Category: Computing

Is the iPad a suitable tool for the travelling photographer, well in certain areas yes.

Now I will be the first to admit its not going to replace your computer, but as a portable device is does have many attractions to the photographer.

We all should know by now the importance of backup.  Your photographs are not safe until you have a second copy of them.  For a number of years now, many photographers have been carrying portable backup devices like the Epson pictured above.  These small dedicated devices have small hard drives in them and a card reader to quickly backup your cards.

I now use the iPad for this task, and while the storage is limited, you can review your images on the large screen and cut the chaff from the wheat so to speak.

For users of Adobe Lightroom, there is a product called PhotoSmith, once your photographs are safe on the iPad you can use this to add your metadata and key words. Once your back at your office you can sync with your computer and your photographs are where they belong and the boring task of adding metadata and key wording is already done.

So that covers backup and some of the more boring data management task but what about the creative function.

After Photosmith my next most used app is SnapSeed.  This is a great app from Nik software who make possibly one of the best Black & White Converters available.  If you after processing your RAW files and trying out different ideas then this is the ideal app.

From simple Black & White conversions like this to more adventures and dramatic shots.

For studio users, Elinchrom have released their remote control application, I can now remotely adjust the power and settings of my Elinchrom flash heads direct from my iPad.

While I have not tried it myself there are now wireless tethering options.

With the release now of Photoshop Touch and iPhoto more and more advanced post processing techniques can be used.  Whilst you might not end up publishing shots produced on your iPad due to limitations on the size of files it can handle, it makes a great tool for when you feel inspired and want to try out ideas.

Lastly we have not mentioned portfolio displays.  The iPad makes a great way of showing off your photographs to potential clients.

Whilst they may be better ways of accomplishing many of these tasks, the iPad can do a very satisfactory job, and it is small, light and how many laptops have 10 hours of battery life.

If you feel only a real computer will do then take a look at Apple’s MacBook Air, the 11inch model is not much bigger and the i7 version with 250GB solid state hard disk and 4GB of RAM is far faster and more powerful then the spec would suggest.

The title of this blog post is far more impressive then the actual content 😉 As I am sure most of you know, the new iPad was announced yesterday.

I’ll leave the details for others to write about, but later i’ll blog about some of the apps I use in iOS to make my Photographic life easier.

See Chris’s Blog for more details on the new iPad.

The big two announcements recently were of course Adobe Photoshop Touch and the New Apple iPhoto. It’s apps like this that are beginning to move the iPad from a passive viewing type device to a creative device.

Well after a relatively short beta period, Adobe Lightroom V4 has been released.

Lots of information and training is now becoming available so I would advise you to check out some of the free on line tutorials and if your going to purchase V4 and want to make the best of it, I can recommend either the video tutorials from either Kelby Training or The Luminous Landscape.

For more info on V4 check out lightroomkillertips.com and Chris’s Blog for more info and links.

For version 2 and 3 I upgraded immediately as there was functionality I really wanted to use straight away. Now I think I may wait. Last time when Adobe Photoshop CS5 was released they did a double upgrade offer that made the Lightroom upgrade a lot cheaper. Hopefully they will do the same this year.

Monitor calibration is critical for photographers.  There is no point in trying to do extensive post production on an image if you have no idea what your monitor is actually displaying.

To this end I use the X-Rite i-1 Display 2.  This is a version of their profiler that is no longer available.

When OS X Lion was released many people were surprised that their Profilers no longer worked.  Unfortunately the profiling software was written for Macs with PowerPC processors.  Until Lion, all Macs came with translation software that enabled them to run  software written for the older Macs.

Luckily X Rite have released a native Intel version for Modern Macs running OS X Lion and even for older versions like mine.  If you are a registered user you can login and download the new version.

One of my faviorate iPad Apps has won Apple’s iPad App of the Year.

Its a tremendously useful photo editing application, but one of the key reasons I purchased it was that it can deal with RAW files.

On all the photographic trips I have undertaken this year, I have left the laptop at home and just taken the iPad.  I can backup my photos to it, and using Snapseed tryout some editing ideas.

A great app and well worth it, if your a digital camera shooter and have an iPad.

See Scott Kelby’s website for more details.

Heres a few Photographs I edited with Snapseed on the iPad.

 

This week I finally got round to updating the software in the Sony A55 (Don’t worry I am still a Nikon User).

Its a simple executable you run while your computer is connected to the camera via USB. There is a Windows version and a OS X version for Apple Macintosh’s.

There was one slight hiccup. The Mac version is 32 bit only and will not work if you have the 64 bit kernel. I run OS X Lion on my MacBook Pro and the software would not run.

This was easily fixed via a quick reboot while holding down the 3 & 2 keys on the keyboard. This forces the computer to restart with a 32 bit kernel, and then the software would run.

The update went smoothly but once it had finished the Camera would not operate. Removing the battery and then putting it back fixed this and we were operational again.

For more details check out the Photography Blog.

With the Launch of iOS5 we now also have iCloud.

Having syncing between my Mac Laptop, iPad and iPhone is very useful.  The key features are the Photo Stream for Photographers.  I tested this out this afternoon, where I took a photo with my iPhone, then checked the iPad and there was the photo I had just taken.  Not only that but because I have Lion OS X (10.7.2) on the laptop and the latest version of iPhoto (Aperture also supported), when I got home and fired up iPhoto, there was the photographs I had taken on the phone.  No syncing or any effort from myself.

I also tried updating a spreadsheet on the iPad then accessed iWork.com from my work Windows Laptop and was able to continue to work on it.

Only down side so far has been the time its taken to update to iCloud.  As can be expected, Apple’s servers are under a lot of stress at the moment as the worlds iPhone 3GS and 4 users update, but with a bit of patience it gets there and it can only get better.

As Apple improve there integration between there devices and the web, there making it very difficult for a user to want to move away.