Has anyone taken their IPAD on safari and used the camera connection kit to serve as a backup for photographs? I was considering carrying a couple of 8GB memory cards but still feel the need to have extra back-up. Please help. Leaving for Cape Town/Botswana/Vic Falls in 3o days.

Robin

No, but, you could try it at home. I always backup photos, i.e., take two copies home.

regards - tom

I obsess about backing up - we traveled with a small laptop to Africa earlier this year so I transferred the pics to it at the end of each day, and then backed those files up to our iPod, which is also an excellent storage device.

Also - unless you'll be editing daily, you could blow through 16GB pretty quickly, especially if you are shooting video or big/raw files.

The iPad camera connection kit gets a great review here - sounds like a good solution to me

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/rev...onnection-kit/

I used my iPad with the camera connection kit extensively to back up my pictures each day during our summer East Africa safari. It worked great as both back-up and as a review device. We also had a Macbook on safari. The advantage for backing up pictures there was the editing available through iPhoto (or equivalent) which is not there for the iPad. I am not yet comfortable with the IPad photo editing apps. However as a back-up device it works great. You must have the camera connection kit however.

Thanks for your responses:

Tom: I intend to practice using the connection today; I'm sure it's user friendly--that's the Apple way

Elizabeth: Thanks for the suggestion of backing up to the IPOD.

AKR1: I have a 13" Macbook, but I was trying to avoid taking it with me; however, it was a good excuse to look at the new 11" Macbook Air. My reasoning for taking the IPAD was because it was multifunctional like the Mac (storage, reviews, SKYPE app) but much lighter. I have the 64GB so I should have enough storage space.

If you are shooting in jpg format,the Ipad can be used for storage. If you are shooting raw, it will not work.

Mike

I shot in both RAW and JPEG and had no difficulty in storing/retrieving the images on/from the iPad. Apple clearly states the camera connector kit supports RAW images.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A

I love the iPad for backing up the photo's. It enables you to go through them after a day of taking pictures and maybe already throw some clear garbage out. The big screen and the good battery life is just awesome for this.

My birthday is coming up and I am HINTING big time for an iPad. However, if all else fails, I'll be getting it before my Paris trip, especially for the photo backup feature. I don't want to take my MacBook Pro, but I do want to be able to upload photos. Thanks for all the info on this thread.

I should have stated that you cannot store raw if you use a compact flash card which is what the majority of the DSLR cameras use.

mytmoss, can you clarify a little more? My new DSLR uses SD/SDHC and I thought both formats were more or less equally used. I have an older DSLR that uses CF. I don't know if this is going to be like Beta and VHS, nor do I know which has the advantage. Comments?

I don't have an IPAD.
Is this a card issue, SD or CF?
Here's some discussion about it -
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=36683293
and maybe-
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=36597857

regards - tom

Thanks for the links, Tom. I am a Mac user, and my camera uses the SD/SDHC memory cards, so they go right into my laptop, but I wanted to get more information about the iPad and what formats it would accept. A friend I travel with uses CF and we were hoping she could download her photos to the iPad, too, so she wouldn't have to buy extra memory cards. I think that might actually be best for her, cards are no longer that expensive.
I guess it is not really an issue for me, as my camera uses the SD and that works well with my laptop and should with the iPad. It was just the possibility of using the older camera with the CF that I wanted to question.

I dont really understand the problem with the card readers... why don't you just connect the camera itself to your ipad via the USB connector? That should work shouldn't it? I haven't tested it on RAW, but can't imagine the card format (SD or CF) could have influence on the iPad being able to reed RAW or not??

Thank you for one more excuse to get an iPad!!

There are some DSLRs that now use SD format and I believe these will be fine with an Ipad. I do not believe you can hook a camera directly to the IPad.

One more thing not mentioned, if you shoot raw, the 64 gigs of storage that the Ipad provides (maximuum) may not be enough room to back up all your pictures. My last trip, I shot over 200 gigs of photos and the Ipad would fall far short.

Mike

According to the Apple site you can directly hook a camera to the iPad using the camera connection kit. They say that you can transfer RAW images:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A

It is true that if you shoot RAW, as I do, an iPad may not have enough memory for something like an African safari!

But now I see that HyperDrive has an external hard drive that will connect to an iPad via the camera connection kit:
http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-...rive-s/183.htm

http://www.pitchengine.com/hyperdriv...d-drive/85829/

You don't need the iPad to use this HyperDrive, but it will connect to an iPad for viewing photos. I've used an older version of the HyperDrive for backup when I didn't want to lug a computer on a trip and have been satisfied. It will run off batteries if you are away from electricity for a while.

I can connect my Nikon d70s to the iPad and transfer the photos and it works perfectly, just havent tried it with raw images yet. I will give it à try over the weekend