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The iPad and Hotel WiFi Uploads


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I will be traveling more on photographic outings, so I am interested in reducing my load.  I am thinking about an 11-inch Air notebook or the ipadPro, which will be available shortly.

 

I am skeptical about the ipadPro because of the 128 gb limit, although I think I would like it as a portfolio display device.  I have concluded that Apple is not making more memory available or providing a port for an external hard drive because they are trying to force users into using Apple iCloud.  If I play that game, I just wander whether uploading 500 photographs from a day's shoot is practical over typical hotel wifi uploads.  Anyone have any experience?

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Having just returned from a week in Paris I would say it mostly depends on the hotel wifi. My hotel in Paris had usable wifi. I shot about 75-100 images a day and on this hotels wifi that was not a problem. In May I was in London and spent 2 days in Sheffield. The hotel in London had amazing speeds (better than @ home-it was the Ritz). The hotel in Sheffield (the best that college town had to offer) was a different story--the wifi was unusable for anything. My iPhone as a hotspot had a better connection and much faster speeds.

 

I have had similar experiences elsewhere in the world (both fast and slow). It does not depend on the price of the room or the quality of the accommodations.

 

After my Sheffield experience I went and purchased many additional SD cards. I now have 10 16GB SD cards. (previously I had 7 ). I have them numbered and everyday I change them, lock them and put them in the room safe (after uploading to my iPad Air).

 

My original 'negatives' are safe. Whatever gets uploaded via wifi gets done on the road. Everything gets saved to my HDD and after that gets backed up I then format the cards.

 

YMMV.

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You haven't explained what you want to do - backup, process on the move, or just store locally. I've also had very mixed experience with hotel WiFi and would not want to rely on it for backup. And I found WiFi to Dropbox from an ipad oddly very slow. Personally I wouldn't want to fiddle with multiple sd cards. I have used a macbook air, which worked well for storage and pp, but I'm normally a windows person so I now use a surface pro 3, and a couple of 120gb memory sticks for added backup. When I get home I just sync Lightroom catalogues with my PC.

Edited by LocalHero1953
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You haven't explained what you want to do - backup, process on the move, or just store locally. I've also had very mixed experience with hotel WiFi and would not want to rely on it for backup. And I found WiFi to Dropbox from an ipad oddly very slow. Personally I wouldn't want to fiddle with multiple sd cards. I have used a macbook air, which worked well for storage and pp, but I'm normally a windows person so I now use a surface pro 3, and a couple of 120gb memory sticks for added backup. When I get home I just sync Lightroom catalogues with my PC.

For Backup.  

 

For the last several years, I have traveled with a solid state external drive and a MacBook Pro.  During my last trip in early September, I decided it was time to lighten the load.  I keep the photo cards until I get home and then I transfer the files from the external hard drive to my RAID system.  It is incredibly fast, and I think that is what I will continue to do.  It would be nice, however, to get rid of the external hard drive and a large laptop.  As for working on the road, I usually spend an hour at night looking at the day's work.  I have Photoshop on the laptop.  If there is something I really like, I make Camera Raw adjustments and apply a curve in Photoshop.   Not much more.

 

By the way, looking at my work saved me in September.  One night I looked, and every photograph I took with the Monochrom had one line of pixels missing.  Fortunately, I had my M and had used both throughout the day.  Without a laptop, I would have never have seen the problem.

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Well, memory sticks could replace your travelling hard drive, and a MacBook Air your Macbook Pro. I found an ipad useless for dealing with photos on the road, except for the simplest tasks, but that was before LR brought in its mobile tools. I use LR and PS on the Surface Pro with no difficulties. 

Edited by LocalHero1953
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For trips where I take along a workstation for post-processing, I just load the cards onto its hard drive, and back-up a second set of the files to an external hard drive. Then put the cards into a wallet and take them home. For short trips, I back up to a WD Wireless Passport external HD (the one that backs up SD cards) and then stick the cards into a wallet and take them home. Sometimes plug the WD into a spare computer (like the one in the lobby that you can use to print boarding passes) and check that the backup went OK.

 

I've never seen the attraction of "cloud" storage, and based on years of dealing with hotel Wifi, I wouldn't waste a lot of time using it for backup of a lot of big files. It varies from hotel to hotel, and even varies within a hotel. Newer properties, where the Wifi was incorporated into the design, often do better than the older properties where it was added later. But not always. And some charge extra for "premium" (high-speed) service.

Edited by Chuck Albertson
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I think I will buy the 11 inch Air and still bring my external hard drive.  I have used the Western Digital  passports, which work great, but the advantage of the hard drive that I have been using is that it is thunderbolt, so it is fast and easy to copy the files to my RAID system on return.  I also like the fact that the hard drive is solid state, which adds some additional safety.

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