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Anyone used SanDisk iXpand for iPad photos?

Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 11:52 am
by DOglesby
I am hoping to find a good external storage option for my images that can be used with the Lightroom app on the iPad that doesn't rely on WiFi connectivity (I find those WiFi storage options a poor experience).  This SanDisk iXpand product seems interesting.  Has anyone used this to work with photos on an iPad?  Any other suggestions?

The "use case" I'm envisioning is to upload images directly from my SD card to the iPad, move them to the external drive, edit on the iPad while accessing the photos from the drive.  I don't think I can move from the SD card directly to the external drive - if I can that would be a huge bonus.

Link to the iXpand product is here (a bit pricey):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUH9BET/re ... UTF8&psc=1


Thanks in advance.

Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 4:18 pm
by SantaFeJoe
I'm not sure exactly what you're needing, but here are a couple of things that may work, including the iXpand. I have an Apple device to upload SD cards to the iPad, but haven't used it much. It's for the older 30 pin connector, not the Lightning connector, but they might make a Lightning version.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2904073 ... -ipad.html

Apple has this, but I'm sorry, I'm not able to view the page to check out the product right now.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJYT ... era-reader

Joe

Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 5:28 pm
by DOglesby
Thanks, Joe. I've read a fair amount on this already but the link you provided actually provided some additional help. I may just purchase the iXpand product and see if it works.

Posted: Sun May 14, 2017 6:21 pm
by DOglesby
So I bought the iXpand drive and it seems to do what I want it to do (gotta love Amazon - buy a product on a Saturday afternoon and get it shipped overnight on a Sunday for free).

I can download my SD card (using the camera connection kit) onto my iPad, edit in Lightroom, plug in the iXpand drive and it auto backups up everything.
Then I can unplug the drive from the iPad and pop it into my USB drive on my iMac (one side of the drive is a lightning connector and the other end is USB) and import the photos into my main library in Lightroom.

The only downside I have noticed so far is that the iXpand app, which is where you browse the drive's files, doesn't support raw, so you can't preview the images there. I shoot raw+jpeg so that's not that big a deal but it sure would have been nice to have raw support.

All in all, this seems like this can make for a very light travel kit. No need to bring the laptop now.