Since the introduction of the iPad, photographers have been speculating on it’s potential applications to the craft.  The most obvious use is for portfolio or client presentations.  But how about a tethering option making it a great live view display?  Another obvious thought is a field backup device in place of a laptop? Although the iPad is definitely aimed at consumers (those whose main cameras are in their phone) and it’s primary function is content consumption, it appears it may offer some appeal to photographers.

After using one for about a month there are many things I really enjoy about the iPad.  It’s probably the coolest “gadget” I’ve ever used, and for a photographer, images displayed on the iPad look terrific.  Add to that many other great features, such as weighing  only 1.5 pounds and running 10 hours on a single charge, it quickly becomes a device you try and find a reason to use even more.  While it appears the design of the device precludes things like tethering (at least for now), what about using it in place of a laptop or a image storage device in the field for storing images?

At this point things are beginning to clarify, and indeed the iPad may have some possibilities as such a device.  I just received the Camera Connection Kit for my iPad and after testing it out, it does offer some functionality for field backup.

To begin with, the iPad itself is based on Mac OS X, and as such has built in support for the same raw files that Mac OS X (and Aperture) support.  That includes most dSLR’s as well as point and shoots such as the Canon G11.  Yes, the iPad can read and display your Canon .cr2 and your Nikon .nef files as well as most other raw files.  You can import your images directly into the iPad via the iPad camera connection kit, and they will show up in the photo app where you can view them just fine.

There are 3 ways to get them into the photo app with the connection kit.  The kit itself consists of two dongles that plug into the iPad’s 30 pin dock connector.  One has a slot for a SD card, the other a standard USB port.  If your images are on a SDHC card, you simply use that dongle, plug in the card, and the images are displayed for you to import to the iPad.  You can import all of them or just some of them. 

You can also connect your camera directly to the iPad using a USB cable, and import from the camera.  One question I’ve seen discussed is how to handle CF cards.  I have a cheap Belkin USB multi card reader, so I connected it via the USB cable, and I was able to import image files just fine.  True, another device to haul around, but I’m guessing I can find an even smaller one to use so it won’t matter much. For a card reader to work it can’t draw much power, otherwise you get an error message that the attached device draws too much power. I’m also buying a couple of CF to SDHC card adaptors and am going to try those in my Canons and PhaseOne camera.  Personally at this point I’d like to standardize on SDHC cards, since my laptop has an SD card slot, and now with the iPad it just sort of makes sense.

Once you get the images into the iPad, you can view them, including zooming in at 1:1 to check focus.  It would be very easy to display the images to a customer right after a shoot. The next step is getting them off of the iPad into a computer, and I was a little concerned at how convoluted of a task this might turn out to be.

To move the image files from the iPad back to the computer you can use iPhoto. This works just like an iPhone, the iPad shows up in the left column, you select it, and you see all the images where you can then import them.  This is all fine and good, but personally I don’t store my image files inside of the iPhoto folder ... I would prefer to control where they are myself and have my images organized in a folder structure on my hard drive.  To get them from iPhoto into my own folder structure my choices were  either navigate down into the iPhoto folder and move them. Easier was to export them from iPhoto to the folder of your choice (being sure to keep them in their original format), then deleting them from iPhoto.  If you use a PC, I would assume you get them onto the PC like you would with an iPhone as well.

But it’s even easier than that if you use Lightroom!  Simply plug in your iPad, launch Lightroom, and like iPhoto, the iPad will appear much like a CF or SD card where they can be imported directly into the folder of choice.  This was a pleasant surprise and makes using an iPad in the workflow pretty simple.

I then tried to import images from my PhaseOne p65+ to the iPad and here I found a mixed bag.  Mac OS X does not support this raw format.  On a PhaseOne back, you have two choices as far as an extension for your image files, .TIF or .IIQ.  I prefer the latter, just so I don’t get them confused with regular tiff files, but iPad only recognizes them as image files if they are .TIF files.  Not a big deal, and it’s even pretty easy to use a utility to rename the .TIF’s to .IIQ after I get them to the folder of my choice on the computer. Unfortunately CaptureOne Pro (PhaseOne’s terrific raw converter) does not recognize the iPad like Lightroom does, but after using iPhoto or Lightroom to get the files off of the pad onto the computer, you can use C1Pro to convert the raw files at that point.  Pretty much like using a big CF card.

Overall it works quite well, but it’s not totally smooth sailing.  There are a few caveats which might make it more challenging or not an option for some users.

First, there really isn’t a good way to organize the files on the iPad.  They’re just all a bunch of files, no folders or albums.  The are separated as “events” based on the day they were taken and if you use Lightroom or iPhoto to import them from the iPad they can be saved into corresponding dated folders if you want.  In the case of Lightroom you could just dump them all into one big folder, which may work for some if you tend to organize with keywords, ratings and the like instead of the OS folder structure.

Another thing you cannot do is save the image files from the iPad back onto another device such as another card or small USB hard drive.  Many in the field always have two devices, usually a laptop and an external hard drive, and archive from their cards onto both devices, especially if they erase the cards and reuse it.  I haven’t found a way around this yet.

Finally is just space itself.  If you have the 64 gig version maybe this won’t be too bad, but with the 16 or 32 gig version, there just isn’t that much space.  You can go light on the apps and leave off the videos, but even with the 64 gig version, some may find there just isn’t enough room to back everything up for some trips.

So there you have it.  If the limitations don’t bother you, the iPad may work just fine as a field CF/SD card backup device.  I would recommend you take enough cards to not reuse one at least until you can get the images off of the iPad onto a couple of hard drives, but if you need to travel light this may work really well.

And I will admit it is really cool to finish taking the pictures, and minutes later be viewing them on an iPad.  Now to figure out how to transmit them directly with an Eye Fi card.