Cheaper, too.

@Josh: From what I read, speed is much better than that of the iPhone. True USB 2.0. Depends a lot on the card and reader/camera. My testing wasn't scientific enough for me to quote numbers.

--Marc

Thanks Marc for the information about the connection kit. Too bad it can't "handle" the card reader and some CF cards. I've always been told it's best to use a card reader and not to ingest directly from the camera. Anyway, as another person has asked in a post, how is the import speed?

Why didn't apple include a card reader? Probably so they can offer one in six months. Why offer now what you can generate more upgrades with later?

@Martin: Too soon to know for sure, but I think the iPad as a field backup/viewer is only for those who have other reasons to have an iPad and are not taking a lot of shots. Dedicated devices are better solutions for more demanding situations. (I certainly didn't buy my iPad to replace my Epson P-3000.)

As a viewer, in the field or not, the iPad excels.

--Marc

Thanks for the review Marc. Did you check how it handles duplicates? can it be used for incremental importing?

That is iteration 1. Unfortunately as Apple is a close shop, it is hard to tell.

May be one day, one can turn the live feed image to IPad and turn it upside down plus horizontal flip it, you can have the experience of a 8x10 camera without the dark cloth. Joke aside, you can zoom it to check focus zoom out to check the overall shot with RGB/histogram per small area etc.

Whether if Apple did not do it can one develop an IPad application to somehow sync with the camera. No doubt, it is a better way to do live view on an A4 size viewer than a 3" inch one.

BTW, looking at a subset of pixel (like the embed JPEG) can be misleading. The real deal is look at the raw in real time on A4 size display!

Apple generally pares down all of its products to the core essentials, and this is no exception.

Imagine: there's an SD card slot built-in.

Immediately, the question from the general audience: how do I copy apps/music/PDFs/office documents/VPN configurations/whatever from the card into my iPad (or vice versa)? How do I browse the card?

Suddenly, the appliance experience the iPad offers becomes polluted.

By offering it as an external device clearly labeled for camera connectivity, Apple maintains control over the experience and expectations. This functionality is for importing images. Full stop.

Think how rare this device is. How many computers sold at Best Buy can you honestly say that, within two days of use, you've used every port available, every button? The iPad has what you need and nothing more; if you want something it doesn't offer, hey, that's fine, you can buy some other device.

Apple doesn't have to "pad" a feature list to sell its products. It sells a promise: if you buy this, the things we do support will work very, very well, and easily, and intuitively.

Think how rare that is, too.

Can you export images from the iPad to another SD card or a flash drive. This would let me make backups when traveling without a computer.

There's lots of empty space inside an iPad, so I'm guessing the omission of SD reader/USB port has to do with profit and power demands. There are other features a next-gen iPad could use, perhaps a variant with huge amounts flash memory could be one of them. Not to mention an onboard camera or two, a decent sized sensor could fit in there.

@Yoni: Skips dupes, so incremental works very well.

--Marc

See here too:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/24/apples_ipad_camera_adapter_supports_usb_audio_keyboards.html

I wish the iPad photo app allowed you to rate photos and have those ratings carry into iPhoto or Aperture. It would be great to be able to perform a first edit in the field.

We should suggest a "PhotoPad" to Apple, with features specifically designed for photographers.

Mike

A specialized PhotoPad from Apple? They'll never do that, because their bag is generalize, not specialize; and with a name like "PhotoPad" users would expect some kind of camera to be built in.

On the other hand, iPads run iPhone software, so a collection of third-party iPhone apps upgraded for the bigger iPad screen is not ureasonable -- existing stuff like PhotoShop Mobile, MillColour, Pixel Perfect, PhotoTropodelic, TiltShiftGen and suchlike could make an iPad into a handy portable editing suite.

But what I'd really like to see would be an iPad version of Lightroom. I used to like dodging and burning with my hands back in the day; a touch version of Lightroom could bring that back, assuming Adobe ever gets over its snit with Apple.

@Steve: There might be a touch version of LR someday, maybe even on an Apple device, but definitely not on the current iPad generation. Memory is much too limited (256MB), and so is CPU speed. Also, it's not an Intel x86 processor, which is all LR v3 runs on.

--Marc

Very interesting review. Guess it's time for me to go get one myself and test it out.

As Jay commented, I also want export images in IPAD to external SD or CF card by using camera connection kit. I didn't find the solution yet.

I also want to browse images, delete bad images directly in SD/CF card. Currently, we have to import images in SD/CF card to IPAD to view full image and delete bad ones.

When I'm in the outside, sometimes I have to quickly select good photos and hand them to press. Hence, direct browsing and deleting images in SD/CF card via camera connection kit is very important to me. That's why I bought IPAD, or PhotoPad. :)

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