Category: Working on iPad

Selfies at Sacre-Cœur

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Recently I went for a short trip to Paris. It was my third time there. Wanted to try out my new Leica Q. Again I tried to get along without my MacBook. Just had the iPad Pro with me.

I talked in an earlier post about trying to get the RAW picture into my iPad by connecting it directly to my camera via USB. Well that didn’t work as expected since the Leica Q makes DNG files directly in the camera. And appearently iOS cannot import those. So I am stuck with just importing JPG’s. Since I am currently mostly using black and white settings in camera, the only thing I have to work with after importing to the iPad is those black and whites.

Below is one of the pictures I took on this trip. It is taken just below the Sacre-Cœur. If you click the picture it will open in Flickr.

Selfie at Sacré-Cœur

 

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Working with iPad Only (part 2)

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This weekend I went on a short 2 day trip to Helsinki. And I thought it would be a good opportunity to try how it would be to for the first time not bring my MacBook. One reason for the trip was to do some photographing with my new Leica Q. Now I could try a workflow including only my camera, my iPad and the Lightning to SD Card connector. So how did it turn out?

Well, not very good. Ok, but I didn’t find it too useful for a couple of reasons. But I learned something in the process.

  1. With the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader you cannot import RAW files to the iPad. Something I already had learned when writing the previous article. What I learned though is that it should be possible with a Lightning to USB adapter if I connect it directly to the camera. So the connector I bought is basically useless to me. Well in any way as long as I need the RAW files for any reason. For example, this time I chosed to photograph in monochrome as an excercise to better see the Lightning of the scene. This means that the JPG’s will be monochrome, and you can’t import the colored RAW files. So I would need a Lightning to USB, and connect directly to the camera and maybe get the option to get the RAW’s.
  2. The import with the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader connector is too slow, and you cannot preview the picture before importing them. Sure, you can choose to import all and they will end up in your Photos app. It will probably take some time though. Then you can view them there and delete the ones that are not good. In this case it might be better to use the Leica app on the iPhone where it’s possible to preview before import.
  3. Editing in Lightroom Mobile is ok. It’s not great in my opinion, but it works depending on how good the picture is coming out of the camera. In other words, if you’ve done your job while shooting. For example cropping is not so smooth. It can be hard to do fine adjustments. When you use touch to drag the cropping to desired position and release it sometimes jump at bit further. Also I found that updating the screen while adjusting exposure, shadows etc lagged a bit, making it hard for fine adjustments.

Maybe most of the above is something I can handle by getting used to it. But at the moment it feels like it’s not 100% ready for ditching the MacBook. I might try with the Lightning to USB and connect directly to the camera. I also ordered the iPad Pro 9.7″ today. Maybe some more processing power will make Lightroom Mobile smoother to use.

One thing that I’ll guess needs to be handled by an IOS update sometime is the possibility to import directly to a different app than the Photos app. I don’t want to clutter my library there with maybe a 100 or more pictures taken during a day, which will also sync to all my other devices.

Update: Just read that the Lightning to USB cable is included with the purchase of the iPad Pro. Great!

Previous article in this series: Working with iPad only (part 1)

Working with iPad only (part 1)

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In my continuing project to try and use only iPad instead of the laptop (MacBook) for everything I need to do (writing blogposts, importing and editing pictures, etc) I today bought a Apple Magic Keyboard, and an Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader adapter.

The keyboard is very nice to write on. Using it to write this post on the iPad mini.The keys are full size, so I find it very fast to type on it. After also learning some keyboard shortcuts it’s even better.iuThe Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader cable also works fine. Something I didn’t consider though is that it doesn’t enable you to import RAW files directly from the card. To do that you need a Camera Connection Kit, and connect the iPad directly to the camera if I understand it correctly. Still I can import the JPG’s into the Photos App, and then import them into Lightroom Mobile. I cannot import directly into Lightroom from the card, which would have been ideal. Still I think it’s workable. I can always delete the pictures from Photos after the import to Lightroom if I want.

One problem regarding the photos workflow is that I need to keep the all photos on the SD Card until I can import them on a computer later. If I am out traveling for a few day, and only want to bring the IPad, I am not sure if it’s enough with one 32 GB SD Card in this case. Probably need at least one more depending on how long I am gone.

The editing in Lightroom Mobile is pretty OK though. I think I can manage with that. I would miss my Silver Efex and Color Efex plugins though.

But anyways, small steps forward. Maybe one day there’ll be direct RAW import from SD-card into Lightroom Mobile.