tita1948 Loc: North Idaho

I am going on a trip to Italy and I want to lighten up my load. I don't want to take my lap top. Can I get my pictures from my camera onto a tablet? And which tablet? And how?

Please any suggestion would help. I want to purchase a tablet during the crazy sales of holiday shopping.

As always thanks.

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

>>Can I get my pictures from my camera onto a tablet?
Yes.

>>And which tablet?
Any decent one. Apple or Android.
Make sure an Android one uses Google Play as the app store. Really cheap ones don't.

>>And how?
A card reader to USB adapter to a micro USB.
You DO realize that a tablet is only going to go up to 64GB, right? And most are a lot less?
Most laptops have at least 500GB.

You might want to consider some sort of online storage, like Dropbox. You could upload to that wherever you got WiFi service.

I would consider a netbook with an external drive, but then you're almost up to a laptop.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

****+*++++++++++++++

I routinely use my 68g iPad to download and go through initial edit before uploading to Dropbox. The iPad is the reliable and superbly functioning mobile tablet against which all others are judged...for good reason!
And by the bye, there is now a 128 Gig iPad.
And don't forget that with the " Go to my PC" app in both your iPad and your PC back home you can pull up your Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or Photoshop window ( or any oher application) from your home PC to your iPad, download the images from Dropbox to your home PC, and sit there at a sidewalk internet cafe on the East bank and pp your recent images in " full service" Photoshop on your iPad, and then back them up into the hard drives attached to your PC back home. It's a whole new world for the traveling photographer!

Dave in SD

blackest Loc: Ireland

Tablets have some positives and at least one big negative.

I'll talk about the negative first limited storage space. I've taken 6Gb of photographs in 6 hours that is a lot of space on a tablet. How much card space would you use?

However some of the advantages are it can be used to view and review photographs. If you take a picture with a tablet or a smart phone it can tag with gps coordinates. Which could be quite useful.

Storage most android tablets support USB host mode. either with a microusb port that supports a cable with a regular usb port on the end some also have full size usb ports too.
A regular USB external hard drive can be used if it has its own psu (but don't drop it). Sometimes you can even have a usb hub, my old tablet supports some powered usb hubs (1 of about 8 i have works) Flash drives could be a reasonable option for backup 64gb / 128gb drives are available at a reasonable price.

most android devices will allow a micro sd card to be plugged in. A simple card adapter would allow it to be used in your camera.

Online backups Many sites will store photo's for you but many compress the goodness out of them. Facebook for example will turn your image into a 67KB file from a 4MB+ image. If you'd rather not publish your pictures you could buy some web hosting a shared host can give you 25gb of space which you could administer/ upload to from anywhere (easy to find for less than €50 a year). With a decent wifi connection you could be backing up in all manner of places.

Apps there are a few good tools out there. Depth of field calculators for example amongst others.

On the other hand a usb card reader could be yours for a couple of euro/dollars/pounds and an internet cafe could give you most of the same facilities and GPS tagged Photographs and utilities would work on a smart phone.

EstherP

My tablet has a slot for a mSD card, can hold up to 64GB.
The way I put my images on that card, is to simply plug in the charger cable in a USB port on the computer - the computer will see both the hard drive of the tablet, and the inserted mSD as a separate drive and I can copy/paste from the camera's SD card, or from the computer's HD.
EstherP

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

I would definitely consider a "netbook" with internal hard drive. Can get them for under $300, about the same as a "good" tablet and not much different in size. The internal hard drives are about 320gb, which should be enough for a trip. That way you can use a direct cable from camera to netbook to transfer pics.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

I am going to be taking my Samsung tablet to Costa Rica with me and will work out doing just what Esther does. I see there are several file transfer apps for Android. I haven't played with this yet, but just got a cable converting the micro USB on the tablet to USB. It will be limited to 64GB, but I will take extra memory cards, so I will be able to make back-up cards during the trip so that I end up with photos in two places, on two sets of cards.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

That's the main problem I see. I have a 16GB iPad, and that's the capacity of some of my SD cards. I got myself a little netbook with a 350GB drive.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Hi Esther while what you say is true, the original poster was looking at travelling light with a tablet in the computer role. If the computer was available on the trip there would be no need for the tablet.

I'm not convinced there are enough high quality tools available on a tablet to make it a viable alternative to a computer. Possibly a chromebook might be an option but then your not as portable as a tablet. Chromebooks can dual boot with linux which does have good tools for working with photographs but that is not that simple an option either.

The other problem is colour calibrated screens. The main problem with most computer screens is they do not give a true colour picture. which leads to a photograph which looks good on one screen may look completely wrong on another. That may not bother some people but i hate it when it happens with mine and i haven't the money for a calibration tool either... I think my main aim would be to try to ensure a secure backup and worry about editing when i'm back home, it'd be nice to post a few pictures to make a few friends envious too :). A tablet could do that and more, helping with translation too, having some good books to read access to your favourite websites gps mapping too. Blogging your trip is another possible. It all depends on your requirements really. Not all tablets have gps or card slots or any method of connecting any storage to them without a computer being involved. So even if you decide yes a tablet could be useful, its another battle to find one which has the features you desire.

EstherP

I didn't ask where she was traveling, but I've found that most (if not all) hotels/motels will allow you computer access, so that you can hook up a tablet to transfer your photos.

[quote=blackest]I'm not convinced there are enough high quality tools available on a tablet to make it a viable alternative to a computer. [quote]

An alternative? No, absolutely not. However, the way I read Tita's question is that she wants storage for her photos, have them on-camera AND somewhere else, till she gets home. Not that she she wants to edit them while traveling.



One App I will be trying out soon, is Dropbox. I have Dropbox installed on two home computers and now on my tablet as well. Next week I'll be at our son't place, and I will use their computer to transfer some photos from my camera's SD card to Dropbox on the tablet. My brother overseas, can check out right away if that works well. (I don't expect problems, but I want to know before we go on a trip again).

Oh, and in the event that I should want to edit a picture on my tablet, it came with some version of Photoshop (Ps) already installed. Haven't tried it out yet though, my fingers or the S-pen just are not a good replacement for my mouse ;-)
EstherP

profpb Loc: Venice, Florida

I no longer travel with a laptop. I use many SD cards and bring them home to load all images to my PC and external drives.

If I want or need a specific or special image while traveling I can download it to my iPad with an iPad camera connection kit. With the new iPads you will also need a Lightning to 30 pin adapter.

CF cards are a bit more complicated without a USB conversion. I never need to load CF card files to my iPad.

Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

I bought an IPad & an extra adaptor to take SD cards & allow pics down load into IPad. Works ok but it shows up as two sets of the same pics. Tried to delete one but it's both or none. Talked with Apple for about half an hour to reason it out but the guy had no idea. I haven't used it. Always plug it in to my PC.
But it can be done.

gee4time

You can check Adorama or BHPhoto. They have several portable Hard Disk Drives for backing up your photos and video up to 500 gb. I personally use one. I've a 160 gb Safedisk which I use the last several years when traveling overseas. Some of the newer one's even have a lcd on which you can see the images or videos store on these devices. They all have rechargeable batteries and can also be use when plug-in a power source. I find that they are much lighter and more compact than either a tablet or laptop. Finally, if you do decide on a tablet, I find the new ipad mini retina is really a great companion for entertainment, communications, taking photo's and video's.
Have fun and Bon Voyage.

alliebess Loc: suburban Philadelphia

I can vouch for the netbook. I love mine; it is my travel buddy and not that bulky.

TonyP Loc: New Zealand

G'day Bunko. Are you taking RAW plus jpeg? It saves two files separately if you are. When you plug in your camera to download just tick the ones you want to save on the ipad screen, then click download. This works for me.

By the way, another system is using an eye Fi card. I leave it connected to the iPad and magically all files are transferred without having to plug in. Not fast but they get there okay.
You just need to check they are all there before deleting from the Card.
(While away, I don't reformat the card or delete them but save the card as another backup).
iPad is great for reviewing the days pics over an ale and gives security of 2 backups.
Works for me.
Cheers