SeaChelle Loc: Boston area

I have the iPad card reader and merely upload to my dropbox...that way, it also uploads to my dropbox on my PC at home....technology is an amazing thing!

Doc Mike Loc: Colorado

Here's a slightly different question that relates to storage and viewing pictures. I back up my photographs on a small portable external drive. I would like to be able to show friends and family pictures from the portable drive when I travel but don't want to take my laptop with me. What is the best way to view pictures from the portable drive when I travel? Thanks

john vance Loc: Granbury,Texas

get a laptop, new or pawn shop.

claire

I share all my photos and videos via a western digital player called the WD TV Live. There are a couple different models, one with a hard drive(WD Live HUB) and others with usb connections( WD TV LIVE). I use a TB hard drive attached to both usb ports and connect the western digital player to any tv or hdmi screen to view almost any file type available. It will play almost anything thrown at it! We use it for video, photo, movies of all types including AVCHD BD etc. I am suprissed more people don't have this device. Oh , also it can stream via wifi and connect to your home network computer system. It is very small and convenient. It will look in your hard drive folders similar to windows explorer and is very intuitive and simple to use. If you label your folders by date it is a snap to find just what you want to view and there is an app included for playing slide shows with music. Best of all very innexpensive, Less than $100 for the one without hard drive ( you use your external hard drives) and about $170 for the one with 1 TB attached. I got ours at Bestbuy but have seen them periodically at Sams and you can get them online through many places.Good luck.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I often take 500 images a day when I shoot wildlife on the road. If I were to get back to my motel room and start syncing with the cloud, how long do you think it would take to upload 500x24mb=12GB It might be done by morning. I bring a small laptop computer, with a real hard drive, that I can upload to and keep plenty of memory cards on hand. If you use SD cards, they are cheap and you could just purchase a bunch and just download when you get home. If you use CF cards that are a bit more expensive, get a $300 laptop or netbook and use it to store images while on your trip.

jsleszynski Loc: Overland Park, Kansas

Thanks for the info. I was wondering how to delete the photos once I got them onto the ipad. It's not quite the same as working with a computer.

mgstrawn Loc: Atlanta, GA

I usually straight out delete the photos that I don't wish to keep and sync the others to my laptop later. You can choose to totally transfer each image, or you can keep the images on the iPad and transfer to laptop as well. Dropbox is a nice app and I use it a lot for music; however, you would need to purchase more than the free storage provided if you have a lot of photos to sync. I make a habit, or usually can't wait to see my photos, so I usually have my iPad with me all the time! You just have to get in the habit of not thinking about 'windows' when you use an Apple product. Once you get in the habit of thinking outside the box, you can enjoy your iPad to the fullest.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

There are also portable battery-powered hard drives with a card reader built in for mobile photo backup. But your idea of off-premise is wise.

I'm not sure I'd pay $100 a year unless I planned on doing that more than once a year though. If you travel like this just once annually you have paid $100 for an intangible service that you only used once. Buying a hard drive is a tangible product you'll have in hand for years and can use repeatedly. You didn't say whether you travel a lot.

TonyP Loc: New Zealand

The iPad2 option works well for me. I use an Eye-Fi card (pro model) that sends the pics to the Ipad as I shoot. Theres about a 1 min lag between shoot and appearing on the iPad. I do a variety of work but the beauty of this system is that the client gets to see the pics on the day. The downside is if I stuff up a shot, they often get to see that before I can hide/delete it :-( I have done a number of equestrian and farming events (we call them A & P Shows), and I usually have an assistant with the iPad sorting and deleting and taking orders (and payment) while I'm shooting. Works brilliantly. They are also backed up on to the Eye-Fi site at the same time. I have a 64GB iPad2 with a sim card. Google Eye-Fi for details to save me raving on too much but hope you can see the benefit. I use a D300s with 2 cards. I save the jpegs to the Eye-Fi card and the RAW files to the CF card. Mind you I am not taking anywhere near as many pics as many seem to on this site. (I rarely, if ever use continuous shooting or bracketing modes). I have the free version of Photoshop (PS Express) on the iPad for minor tweaking of the 'proof'. For back-ups we have 2 WD 500GB remote drives both connected via the broadband modem, in our home office, to our 2 laptops. (Doesn't work for the iPad) The computers are set to copy any new files to the WD's as and when they are found in 4 nominated files. Bit hard to explain but the 'watched files' are named RAW, Original JPEG, Client, Ordered.
The beauty of the WD drives is when we go away, they fit in our fire safe or we take them with us. Personally am not comfortable with the 'Cloud' system. Living in NZ, home of Mr Dotcom and seeing how the FBI shut him down, I wouldnt relax knowing that ultimately the US Govt actually held the key to all my files. Hope Mr Gates or Mr Cook never offend Mr Obama :)

Trevor Dennis Loc: New Zealand (South Island)

I bought my iPad 3 so I could travel without a laptop, and got the 64Gb version to give me plenty of room to dump the pictures from my G1X. So I got the USB adaptor/ SD card reader gadget, and could not believe how well it all worked.

As people back the thread have said, just plug in the card reader and pop in a card with pictures on it, and the rest is easy as. But also surprised me was how good the unprocessed RAW files from my G1X looked on the iPad. Great colour and contrast, and super sharp. It was almost a pity taking them off to view them any other way.

As I did not have any means to process the RAW files until getting home, and as I'd travelled back to the UK to see old friends and family, it was so nice to be able to show them pictures there and then. A real success story.

Only thing is, the iPad does not get a whole lot of use now I am back home. I don't have a sim in it, but did while I was in the UK, and it was great having access to maps and other data when away from a wifi source.

Aaron Braganza Loc: Sydney, Australia

This sounds exciting an "eye-fi card"
Please educate me, how does it all work relative to the ipad.
Also how much does an "eye-fi card" cost

Bri Loc: NZ

I wanted to look at the photos and movies on the camera card each night while on holiday.
The ipad 3 sucked every thing (copies) from the card each time. It also changed the codec of the movies.
Have gone back to a note pad. Screen not so good but so much more user friendly. I might reconsider when Apple allows me to read the camera card.

Bensson Loc: Maple Ridge/Athabasca Oil Sands

Last time I checked on Amazon, a 16GB eye-fi card was around $100 usd.
Basically it's an SD chip with built in Wi-Fi. Configure it on your home PC so it can "talk" to your iPad and voila! It's very similar to tethering your camera and iPad. Basically.

banjonut Loc: Southern Michigan

You can certainly put your photos in the iPad using the SD card reader, and they will look very good, but........I think you would find that if you downloaded the same pic from the pad, the size of the file has been reduced. So, using the iPad purely as a backup does not appear to be the best choice, since you could never get your original file back.

mgstrawn Loc: Atlanta, GA

I have never had a problem with the size or clarity being reduced by temporarily storing images on my iPad. The images that I edit are altered, but my original stays intact.