Non-spammy post time (sorry again), for camera peeps: would an iPad Air be enough to sort photos during a month of travel? I was going to take my laptop with me because my phone is old and sad, but the weight is considerable. What do you take as your hardware setup when you travel with your camera?
@JohnPhilpin thank you! I was thinking the iPad, as opposed to the laptop, just for the weight factor. But that’s really interesting all the same.
@herself I take a laptop. But I really am not comfortable using an iPad for productivity. I use Lightroom and Photoshop and much prefer my laptop.
@herself I would say it very much depends on how many photos you take and what you want to do with them. Personally the longest trip I've taken with iPad + camera (m43 system + GRIII & 600-800 photos) was 10 days and I had no problem. Later this week I'm going away for 5 days (Nikon FF system + m43 system + GRIII, expects to take 2000-4000 photos and a couple of hours of video) and I'm unsure if I'm going to bother with an iPad or a laptop (not that I have an usable one), if so it's purely for backup.
@herself Quantity would be the main issue, but I would say the iPad would be ok, if there is room for all the photos.
@herself I only use an iPad, 12.9" and have no problems managing photos. You don't mention what apps you use. I'm using the Photos app with iCloud Photos and find it's a fantastic device to sort/manage/edit.
@herself I've done a decent amount of traveling with only camera and iPad Pro. It definitely worked for me. A few considerations for you: which iPad Air? Hopefully an M1 processor? How much storage does it have? 64gb or 256gb? Will that be enough for your use? This is especially important if you're shooting in RAW. I don't think it'd do RAW photography on a trip with only a 64gb iPad.
Are you only sorting photos or also doing processing/editing on the go? Is there a photo app that you are already comfortable using on the iPad (whether that's Apple Photos, Adobe, Photomator/Pixelmator, or something else)? If your iPad Air is not an m1, you can expect the photo processing to be slower.
@7robots @abc @JohnPhilpin @Denny @maique Thanks for all of your comments - I guess I was roughly fumbling around with my initial question. I don't own an iPad right now but was contemplating getting one after my tax refund (hah). For normal editing and organisation I use Lightroom classic on a mac mini. I hear the lightroom cloud app (whatever it's called) isn't that great on the iPad so was envisaging just using Photos for any editing or emailing while we're on the trip. Once I get home I'd import everything into lightroom and work away from there.
@7robots Likely it'd be the new iPad Air--if I can justify the cost while we're still saving for the trip! I'd go for the 256 GB version, M1 chip. I don't shoot in RAW any more--I'm a hobby photographer :D
@jemostrom if it was a short trip I think I wouldn't bother, but as we're going to be away for a month (Thailand, Japan and South Korea) I don't think I will be able to last that long! :D
@herself oh! one other comment since you're thinking about a new purchase -- you may already be aware of this, but all signs point to a new iPad Air being announced in the next couple of weeks -- likely M3 based.
@herself If were to travel around like that, I would take an iPad, a SSD disk, hub, my GRIIIx, and probably an older m43 camera + wide angle prime + two really, really small zooms I have. With chargers etc, it would fit in a small sling bag. Assuming this is mainly a travel trip with family/friends.
@herself I usually take my iPad Pro, a USB hub with card reader and 2 SSD drives (one is a backup). I connect the hub to the iPad, insert the SD card into the hub then use a Shortcut I wrote to copy the SD card to the SSD drive. I repeat this for the 2nd SSD to ensure I have a backup.
@7robots oh cool! I’ve got about six months up my sleeve so will wait and see if anything is announced!
@jemostrom nice! My lenses aren’t the smallest but uh, maybe I can do some shopping while I’m there.
@kimonostereo nice. That might be more than I would wind up needing but you’ve reinforced the need for some sort of backup plan.
@herself I only started doing the backup drive during my last trip since I realized all the photos would be gone if the drive failed since I erase my SD cards regularly. Another option would be to have multiple SD cards that you don't erase as they're pretty inexpensive.
@herself Jumping on the "what I did" bandwagon: I don't have a bunch of "extra" cameras or computers but my once-in-a-lifetime trips to Paris and London still went just fine. I took photos daily with my Fuji camera and, at the end of each day, used a firewire-to-SD reader to uploaded the day's pictures into the Photos app on my phone. (I shoot in JPG, not RAW.) I never erased any of the photos from the SD cards and, even with crappy Air B&B wifi, the Photos app automatically uploaded backups into my iCloud account while I slept. If you are paying for Lightroom's mobile app, you should be able to do a similar process by uploading everything into your Creative Cloud account.