cyberbo60 wrote:
Good morning all... I just bought the Canon 1DX Mark II and it’s amazing. I have an iPad Pro and an iMac pro and I was wondering if I can transfer photos from my C𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐭 card to my iPad Pro? I have thunderbolt connections on my iMac Pro and I just ordered a reader that connects to the Thunderbolt connections. I was just wondering if anyone who has experience with CFast cards has done any downloads in the field without going back to your house or studio. Thanks in advance.
Canon's more pro-oriented cameras do not have built-in WiFi. Instead they are designed to use a much higher performance, much longer range (approx. 400 feet) Wireless File Transfer or "WFT" module , that's purchased separately. Some models (such as 7D Mark II) that have dual memory card slots, where one is an SD type slot, also can use an inexpensive, short range WiFi adapter instead (range approx 25 to 30 feet).
An alternative is CamRanger... which essentially serve the same purpose as the WFT modules, but cost a good deal less. CamRanger has just announced a new "mini" that's got similar range (about 400 feet) and sells for about $200. I haven't yet compared it's other functionality with their older, larger model, which has a range of about 100 feet and sells for about $300.
The CamRanger products are more universal (
http://camranger.com/).... can be used with a variety of brands and models of cameras.... where the Canon WFT are more model specific (some can be used with 2 or 3 different models, others are only usable with one particular Canon DLSR). WFT modules are not available for and CANNOT be used with any of the cameras that have built-in WiFi... not sure if there's a conflict or not. However, I do know that the CamRanger modules can be used both with DSLRs both with and without built-in WiFi.
If you are planning to automatically transfer all image files to your phone or a tablet, you may want to set your camera to shoot RAW + small JPEG and only send the latter to the phone or tablet. Otherwise you will likely fill the storage on your device very quickly. If you're only specifying occasional, single images to send to the phone/tablet in the field, that might not be a problem but you still may want the camera to make smaller JPEGs because the larger RAW files are slower to transfer and will need to be processed in some way before they can be shared or used for any purpose. There are mobile versions of Lightroom and other RAW conversion software now, but I can't imagine trying to do image editing and optimization in the field.
I've used WFT in the past, but am not doiong so now. Instead, if I need quick access to the images on a card, I just swap it out with another and use a card reader to transfer the images to my laptop. That's plenty fast for my purposes (and right now I don't need remote control of the camera via my phone or a tablet... but if needed, there are apps for that!).
I have around 20 memory cards.... mostly 16GB and a few 32GB (plus about 50 more older, smaller, slower cards used with previous cameras). These are plenty big for me. 500 to 1000 shots per card (20MP cameras). I don't use single, super large memory cards because I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. It's rare for a card to fail, but it can happen (once to me... in 20+ years total shooting digital, over 15 years almost exclusively... 25,000 to 50,000 images a year). More likely a card may get lost, be corrupted by some error in writing or reading it, or damaged (tho leaving one in a pants pocket and sending it thru the wash doesn't seem to kill 'em!) These are very rare occurrences, but enough that I don't want to risk a whole day's shoot to a single, very large card. I typically fill four to twelve cards... so if anything goes wrong with one, I'll still have most of my work on the others.