Can I use a tablet ?

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gary43

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I'm popping off on a proper holiday later this year and have sorted out all my camera and lens needs.

I will though probably fill A LOT of memory cards and like to have backups of images anyway.

So, question is, can I ditch the laptop and download images straight from my camera (Sony a77) onto a tablet device or alternately can I get one which will take SD cards to download onto the SSD ?

I'm looking for a 64 Gb device (or more ?) of some description.

Is this possible ? If so which tablet would be recommended ?

BTW, I know NOTHING about such things so ANY help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Gary
 
gary43 said:
I'm popping off on a proper holiday later this year and have sorted out all my camera and lens needs.

I will though probably fill A LOT of memory cards and like to have backups of images anyway.

So, question is, can I ditch the laptop and download images straight from my camera (Sony a77) onto a tablet device or alternately can I get one which will take SD cards to download onto the SSD ?

I'm looking for a 64 Gb device (or more ?) of some description.

Is this possible ? If so which tablet would be recommended ?

BTW, I know NOTHING about such things so ANY help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Gary
Click to expand...
As long as the tablet has a full-size SD card slot (not the usual micro-SD slot), there should be no problem... Different if you're using cf cards, as you'd need to use a card reader or a usb cable, both of which would require the tablet to be able to host usb devices. The few tablets I've used haven't been capable of usb hosting, that's not to say others will be the same.

Not sure on the backup devices, but there are a good few available... Epson used to make good ones, but I've not been in that market for a while :)
 
gary43 said:
If so which tablet would be recommended ?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't. Tablets as storage devices are overpriced, fraught with problems and risky at best.

For pure storage it would be cheaper to buy more SD cards. If you want to view the files as well, buy yourself a cheap, secondhand netbook with a 250Gb HD for around £100-150.
 
The Motorola Xoom is available second hand under £200 and includes a 10 inch screen. USB host for card readers and Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

You could also get an iPad and the Apple camera connection kit to read the SD's.

Regards
Steve
 
Thanks to all for the tips. I'll definitely look into the Motorola.

There seems to be some good deals on the Blackberry tablet at the moment, are they any use for this application ?

Regards

Gary
 
gary43 said:
Thanks to all for the tips. I'll definitely look into the Motorola.

There seems to be some good deals on the Blackberry tablet at the moment, are they any use for this application ?

Regards

Gary
Click to expand...
I'd second the advice to either take a netbook or additional cards... I have owned a couple of tablets mainly as web-surfing devices, and they're just oversized phones. That can't make calls. And if you tweak them a lot (ROM flashing etc), they tend to lose the plot, which is why I own a bricked tablet presently, waiting for me to be bothered to fix it :)

I think the blackberry tab was sold off for cheap due to the need for it to be paired with a blackberry for best functionality. Again, someone may have developed an Android ROM for them, but like Apple, best avoided for reasons of being tied to an ecosystem.

FWIW I picked up a few sandisk extreme 16GB Class 10 cards from Play recently for around £17 apiece.
 
Gotta say I fancy the thought of viewing images on-the-go so will probably end up with a tablet of some sort. Portability is king though. Any recommended alternatives to the Xoom ?

Thanks again to all.

Gary
 
If you buy a tablet then it's own storage will not be sufficient so you will want to use it to copy data between two sd cards or sd cards an an external hard disk. I think first off you need to think about how many photos and therefore how many megabytes of photos you will be take and then work from there.
 
Hi Gareth,

I'm thinking I could download say 16Gb of images on a busy day onto the SSD which I can then delete down to a few Gb per day on the tablet. I think a 64Gb device should be fine for a couple of weeks holiday.

I have a lot of SD cards as it is, I'm thinking of the tablet as backup really.

I'm getting the steer that any 64Gb device with a full-size SD slot which can handle jpegs will do a job for me. Presumably that is about the size of it ? I reserve the right to be wrong. The rest is down to my preference over device speed, screen type, size etc ... ?

Regards

Gary
 
You don't need a full-sized SD slot. You can use a micro-SD card in a full-sized SD card converter in your camera. A bit fiddly but it increases the range of tablets you could consider.
 
+1 on the cheap netbook. Far more storage & more reliable for your money. Though is a small netbook much of a replacement for the laptop? Depends how big the laptop is by comparison.

Tablets are generally flash storage and typically come with up to 64gb, some of which will be used by the OS and apps. iPad is non-expandable, expensive and have to pay extra for the kit to get photos onto it from a camera (and can you get them off again without using a Mac I wonder?). No idea about the Blackberry or Motorola. Other popular option is the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Possibly even the Galaxy Note which is halfway between a phone and tablet, though maybe smaller memory.

Really depends if you can hook the thing up to the camera and/or an SD card reader of some sort.

I wouldn't be that trusting of flash memory backups myself, given how many SD and CF cards I've had die on me. Luckily I usually manage to get the stuff onto a hard disc before they die.

Alternatively though copy onto a tablet you could then upload to an online storage site. e.g. Dropbox, SkyDrive, and various others. You'd need to find WiFi access though and these sites generally give you just a few GB free so may have to pay for enough storage, and can be slow to upload. 3G connection... avoid! Unless you want to come home to a phone bill costing £thousands!!
 
I use an IPad and a cheap (£5) SD ipad card adapter to download my RAW images from my card to have a look at them on the move. It works really well and in some cases you can start to try out some basic PP on the images using some of the photo apps you can now get. I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives to an Ipad but what you are suggesting can certainly be achieved by an iPad.
 
Thanks for the input Garry/Tim

Think I'll scour the web to see what options are out there.

The Archos G980 has a 250 Gb HD memory which looks interesting.

Have just got the baby brother of this device for my daughter and she is delighted with it. Weirdly, though, I was more concerned about the durability of non-flash memory !

Only takes a micro-SD so your comments Garry are relevant.

Maybe it will support a card-reader ?

Either way, I'd better go see what is out there, as mentioned !

Regards to all.

Gary

I
 
The archos devices will work in host mode with the correct USB cable so you can copy files to it.

Another idea might be to get something like the WD live tv. It connects to a tv so you can preview the photos in hd but you also have file management so you can backup all the photos onto an external hdd (it has two USB ports).
 
Thanks again to everyone. I'll go see what the WWW can offer up in terms of prices and feature sets for the devices mentioned above then.

Loads of food for thought.....

Regards

Gary
 
I've been using an Asus Transformer (like the Xoom but with a keyboard dock). It has a full sized SD card holder on the dock and can mount USB devices via 2 USB ports. So you can use it to view and to dump files onto a USB HDD.

I've tried it with the Eye-Fi app for auto transfer but with only moderate success.

It might be a bit pricy for you, but is a very nice piece of kit.
 
I have. PlayBook / eyefi combo. Works well enough, best if you shoot jpg as you can look at the images on the PlayBook as they're downloading, if you shoot raw large files so takes a little time to copy across, but the eyefi pro supports backing those up too. I have my camera set to produce raw and small jpg and only copy the small jpg to playbook as I'm shooting so the other half can see images as they're being shot, and I can review whilst taking a break.

PlayBook uses the android eyefi app. And generally is a great bit of kit. There is also reports that host usb mode will be released in the summer which would allow you to connect external hdd or usb card readers.
 
I use a Windows 7 tablet with a laptop hard drive in an external USB enclosure. That way I can transfer the images onto the hard drive and store that away from the camera and the full SD cards when I'm travelling.

The Windows 7 tablet isn't as easy to use as an Android but using the same programs as on my desktop, and easy data transfer, makes it worthwhile. Hopefully, Windows 8 will improve ease of use. Or not.
 
Dear All

Thanks for the tips above. I'm currently looking at the new prices for the Sony Tablet S, Xoom2 and a couple of other tabs which will operate in host usb mode.

Gotta say the Archos G9 80 looks to fit the bill and it cheap. I read somewherer though that it is a bit flimsy but then I do generally baby my gear ! Anyone have any experience of this device ?

If only the Sony Tablet S was cheaper .....

MANY thanks again to all.

Regards

Gary
 
I believe the cable you need is called a USB On the Go cable. And I've heard that Samsung are bringing out a couple of new 7" and 10" tablets later this month, presumably running Android 4. No idea if they run as USB hosts but worth checking out?
 
I tried a tablet for this, but went down the netbook route in the end. I've got a Samsung netbook with 250gb hard drive and I prefer it over the tablet as its a similar size, but I can do editing on it as well. Very easy to use as it has an inbuilt card reader, but I can get a lot more out of it than I can from a tablet.
 
For security of back up I would get a portable hard drive - I got one for backing up in the office, a Lacie 2TB hard drive was only £110. For something with 250GB you can get a good small laptop with that amount of space for under £150 - something with a screen of 10.5" for compactness, lightness and it will be more durable than a tablet type thing.

What power source will you have?
 
Hi all

Had a look at tablets in Currys/pcworld and CarphoneWH today and really wanted to go down the Blackberry PB/eyefi route. These devices totally crashed in both outlets when I was doing the simplest things so was not too impressed with the hands-on experience.

Hate to say it but the Apple iPad3 I had a play with impressed enormously.

Seems like I have a few workable options though. Thanks to all the advice above.

I think it is a matter of going to a few shops now and giving some other devices a bit of a workout.

OOI, Lensflare I will be cruising round the Med with stop-offs at about 8 ports/places of interest so will have whatever power is availabe onboard ship (?).

Thanks again to all.

Gary
 
Depending on the flag of the ship, take a 2-pin adaptor with you, just to be on the safe side. I got a world wide plug adaptor from Lidl a couple of years ago - th epins alter to fit any plug in the world - so my 3-pin plugs work everywhere!
 
Take a look at the Toshiba AT100 tablet - full size SD card and USB slots with a good screen for previews - you can connect a portable hard drive direct to the USB

The con is its a bit chunky but worth a look
 
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