IPAD for travel use: backup storage & image viewer

[skinnypix]

I’ve been thinking about replacing my netbook with an IPAD for when I travel. My photography use model would be to use it for backup storage, & high-resolution viewing some of my images – not for editing because of lack of color management.

My sister has an IPAD & SD card reader for it, so I tried transferring JPEG+RAW files, and RAW-only files to the IPAD, and then transferring both back from the IPAD to PC. No problems! So I’m satisfied it would meet my backup needs.

I did have a problem viewing files, however. For the RAW-only files, I was apparently viewing the sidecar JPEG image, which of course is low resolution. What surprised me was that when viewing the high-res JPEG images, when I zoomed in, I didn’t get all the detail present in the image that could be seen on my netbook. Basically, I think the IPAD is downsampling the large JPEG files so when you zoom in you can’t really pixel peep to look for critical details & sharpness!

Are there any other viewer apps available for the IPAD that will allow me to zoom in and see to the pixel level?

Another alternative might be to use a RAW editor like piRAWnha (not for editing, but as a viewer) but I don’t know if it allows the user to zoom into pixel-level viewing. It may not because there are file size limitations. (It says in the 1.1 version of the manual: “At this time due to available memory on the iPad, raw images larger than 15 megapixels will be exported as smaller images that are one-half full-size in width and height.”

Anybody have any experience with piRAWnha or other JPEG viewer to pixel peep?

Thanks, Alan

 

[skinnypix]

bumb...nobody using an Ipad for high-res viewing of images in the field?

Another possible Ipad app I found was Photosmith. Anyone tried Photosmith to zoom in on jpegs (some RAW files can't be viewed at 100% according to the Photosmith documentation.)

 

[Terry]

I use my iPad on the road sometimes but I don't get bogged down into pixel peeping. I kind of use the sidecar jpegs and just go with it. Some sidecars are better than others. Panasonic cameras give you good sidecars to work with. Leica typically has not.

 

[barnack]

I did not think you could upload photos to an Ipad. Please excuse my ignorance, but could some tell mehow it is done. I would love to use my Ipad as a storage device with I travel rather than taking my laptop with me when I travel.

 

[Terry]

Apple makes a camera connection kit. It looks like an SD card reader on one side with a dock connection on the other. That works for SD card based cameras. The kit also comes with USB on one side dock connector on the other and that can be used to connect directly to the camera for CF card based cameras. Some have gotten CF card readers to work through the USB connector but it is hit or miss.

Very simple to use. Caveat is how long is your trip and how much giggage do you use shooting. For instance in Kenya I took more than 185gb worth of shots which would not have worked with only iPad.

 

[Godfrey]

I’ve been thinking about replacing my netbook with an IPAD for when I travel. My photography use model would be to use it for backup storage, & high-resolution viewing some of my images – not for editing because of lack of color management.

My sister has an IPAD & SD card reader for it, so I tried transferring JPEG+RAW files, and RAW-only files to the IPAD, and then transferring both back from the IPAD to PC. No problems! So I’m satisfied it would meet my backup needs.

I did have a problem viewing files, however. For the RAW-only files, I was apparently viewing the sidecar JPEG image, which of course is low resolution. What surprised me was that when viewing the high-res JPEG images, when I zoomed in, I didn’t get all the detail present in the image that could be seen on my netbook. Basically, I think the IPAD is downsampling the large JPEG files so when you zoom in you can’t really pixel peep to look for critical details & sharpness!

Are there any other viewer apps available for the IPAD that will allow me to zoom in and see to the pixel level?

Another alternative might be to use a RAW editor like piRAWnha (not for editing, but as a viewer) but I don’t know if it allows the user to zoom into pixel-level viewing. It may not because there are file size limitations. (It says in the 1.1 version of the manual: “At this time due to available memory on the iPad, raw images larger than 15 megapixels will be exported as smaller images that are one-half full-size in width and height.”

Anybody have any experience with piRAWnha or other JPEG viewer to pixel peep?

Thanks, Alan

On my last trip to Dublin, the isle of Man and London in October 2011, I decided to carry the iPad 2 instead of laptop or netbook. I have a 64G model which is normally about half empty, my anticipated shooting over the three weeks would be about 1500-2000 exposures maximum, which can all fit in the available space.

My camera kit and computing equipment all fit in one small bag (Black Label Bag's "Oskar's One Day Bag Mark II" which is almost identical to the A&A ACAM 7100) with the sole exception of the wireless keyboard (in its case; I tossed it into my checked luggage). That was the Ricoh GXR-M with 21, 40 and 90 mm lenses, pinhole lens kit, three batteries, chargers, all the cables, connectors, four 16G SD cards, Camera Connection kit, iPad 2 in DODOcase, travel papers, etc etc. I turned on ATT's international roaming service for the duration of the trip too.

For image processing software, I used Snapseed and Photogene. I also used Keynote to assemble a presentation of "quick looks done while traveling". I've output these into a PDF booklet for viewing now (just moved the Keynote file to my desktop and exported the PDF):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25268645/OnTravel-2011-2.pdf

Snapseed and Photogene operate on the JPEG sidecar or embedded JPEG files in raw files. I didn't find this a handicap for my purposes. I made sure the Ricoh was set to produce maximum resolution JPEGs with minimum compression, and it makes pretty good JPEGs right out of the camera. Having this at my disposal certainly made it easy to tell when a photo was properly focused, etc. Both allow you to see or output the full resolution image file.

I have Photosmith as well but didn't use it on this trip. I'll get around to it one of these days as my main workflow is with Lightroom.

If you really want to process raw files, there are a couple of options:

PhotoRAW - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photoraw/id413899112?mt=8 ... I have it, haven't used it much.
PiRAWhna - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pirawnha/id409747795?mt=8 ... haven't got it yet

I've only tested PhotoRAW so far. Works fine on both GXR and Olympus E-5 raw files, but it's fairly slow. The UI is clumsy.

Basically, if your camera makes a decent JPEG and you can set it for JPEG+raw capture, set the JPEG for max resolution and minimum compression and you'll get what you're looking for.

The camera + iPad 2 kit worked out very well, was FAR less to manage and deal with then my DSLR kit + laptop was in 2008. I made half the number of exposures on the trip, and so far think I've netted more than twice as many keepers from the effort. It was easy to manage in all circumstances and did all my computing needs well. I found I needed to borrow my host's MacBook Pro system only once or twice to do some printing (for bookings, etc).

G

 

[Diane B]

Yes, I've been doing this since I got my Ipad. The CC works fine with both types of cards and I understand there is a third party CC available on Ebay with another format (?) available also. I can recommend the CC though as it always works and all you have to do is put your card in the little dongle, slip it into the power port on the bottom of Ipad and it automatically opens your Photo app. You can upload what you want, sort into albums.

You will only be constrained by the storage on your Ipad. I have a 64 GB and that gives me plenty for a trip of 10 days (I don't normally shoot as much as Terry did on her safari LOL), but you have the choice of what you want to upload too. I shoot only RAW on G3 (m4/3) and 5D, save my cards for upload to PC when I get home. There are a number of ways to transfer the files from Ipad to computer but using the cards are the fastest.

The +jpeg seemed extraneous to me when the embedded jpegs in my raws are plenty large enough for viewing/sharing when I'm on the road. I use a couple of apps for processing since I keep both cameras on as neutral as possible.

Diane

 

[Godfrey]

... The +jpeg seemed extraneous to me when the embedded jpegs in my raws are plenty large enough for viewing/sharing when I'm on the road. I use a couple of apps for processing since I keep both cameras on as neutral as possible.

Hi Diane,

The reason I use JPEG+raw is that for some cameras, the JPEG preview in the raw file is very highly compressed and might not be the full pixel dimensions. For other cameras, the raw file does not contain a JPEG preview (I know this was true for my Panasonic L1, might be true for the GXR, don't know how many others), just a thumbnail. For this reason, I set JPEG+raw and have control over what size and quality JPEG files the iPad apps have to work with (can't turn off JPEGs on the L1 or GXR anyway). They don't take up that much space on the storage cards so it's not much of a bother.

Godfrey

 

[skinnypix]

Interesting discussion...but I'd like to bring this back to my on-topic questiong about zooming in & viewing to the pixel level.

The Ipad apparently downsamples high-res JPEG images, so even if you shoot RAW+JPEG & view the JPEG image on the Ipad, the Ipad won't display to the pixel level zoomed in. I verified this by shooting RAW+JPEG and JPEG alone, then loading those shots on both my netbook & IPAD (through the IPAD's camera connection kit SD reader).

I then zoomed in to view the images on both the IPAD & netbook (using Photoshop) & saw much more detail on the netbook. One of the tech-savvy guys at our local Apple store verified my observation -- the IPAD does indeed downsample high-res JPEG images.

There are times I'd like the ability to zoom in & look at fine detail & I am trying to find an IPAD application that will let me do that!!

 

[Godfrey]

... zooming in & viewing to the pixel level.

The iPad apparently down-samples high-res JPEG images, so even if you shoot RAW+JPEG & view the JPEG image on the iPad, the iPad won't display to the pixel level zoomed in. ...

It's the iPad apps which limit scaling and display of JPEG images, not the iPad. They do it usually for memory and performance reasons. Of the apps I mentioned above

- Photosmith can display images at percentage of the pixel resolution of their original capture. It works with both JPEG and raw image files. Check their website for the details on image display resolution ... it varies depending on the raw format.

- PhotoRAW can display raw image files at the maximum 100% pixel resolution of their original capture. It works only with supported raw formats. Check their website for the details on raw compatibility.

Generally speaking, being able to view at 100% pixel magnification isn't terribly useful in practice, but I understand wanting the facility.

 

[Diane B]

Godfrey, you have a good point--they don't take much room on card. I'll set my cameras back to +jpeg LOL.

I noted this week that they are predicting the Ipad 3 (which I'm planning on upgrading to) will have Retina resolution. For you tech folks, will this affect the resolution viewing the files??? i'm more interested in other upgrades but did note they mentioned the Ipad 3 might be thicker than 2 due to the increased resolution.

 

[Godfrey]

...I noted this week that they are predicting the Ipad 3 (which I'm planning on upgrading to) will have Retina resolution. For you tech folks, will this affect the resolution viewing the files??? i'm more interested in other upgrades but did note they mentioned the Ipad 3 might be thicker than 2 due to the increased resolution.

I have no clue whether it will have a Retina display, but it would be nice. That's a lovely display spec.

How the display affects the image resolution is a matter of how the images destined to be viewed on the iPad are sized and prepped for that display resolution. Until we know more about what exactly the iPad 3 display is going to be and get some sizing/pixel density information, as well as some guidelines for image file optimizations for the device, it's hard to say exactly how it will affect a particular image.

 

[sandymc]

The thing with the iPad (and iPhone) is that the image that you end up with depends on how it was loaded onto the iPad.

So, e.g., if you use iTunes, and sync photos, iTunes will "helpfully" downres images if they are more than about twice the screen resolution.

However, if you use iTunes file transfer (if the app you're using supports file transfer rather than sync), then you'll get the full image.

If you load images from the camera connection kit, things are even more complicated - iOS supports multiple "image representations" for a given image. So if you load a raw, the iPad will contain, and make available to apps running on it, either the raw file, or whatever thumbnails/previews were in the raw file, each as a separate image representation.

Currently, so far as I'm aware, only PhotoRaw and piRAWnha can decode the full-res raw files. Apps like PhotoSmith, etc are dealing with JPEG previews.

Apple is moving to having more image processing built into iOS - iOS 5 introduced a lightweight version of the CIImage library that's on Macs - but it's likely to be a while before full res image processing happens on a iPad with out third-part apps.

Sandy