so, i almost forgot i pre-ordered theapple ipad camera connector kitalong with my 16gb wifi ipad. i was totally surprised when it came to my home! great, now I have a way to unload a few photos from SD cards and MAYBE slowly upload some photos from my nikon cameras from time to time. i plug the usb adapter into the ipad and connect my kingston CF memory card reader. FAIL. nothing happens at all. nada. so, then I try plugging in my d3s. WIN. the photo app auto opens and photos from my camera begin to appear. great, so now i’ve got what i wanted.

but wait. what about my little portable cf reader/hard drive thingy that i use for simple offsite backups? i plugged it in and WHAT DO YOU KNOW…i can now copy RAW NEF files onto my ipad directly from my cf card without needing to use my camera as the card reader. So, I promptly sold my lame (not really) 16GB wifi model and went to best buy to pickup the 64GB 3g version. this thing is absolutely perfect for offsite backup and viewing when I don’t want to bring the extra weight and size of my laptop.

here is my actual work flow:

1) shoot with dual same sized compact flash cards in my nikon d3s set to copy raw.

2) memory cards fill up so i take them out and put in two new ones. i then take the two full cards and put one in my nexto for copy to it’s own hard drive and one away in a CF case no longer to be used.

3) i continue shooting on my fresh cards while the copying is finishing on the nexto. then i erase the copied card and throw it back in my useable pile of CF cards.

4) once finished with the shoot i put my nexto hard drive somewhere for safe keeping. i take out the stowed duplicate CF cards and load them up on the ipad. i can either pick and chose some ones i want for viewing/uploading etc., or i just copy them all onto it.

5) i’ve now got THREE copies of my photos. one set – on the backup CF cards. two set – on the nexto hard drive. three set- on my apple ipad able to be viewed on a large beautiful screen.

now, IMO it’s a little overkill to have three copies a lot of times. i’ve often skipped step 2 and just copied the cards straight to the ipad. i’d still have the duplicate CF card as a fail safe.

this system is what works for me. the ipad provides such a nice viewing screen and the solid state memory inside of it makes it totally reliable. totally worth the cost. i went for the 3g model because i got tired of having to miwi my iphone any time i wanted to use my wifi ipad. plus, now i can upload/email photos directly from the ipad if i really want to, or when i’m not cleaning the smudges of the screen

when i get home i’ll usually plug my ipad into the computer and copy the files straight from it into lightroom. lightroom 3 does detect it as a camera source and imports all the files in their original RAW NEF format. the rest of my computer backup solution is a bit more intense and will be outlined in a later post.

next, i’m going to order the ipad -> vga adapter. curious to see if it will work to output slideshows for wedding-day-of slides. if so—AWESOME.

side note: there are plenty of people reporting that they’re able to copy photos from their CF cards using their normal CF usb card reader. I was actually able to do this too (with a friend’s) but I noticed the speed was slooooooow. MUCH slower than when copying from my battery powered cf/hard drive. i prefer to have the extra hard drive backup anyway. plus-it’s not that much bigger than a CF usb card reader, but it is another thing to remember to recharge.