Apple’s current-generation iPad system software is a little more heavy-handed than one might expect when either of the iPad Camera Connection Kit accessories is connected. If the iPad’s locked, plugging in the SD Card Reader or the iPad Camera Connector doesn’t do anything, but making the connection in the middle of running another application will abruptly quit that application and call up Photos, Apple’s photo management and now importation tool.Photos deals with importation by creating a new tab called Camera, which for the first few seconds displays a screen full of empty dashed outlines, then fills each outline with a thumbnail image of a photo or a movie stored on the camera’s memory card. By default, a blue button labeled “Import All” appears in the upper right corner of the screen, with a red “Delete All” button at upper left. Should you select any thumbnail or number of thumbnails, blue checkmarks appear on the thumbnails, and the blue button instead becomes “Import,” providing the choice to “Import All” or “Import Selected” when you tap it. Importing images and videos from your camera is as easy as selecting one of those options, watching as each blue check on a thumbnail becomes a spinning progress wheel, and then a green check, moving on to the next image—generally but not always in sequence. JPEG-format images are typically imported without any issues, as are certain .MOV-format videos, specifically 640x480 and smaller files that come off of many but not all point-and-shoot cameras. (More details on compatibility are discussed in the next section of this review.) During the import process, Photos creates “Last Import” and “All Imported” albums, enabling you to quickly see your most recently transferred files and all of the transferred files. When you individually look at the pictures, a new Rotate button lets you change the orientation in 90-degree steps to make sure that pictures from cameras without orientation sensors—or with occasionally faulty ones—appear correctly on your iPad’s screen.Rotation can also prepare them for proper e-mailing. Once you’ve imported a photo and displayed it on your screen, you can press a button to e-mail it, send it to a Mobile Me account, assign it to a contact, use it as wallpaper, or copy it. Up to five pictures can be e-mailed at once with relative ease. If you’re worried that you’ll only be able to send out low-quality photos from your iPad, there’s some mostly good news to share. Rather than chopping JPEG pictures down to 800x600 as is done with iPhone photos, the iPad defaults at e-mailing images out at roughly 3-Megapixel resolution: 2048x1536 for typical 4:3 point-and-shoot images, or 2048x1364 for 3:2 DSLR images. Pro photographers mightn’t like the rescaling, or that the EXIF data is stripped for re-sized images, but most users won’t care: the resized images look fantastic, and are perfect for sharing via e-mail. There’s also a workaround for users who need superior image quality: if you select an image manually using the Copy button and Paste it into an e-mail, you can send the full-resolution version out instead, complete with EXIF data. We had only one issue with this trick, discussed in the compatibility section below.The ipad camera connector kit can also import videos from digital cameras. Supported movies use the video playback and editing interface introduced for the iPhone 3GS, which places a timeline at the top of the screen, and changes the sharing features to “Email Video,” “Send to MobileMe,” “Send to YouTube,” and “Copy Video.” E-mailed video clips appear to be capped at 5MB in size in H.264 format, with the iPad automatically reducing their resolution to 480x320 and providing you with editing tools to select a snippet that you want to share; we were given 54 seconds worth of video to share from our 3 minute, 3 second sample clip. File sizes and video lengths differ based on where you’re exporting them, as well as the quality they started at.Compatibility + Compatibility IssuesThere’s far more good news than bad news to report on the camera connection kit for ipad compatibility front, and that’s due in part to some previously unknown features Apple has included in the current iPad system software. It turns out that the USB port-equipped iPad Camera Connector is capable of connecting to devices other than digital cameras—though Apple neither advertises this additional functionality nor makes any promises regarding which specific USB devices will work if you plug them into the iPad. Officially, it has posted a support document called Using ipad camera connection with unsupported USB devices, and notes that “USB printers with built-in SD card readers are not supported;” for the time being, printers, external hard disks, and numerous other Mac/PC accessories are off-limits. But USB headsets for Skype work—like headsets that plug into the iPad’s headphone port—as do USB keyboards, and certain other USB-based audio devices. For the time being, these non-camera peripherals are little more than bonuses for iPad users, but developers could use the Connector as a trojan horse to add additional devices to the iPad; it may well turn out to be a truly great item for non-photographic purposes, as well. On the flip side, it should be noted that the iPad Camera Connection Kit only works with the iPad; at this moment, there’s no sign that it will work with iPhone or iPod touch models. Once again, this could change in the future.Real-world testing also revealed some surprising details regarding the Kit’s camera-specific compatibility and file format support. On a positive note, the SD Card Reader worked perfectly to grab the photo contents of the majority of Secure Digital memory cards we tested, but put up an odd complaint when we tried to insert an Eye-Fi Geo card with a Wi-Fi chip inside: “The attached USB device is not supported.” Photos wouldn’t read the Eye-Fi Geo’s contents at all, and we also had the same message come up repeatedly as a bug when the SD Card Reader was connected to an iPad left with its screen off. Apple’s official compatibility details are found in a support document that says the “iPad SD Card Reader supports SD standards up to SDHC, miniSD and microSD with adapters, and MMC. SDXC is not supported.”Similarly, the camera kit for iPad is capable of connecting to most USB-compatible digital cameras via a male USB plug and/or cable—except when it’s not. Some older, pre-2005 digital cameras may experience issues if they don’t support the popular Mass Storage Device or Picture Transfer Protocol connectivity standards. Additionally, when we plugged in a Flip Ultra HD camera, the iPad initially said “Accessory Unavailable - The attached accessory uses too much power.” Yet the iPad was able to read and transfer the Flip’s contents anyway; the problem appeared to be the Flip’s desire to recharge its own battery while transferring files. We had no electronic problems connecting other digital cameras, including everything from pocket point-and-shoots to a Canon 5D Mark II, though what happened with their contents varied somewhat.ConclusionsFor right now, the camera connector kit for iPad is a great accessory—the single most worthwhile purchase currently available for iPad users who enjoy photography, and a neat toy for others who are interested in tinkering with additional, unofficially compatible USB devices. Used purely for importing digital images and videos, the camera connection for iPad enables iPad owners to share and store considerably higher-quality content than any past iPhone or iPod could handle, and does so with enough speed and versatility to properly limit both camera and iPad battery drain. Even for prosumer-grade applications, we would actually use the iPad Camera Connection Kit in the field right now with only modest limitations and concerns, and that’s saying something given how weak the iPod Camera Connection Kit was as a storage and sharing alternative. Apple’s latest release is a considerable improvement on the iPod version released years ago, and easier to recommend today than that one was back then. Our A- rating reflects our rare high recommendation, with caveats.That having been said, there’s little doubt that the iPad Camera Connection Kit may stir up grumbles from some photographers and iPad owners—some will dislike the fact that it needs to exist at all because of the iPad’s overly sparing I/O ports, and others may be less than completely impressed by some of its current software issues, particularly its less than ideal handling of media shot by higher-end and higher-resolution cameras. If history is any indication, such high-resolution photos and videos will only increase in popularity over time, straining the current-generation iPad’s software and hardware; hopefully Apple will be more aggressive going forward in responding to these changes than it was with the iPod accessory. Incorporating superior file format support and eventually reader hardware into upcoming iPad releases would win over users who aren’t thrilled by this otherwise extremely competent new iPad Camera Kit.http://www.dealmelody.com/apple-accessories-ipad-camera-kit_c1952
iPad Camera Kit Review
Apple’s current-generation iPad system software is a little more heavy-handed than one might expect when either of the iPad Camera Connection Kit accessories is connected. If the iPad’s locked, plugging in the SD Card Reader or the iPad Camera Connector doesn’t do anything, but making the connection in the middle of running another application will abruptly quit that application and call up Photos, Apple’s photo management and now importation tool.Photos deals with importation by creating a new tab called Camera, which for the first few seconds displays a screen full of empty dashed outlines, then fills each outline with a thumbnail image of a photo or a movie stored on the camera’s memory card. By default, a blue button labeled “Import All” appears in the upper right corner of the screen, with a red “Delete All” button at upper left. Should you select any thumbnail or number of thumbnails, blue checkmarks appear on the thumbnails, and the blue button instead becomes “Import,” providing the choice to “Import All” or “Import Selected” when you tap it. Importing images and videos from your camera is as easy as selecting one of those options, watching as each blue check on a thumbnail becomes a spinning progress wheel, and then a green check, moving on to the next image—generally but not always in sequence. JPEG-format images are typically imported without any issues, as are certain .MOV-format videos, specifically 640x480 and smaller files that come off of many but not all point-and-shoot cameras. (More details on compatibility are discussed in the next section of this review.) During the import process, Photos creates “Last Import” and “All Imported” albums, enabling you to quickly see your most recently transferred files and all of the transferred files. When you individually look at the pictures, a new Rotate button lets you change the orientation in 90-degree steps to make sure that pictures from cameras without orientation sensors—or with occasionally faulty ones—appear correctly on your iPad’s screen.Rotation can also prepare them for proper e-mailing. Once you’ve imported a photo and displayed it on your screen, you can press a button to e-mail it, send it to a Mobile Me account, assign it to a contact, use it as wallpaper, or copy it. Up to five pictures can be e-mailed at once with relative ease. If you’re worried that you’ll only be able to send out low-quality photos from your iPad, there’s some mostly good news to share. Rather than chopping JPEG pictures down to 800x600 as is done with iPhone photos, the iPad defaults at e-mailing images out at roughly 3-Megapixel resolution: 2048x1536 for typical 4:3 point-and-shoot images, or 2048x1364 for 3:2 DSLR images. Pro photographers mightn’t like the rescaling, or that the EXIF data is stripped for re-sized images, but most users won’t care: the resized images look fantastic, and are perfect for sharing via e-mail. There’s also a workaround for users who need superior image quality: if you select an image manually using the Copy button and Paste it into an e-mail, you can send the full-resolution version out instead, complete with EXIF data. We had only one issue with this trick, discussed in the compatibility section below.The ipad camera connector kit can also import videos from digital cameras. Supported movies use the video playback and editing interface introduced for the iPhone 3GS, which places a timeline at the top of the screen, and changes the sharing features to “Email Video,” “Send to MobileMe,” “Send to YouTube,” and “Copy Video.” E-mailed video clips appear to be capped at 5MB in size in H.264 format, with the iPad automatically reducing their resolution to 480x320 and providing you with editing tools to select a snippet that you want to share; we were given 54 seconds worth of video to share from our 3 minute, 3 second sample clip. File sizes and video lengths differ based on where you’re exporting them, as well as the quality they started at.Compatibility + Compatibility IssuesThere’s far more good news than bad news to report on the camera connection kit for ipad compatibility front, and that’s due in part to some previously unknown features Apple has included in the current iPad system software. It turns out that the USB port-equipped iPad Camera Connector is capable of connecting to devices other than digital cameras—though Apple neither advertises this additional functionality nor makes any promises regarding which specific USB devices will work if you plug them into the iPad. Officially, it has posted a support document called Using ipad camera connection with unsupported USB devices, and notes that “USB printers with built-in SD card readers are not supported;” for the time being, printers, external hard disks, and numerous other Mac/PC accessories are off-limits. But USB headsets for Skype work—like headsets that plug into the iPad’s headphone port—as do USB keyboards, and certain other USB-based audio devices. For the time being, these non-camera peripherals are little more than bonuses for iPad users, but developers could use the Connector as a trojan horse to add additional devices to the iPad; it may well turn out to be a truly great item for non-photographic purposes, as well. On the flip side, it should be noted that the iPad Camera Connection Kit only works with the iPad; at this moment, there’s no sign that it will work with iPhone or iPod touch models. Once again, this could change in the future.Real-world testing also revealed some surprising details regarding the Kit’s camera-specific compatibility and file format support. On a positive note, the SD Card Reader worked perfectly to grab the photo contents of the majority of Secure Digital memory cards we tested, but put up an odd complaint when we tried to insert an Eye-Fi Geo card with a Wi-Fi chip inside: “The attached USB device is not supported.” Photos wouldn’t read the Eye-Fi Geo’s contents at all, and we also had the same message come up repeatedly as a bug when the SD Card Reader was connected to an iPad left with its screen off. Apple’s official compatibility details are found in a support document that says the “iPad SD Card Reader supports SD standards up to SDHC, miniSD and microSD with adapters, and MMC. SDXC is not supported.”Similarly, the camera kit for iPad is capable of connecting to most USB-compatible digital cameras via a male USB plug and/or cable—except when it’s not. Some older, pre-2005 digital cameras may experience issues if they don’t support the popular Mass Storage Device or Picture Transfer Protocol connectivity standards. Additionally, when we plugged in a Flip Ultra HD camera, the iPad initially said “Accessory Unavailable - The attached accessory uses too much power.” Yet the iPad was able to read and transfer the Flip’s contents anyway; the problem appeared to be the Flip’s desire to recharge its own battery while transferring files. We had no electronic problems connecting other digital cameras, including everything from pocket point-and-shoots to a Canon 5D Mark II, though what happened with their contents varied somewhat.ConclusionsFor right now, the camera connector kit for iPad is a great accessory—the single most worthwhile purchase currently available for iPad users who enjoy photography, and a neat toy for others who are interested in tinkering with additional, unofficially compatible USB devices. Used purely for importing digital images and videos, the camera connection for iPad enables iPad owners to share and store considerably higher-quality content than any past iPhone or iPod could handle, and does so with enough speed and versatility to properly limit both camera and iPad battery drain. Even for prosumer-grade applications, we would actually use the iPad Camera Connection Kit in the field right now with only modest limitations and concerns, and that’s saying something given how weak the iPod Camera Connection Kit was as a storage and sharing alternative. Apple’s latest release is a considerable improvement on the iPod version released years ago, and easier to recommend today than that one was back then. Our A- rating reflects our rare high recommendation, with caveats.That having been said, there’s little doubt that the iPad Camera Connection Kit may stir up grumbles from some photographers and iPad owners—some will dislike the fact that it needs to exist at all because of the iPad’s overly sparing I/O ports, and others may be less than completely impressed by some of its current software issues, particularly its less than ideal handling of media shot by higher-end and higher-resolution cameras. If history is any indication, such high-resolution photos and videos will only increase in popularity over time, straining the current-generation iPad’s software and hardware; hopefully Apple will be more aggressive going forward in responding to these changes than it was with the iPod accessory. Incorporating superior file format support and eventually reader hardware into upcoming iPad releases would win over users who aren’t thrilled by this otherwise extremely competent new iPad Camera Kit.http://www.dealmelody.com/apple-accessories-ipad-camera-kit_c1952