IPad Discussions

[Diane B]

Tomorrow we'll become a two Ipad family--bought my husband one for his birthday. So, have a question. I understand that you can use one account on up to 5 computers. From reading other forums I know people are sharing apps--and some with multiple computers.

I've upgraded iTunes to the newest version on his computer. I set the account to mine with the same CC. i know he will want to use some of my apps but not all. I'm also sure he will want to add some apps that I won't want. I'm assuming that when we connect his Ipad with the same account it may show my list of apps which I sync manually. I also have a Touch and 2 Ipods but all on my one computer. Some say no problem, others say they go to each app in the app store and dl onto the new Ipad and its just a redownload without a charge. Some suggest using only one computer but I prefer we use our own.

So, any here that are 2 Ipad families using 2 or more computers and assuning with one account with one credit card.

 

[Don Libby]

I've been attempting off and on to find the answer to this question...

Can you use a blackberry to tether to an iPad for internet access? Google hasn't be of much help and I figure if anyone would know it'd be someone from here.

Don

 

[DavidE]

I've been attempting off and on to find the answer to this question...

Can you use a blackberry to tether to an iPad for internet access? Google hasn't be of much help and I figure if anyone would know it'd be someone from here.

Don

Don,

As one of the Our Gang kids used to say, "I don't think you can do it."

It's my understanding that you can't tether a BlackBerry without using the BlackBerry Desktop Software, and RIM hasn't made that available for the iPad.

If you go for the 3G version of the iPad, you can switch the cellular coverage on and off by the month as needed -- directly from your iPad. So if you're stuck somewhere without Wi-Fi, assuming there's AT&T coverage (even 2G), you could turn it on for 30 days.

I just checked the Apple website, because the plans have changed since I bought my 3G iPad. Currently, the two monthly plans are $14.99 for 250MB or $25 for 2GB.

 

[sc_john]

Don,

I have been researching this same question and have not found a simple solution. The alternative I'm going to try is an additional device (Cradlepoint PHS300) to create mobile hotspot with BBerry. The negatives are that it requires purchase of additional device, and adding tether option ($20/mo) to my data plan. Positives are a MIFI spot that can support multiple devices, and ability to use 4G when available on my carrier. I have ordered the PHS300, but haven't received it yet. If you are interested, send me a PM, and I'll let you know how it works.

John

 

[ustein]

I covered it here:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/CONTENT_2007_01/section_news/20100403_iPadDiary/index.html

 

[wjlapier]

I covered it here:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/CONTENT_2007_01/section_news/20100403_iPadDiary/index.html

Thank you. Just what I was looking for. Next summer everyone will be online while on vacation :ROTFL:

 

[CPWarner]

As the driver, no. As the navigator, yes. The iPhone you can hold or put on a dashboard stand. The iPad is too big to handle in the same way. As navigator it was great and easy to show the driver what they were going to do.

If you are using the ipad to navigate as a passenger, buy the "beat the traffic" app. It is awesome for traffic warning if you do not have a traffic gps in the car with you. I would not recommend it without someone else in the car using the ipad, as it is too big (IMHO) for the driver to use.

Cliff

 

[CPWarner]

So I just got back from a trip to the pacific north west with my family. I took my iPad (64Gb with 3G) and left my laptop at home. Here are some of my thoughts and observations using this in support of a photography trip:

1) Battery life is epic. I watched two full feature length movies on the ipad with my kids on the coast to coast flights and had more than 50% battery left after both flights (the second one was delayed due to weather so I did a bunch of playing with photos as well as the movies).

2) I used the camera connection kit to upload images at the end of the day and then do some processing. The interface for the uploading worked very well, and allowed me to select what I wanted to upload each day (i.e. I use a card for more than one day, typically). I am not exactly clear what is being uploaded to ipad as one does not have a file browser. I was shooting raw with my Panasonic G2 on this trip, so it may be showing a sidecar jpg file, but I am not sure.

3) I used a couple different applications for processing some images, mainly to send low resolution images by email to family while we were away. I used PhotoForge the most, followed by Photogene, Cropulator, and Filterstorm.

4)PhotoForge has a lot of tools I am used to using with Lightroom including cropping, curves, levels, noise reduction, hue, saturation, brightness and sharpening. It does misses a few like a highlight and shadows slider. I am not fond of the cropping within PhotoForge as it is hard to grab the corners and can be very frustrating. Using a Pogo sketch pen make it a lot easier, and overall makes processing images on the iPad much easier. JPG output was at full resolution, so it seems to me that PhotoForge was reading the raw file.

5) Photogene has a better curves and crop controls that PhotoForge and has highlights and shadows sliders like lightroom. Levels is not as easy to use, but not terrible. Again the Pogo pen was useful.

6) Filterstorm was my favorite for doing black and white conversion. it's color separation controls gave much better results than with all the other apps had.

To repeat, my use of the iPad for image processing was not for final work, it is not calibrated etc. I am starting to go through everything in lightroom on my Mac now that I am home. However, it did allow me to go through my images quickly and send some pictures out to family via email. And, it allowed me to play with them in the down time I did have.


7) Other useful photo specific apps: TideGraph HD - great for tide tables particularly at a location like the Olympic seashore. LightTrac - cool app that shows the orientation of the sun and moon at sunrise, sunset and the current direction as well as time for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset. Very nice, but you need to have an internet connection for it to work. So use it as a planning tool, not a location tool for landscape work.

8) One thing I have not figured out is how to do, is how to upload images from my ipad to sites like GetDPI. The web based tools to search your computer do not work on the ipad. So I have not figured that out. Pbase did the same thing, so I was not able to upload to that site as well.

9) The iPad was fantastic for reading both books and magazines (get the Zinio app), movies, browsing the internet, email, keeping up with baseball via MLB.com, and some games for the kids (they like the Pinball HD a lot and Foosball HD is great fun for two people). I also made use of Goodreader for the PDF copies of some photograph america newsletters on Mount Saint Helens which we decided at the last minute to swing through on our way between the Olympic Peninsula and Mt Rainier. Goodreader is excellent.

Overall, I found my experience with the iPad very positive and easier to use for internet browsing and email than my iPhone. However, that might just be my aging eyes and the extra screen area that the iPad allows...

One last thing. I did buy the 3G version versus getting a wifi hot spot device or jailbraking my iPhone. All other options seemed to be more expensive in the long run. One thing I noticed was that I have easily kept within the 250Mb limits of the $15 per month rate even with travel. I may end up not renewing the 3G data, but $15 per month is not bad, so it is convenient, particularly in the east where everyone wants to charge you for wifi connections.
Cliff

 

[ustein]

How do you clean off the iPad from your images once you are home and have copied them to your main machine?

Did you use CF cards?

 

[CPWarner]

How do you clean off the iPad from your images once you are home and have copied them to your main machine?

Did you use CF cards?

I was using my Panasonic G2 on this trip as it was predominantly a family trip and I wanted to go light. That camera uses SD cards. You can use a usb cable to the camera for cameras that use CF or other cards. I have heard that you can use a CF card reader to USB to the camera kit USB adapter rather than a camera cord, but have not tested that. I will try that at some point with my Canon 1DsMk2 and a couple CF cards I have.

I did not transfer everything to the iPad, and was liberal at deleting anything but the very best right away. I also cary more cards than I can fill in a trip and download from the cards when I get home. So this is not a replacement for a laptop with Lightroom 3 loaded on it that I can import to my library. I just wanted to be able to see what I got and send out a few photos while I am away.

Funny you should as about transferring photos, I just finished downloading photos from my iPad to my Mac using the Photo Transfer app. It is fast and it has a good help menu. All you need is to have both on the same wifi network. Great App.

The Apple photo connection kit seems to be loading jpeg images around 1 Mb in size from my card, and no raw files. I am not exactly sure what is being read by the camera connection kit, so I will have to experiment with this more. I shoot raw file only, so I am guessing that apple is reading sidecar jpg data. So to repeat, it is not a replacement for a laptop and multiple drives for heavy on site editing. However, it might be ok for those just wanting a quick browse and like to travel light.

Cliff

 

[Diane B]

Cliff, as mine are being loaded they say RAW + jpeg. When I have the cams set for just Raw without the added jpeg I can't remember if it states that or not but I think it was established before that Raw is being loaded but the Photo app shows the enbedded jpeg.

I think its Photogene app that has option to upload to Flickr. I hsven't tried enbedding but I did upload one to try that and you should be able to link from it to getdpi. They have a reasonable free subscription so it may be enough to use for sharing.

 

[CPWarner]

Cliff, as mine are being loaded they say RAW + jpeg. When I have the cams set for just Raw without the added jpeg I can't remember if it states that or not but I think it was established before that Raw is being loaded but the Photo app shows the enbedded jpeg.

I think its Photogene app that has option to upload to Flickr. I hsven't tried enbedding but I did upload one to try that and you should be able to link from it to getdpi. They have a reasonable free subscription so it may be enough to use for sharing.

Then I am not sure how to get the raw files off the iPad as the photo transfer app uses the photo application to select the images. It then transfers jpegs.

Thanks for the photo gene suggestion for uploading, I will have to try that.

 

[Diane B]

Then I am not sure how to get the raw files off the iPad as the photo transfer app uses the photo application to select the images. It then transfers jpegs.

Thanks for the photo gene suggestion for uploading, I will have to try that.

Did you need to transfer them since you had the cards to upload from directly?

Were you uploading saved photos or from the events lists? I suspect that anything that goes through Photogene and is saved is a jpeg since the shown image is a jpeg in Photos and I assume that the file PG works with is the embedded jpeg. Could be wrong but that seems likely to me. Those in the events list should be Raws from what others have said.

Did the photo transfer app delete the files from Photos or did you delete manually?

 

[CPWarner]

I was just testing to see how the photo transfer system worked to see what I could transfer. Basic curiosity to understand if the iPad could act as a backups system to my cards while traveling. The files that I processed are jpegs, PhotoForge, PhotoGene, and Filterstorm all output as jpeg files. I also tried moving files that were not processed, and they also moved over as jpeg. Images selected from the Photos and Albums lists were jepgs. I just tried moving a photo over from the Events list and it also came over as a jpeg. This may be because of the kind of raw file, as I was using my Panasonic G2. I will try with my Canon 1DsmkII at some point this week to see if that has a different result. I must have missed a bunch of discussion on the photo transfer app on this thread as you mentioned other discussion twice now. I will have to go back through this thread again.

I have not deleted anything from Photos yet. The Photo transfer app does not do that. You have to do it in Photos independent of the photo transfer app. pretty straight forward in Photos to delete things.

 

[jonoslack]

HI There Cliff
Thanks for your long post about the joys of the iPad on holiday (and suggestions for good apps). I was going to get the Tide Table app for our trip to Crete . . . then I remembered that the tides there are less than a foot, so it's hardly worth knowing :ROTFL:

I was just testing to see how the photo transfer system worked to see what I could transfer. Basic curiosity to understand if the iPad could act as a backups system to my cards while traveling. The files that I processed are jpegs, PhotoForge, PhotoGene, and Filterstorm all output as jpeg files. I also tried moving files that were not processed, and they also moved over as jpeg. Images selected from the Photos and Albums lists were jepgs. I just tried moving a photo over from the Events list and it also came over as a jpeg. This may be because of the kind of raw file, as I was using my Panasonic G2. I will try with my Canon 1DsmkII at some point this week to see if that has a different result. I must have missed a bunch of discussion on the photo transfer app on this thread as you mentioned other discussion twice now. I will have to go back through this thread again.

Using the camera connector kit it will transfer whatever is on the SD card to the iPad (Raw, Raw+jpg, jpg). This means that it will act very well as a backup.

However, it will only show one image in the photo-app. If you have shot JPG, or RAW+JPG, then it will show the jpg. IF you have shot just RAW, then it will show the embedded JPG from the RAW file.

If you delete a photo, then it will delete both the RAW and the JPG (assuming you shot both). This is convenient, as it means that when you get back home, you won't have to go through and delete the rubbish all over again.

Applications like Photogene etc will use the jpg if you've shot one, otherwise they also will use the embedded JPG from the RAW file (this is very irritating with the M9, where the embedded jpg is very small).


The upshot of all this is that the iPAD can be very usefully used on a trip - upload all files from the SD card(s), do your culling in comfort in some bar or other. When you get back, upload from the iPAD rather than the cards, and you will just get the selected files.

I have not deleted anything from Photos yet. The Photo transfer app does not do that. You have to do it in Photos independent of the photo transfer app. pretty straight forward in Photos to delete things.

This is a problem (see Uwe's post above). It's not quite so much of a pain as it seems at first, but it's quite an effort.

Basically, you need to go into the imports folder, choose the edit button, put a tick against each image one by one :sleep006::sleep006: then choose to delete.

I've done hundreds of images like this - it's irritating, but not impossible. For a wedding with thousands of images I think my patience might be tried!
As a rule of thumb I reckon I can tick two images per second - so deleting 600 images would take 5 minutes.

The other real irritation for me is that when you import the images to Aperture, it insists on making a new project at the top level for every day. You can, however, choose where the files are copied to (not split on a daily level).

Room for improvement.

On the other hand, we visited someone for their 2nd wedding anniversary celebration on Saturday - I'd shot the wedding in Spain 2 years ago. It was the work of minutes to get the images onto the iPad, which was passed around the evening - a real success, and not something you can really do with a laptop.

 

[Diane B]

Yes, thanks Cliff, for your report. I found it really helpful and neglected to say that. I also took your recommendation and added Photo Forge which I like a lot so far. And thanks Jono for reviewing, again, the import part. I find deleting quite a few at a time not so bad either since, like you I can "tick" pretty quickly. Sure room for improvement but I can live with the current situation for my use

Just thought I'd add to Jono's thing of passing the Ipad around to savor memories. I'm not into video enough to want to deal with it in Sony Vegas on my main computer but using ReelDirector I have made some videos to share that turned out nicely enough for that purpose. I shoot in jpeg on my GF1(can't upload AVCHD), load the clips with the camera connector, and load continue with RD to edit. Its actually a fun project. I didn't find editing in Vegas fun LOL. I shoot less seriously with the top red button that allows me to shoot stills at the same time and mix stills with the "Ken Burns" effect (for nonUSA folks its basically giving motion to stills with pan and zoom) with the video. RD is also nice to do a slideshow organized the way you want it.

The more I use my Ipad the more uses I find for it and ways to use it.

 

[tokengirl]

7) Other useful photo specific apps: TideGraph HD - great for tide tables particularly at a location like the Olympic seashore. LightTrac - cool app that shows the orientation of the sun and moon at sunrise, sunset and the current direction as well as time for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset. Very nice, but you need to have an internet connection for it to work. So use it as a planning tool, not a location tool for landscape work.

Great report! I agree, these two apps are terrific. I use TideGraph mainly for fishing/boating, but it has turned out to be a good photography tool as well.

 

[jonoslack]

The more I use my Ipad the more uses I find for it and ways to use it.

HI Diane - I quite agree, as that reviewer said "It's the answer to a question nobody asked". We have to work out what the questions are!:ROTFL:

My absolutely most used app is Omni-focus. I can't really see how I lived without it before.

 

[Diane B]

Jono, I had to see what it was. I can see that used a lot. Interestingly enough we just learned of two manufacturing companies and their marketing divisions here in the furniture industry adding Ipads for everyone and likely using with an app something like Box.net with some also having cams and the connectors.

I've often read that new technology or software, once it gets into the hands of day to day users, gets used quite unlike what the original developers planned. I think this will happen with the Ipad and its going to evolve. I was in one of our big box stores this weekend and got into a conversation with one of the salespeople who was pretty conversant with the Ipad but was unaware of how much more one could do with the third party apps. He actually made notes about several I mentioned.

 

[CPWarner]

Thanks for the info Jono and Terry. I must have skipped over page 11 the first time through this thread. Lots of good information there. It is very nice how Lightroom can access the raw files right from the iPad. Tried that tonight and it is great. It does seem that with Panasonic the imbedded jpegs are of pretty decent quality.