Monday, April 16, 2018

Update On Using Only An iPad Pro For Travel And Leaving The Laptop At Home

Apple's old "Lightning to SD Card Reader" on top and the new model below it.  The new model is more than 5 times
faster at ingesting images into an iPad than the old model.
Just a quick update on the idea of using an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil instead of bringing a laptop and all its necessary paraphernalia (after all, I've been trying to find ways to go small, lighter and less expensive these past years) when traveling to backup and synchronize image files.  I first wrote about it here but since then I've done a bit more experimentation and I thought I would pass on what additionally I've learned.

 One of the complaints I had was how slow the image files (Olympus E-M1 Mark II 20mp RAW files) loaded into my iPad Pro.  One reader, Paul, suggested that if I had purchased my SD to Lightning Card Reader some time ago that there is a newer card reader that is faster.  I did purchase a new one and it is faster.  Here is a quick comparison.  

 Here are the times to load 100 RAW image files into my iPad Pro camera roll:

 Old card reader     117 seconds
New card reader     22 seconds

 That difference is huge and that makes uploading images at the end of a long day of photography much nicer.  I thank Paul for that tip.

 Here is an Amazon link to the new model.  There are cheaper knockoffs at lower prices but I figured Apple's product would be worth the little extra money as I don't think the knockoffs would be any faster, if as fast.  When looking for devices to use with my iPad, I often read where someone has purchased a 3rd party device, then written that it would not work with their iPad.  With the official Apple model, it is guaranteed to be compatible with ISO 11.  The Model number listed on Amazon to this new card reader is MJYT2AM/A.

 Also, I found a way to Title, Caption, Keyword, Assign Stars and Flag my images in Lightroom CC (used to be Lightroom Mobile) on the iPad.  All of that data moves effortlessly to Lightroom CC Classic on your desktop except Keywords.  Darn.  At the bottom right corner of the iPad screen when using LR CC, there is a small i symbol.  Click on that and it reveals the data you can fill in.  As soon as you finish, LR CC automatically updates the files that have already been synced.

 Adobe seems to be making progress with Lightroom CC (Mobile).  I hope at some point they allow the keywords you may assign when working on the iPad to be brought into your desktop environment.  If so, my plan would not be to try to keyword all of my images in the mobile environment, but only a few that are representative of the greater body of work then, after returning home, copy and paste the keywords into the rest of my images.

 If anyone has any more good news about using the iPad for travel in lieu of taking a laptop and all of its peripheral necessities, please leave a comment so we all can benefit.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

 Dennis A. Mook 

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4 comments:

  1. Jim CamelfordApril 17, 2018 at 9:48 PM

    Thanks for the tip on the card reader - just ordered it from Apple Canada...speeding that part of the process up will be beneficial.

    I have done this round trip several times now ... but you have to be fairly careful you don't run into your cloud storage limit. By way of example, I routinely keep about 5GB on my CC account - sync'd to the iPads, iPhones and my Laptop that myself and my spouse share. 5GB is plenty for showing off current grandkids and projects. On a trip, I have to keep the stuff on the iPad from my Mk II limited to about an additional 14GB - or I hit the 20GB limit of the plan and it gets really messy when you return the iPad to the real world and start sync'ing.

    A workaround is to winnow down all the off-internet loads on the iPad to less than 14GB before turning sync back on and introducing the iPad to WiFi.

    The real solution, of course, is to up the cloud plan to 1TB - but not sure I want to pay for that continually at this time.

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    1. The Wandering LensmanApril 18, 2018 at 10:13 AM

      Jim, thanks for the input. You have a good point about being careful that your Adobe Cloud storage doesn’t quickly fill. I don’t use the desktop version of Lightroom CC, only the mobile version. That means I don’t keep any images in the cloud and continuously synced between my devices. Once I sync and transfer my images from my iPad to my desktop version of Lightroom Classic, I then delete them from Lightroom CC on my iPad and also from my camera roll. I then don’t fill up my iPad’s memory and the Adobe Cloud storage gets cleared out at the same time.

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    2. Jim CamelfordApril 20, 2018 at 4:32 PM

      Hi Dennis, a point of clarification on the SD Card Reader. I have a 9.7" iPad PRO - and bought the reader - model as noted above. However, it only achieves this speed increase apparently on the 10.5"/12.9" model ... and I missed this point when ordering it. Gotta send it back as apparently I already had this one without realizing it since the model code is not stamped on the reader anywhere. Here's the disclaimer from Apple's website.....

      "It supports data transfer at up to USB 3 speeds on the 12.9-inch and 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and up to USB 2 speeds on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and all other iPad and iPhone models.*"

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    3. The Wandering LensmanApril 20, 2018 at 7:38 PM

      Jim, great information. Your comment helps all of us. Thank you for taking time to contribute to the conversation.

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