I know that there have been posts on this subject over the years (including some by me), but I just came back from two weeks in Portugal and the latest iteration of my strategy has worked very well for me. When I think back to the difficult and buggy process I used to use, this is heaven. No laptop to carry, no power supply, no external hard drives.
In addition to my camera and iPad (which I carry anyway), the extra gear is petty minimal, literally a couple of ounces:
- a USB-C SD card reader (I use the Apple one, but it doesn't matter)
- a Samsung T7 1GB SSD
- a short USB-C to USB-C cable
My daily routine is thus:
- Remove SD card from the camera, insert into the SD reader, and connect to my iPad. Strictly speaking, you can connect the camera directly to the iPad and eliminate the card reader. But I prefer this.
- Use the File app to copy all of today's images from the SD card to a folder in "On My iPad". I create a folder for each trip ("Portugal 2024") and subfolders for each day ("09-10-24").
- Remove the card reader, and connect the Samsung T7. Copy the contents of the subfolder I just created to a parallel folder on the T7.
Now I have two backup copies of the images in addition to the original copy on the SD card. I won't reuse the card during the trip, but I could if I needed to. If your iPad has limited storage, you could now delete the copy on the iPad at this point. I needed about 30GB for this trip.
- Open Lightroom on my iPad and import all of the images from the "On My iPad" subfolder for the day (or from the T7, if you deleted the iPad copy). Since I have LR set up to use Adobe Cloud to Sync back to my desktop, it will immediately start this process if it is connected to the Internet. Note that you need an Adobe Cloud subscription with enough capacity for the transfer; this was a problem for me when I first used this technique years ago. The extra subscription cost is well worth it to me.
On this trip, I was in hotels with good wifi service. The sync time will obviously depend on the number and size of your images, and the speed of the wifi. For me on this trip, the sync ran pretty quickly. This means that all of my images were already imported into Lightroom Classic on my Mac by the time I got home.
Furthermore, I typically write a blog while I'm traveling and edit pictures to post, using LR on the iPad. These edits are again automatically sync'd back to LrC on my Mac as they happen. This happens very quickly, as it's only the edits themselves and not the image files that need to be sync'd.
Yes, I know that only a paranoid would need five copies of their images from a vacation (SD card, iPad, T7, Adobe Cloud, LrC on my Mac). And this doesn't count the additional backups made from the primary storage on my Mac. Six if you count the microSD in my Nikon Zf. But it's pretty easy, and I'll delete the files on the iPad and T7 once I'm home.
And as a former IT professional, I know that the only thing dividing us is that some of us have had storage failures, and the rest will have storage failures eventually.
So I got home last night, opened LrC this morning on the Mac and all of my edited pictures are there to enjoy! Pretty sweet.
In addition to my camera and iPad (which I carry anyway), the extra gear is petty minimal, literally a couple of ounces:
- a USB-C SD card reader (I use the Apple one, but it doesn't matter)
- a Samsung T7 1GB SSD
- a short USB-C to USB-C cable
My daily routine is thus:
- Remove SD card from the camera, insert into the SD reader, and connect to my iPad. Strictly speaking, you can connect the camera directly to the iPad and eliminate the card reader. But I prefer this.
- Use the File app to copy all of today's images from the SD card to a folder in "On My iPad". I create a folder for each trip ("Portugal 2024") and subfolders for each day ("09-10-24").
- Remove the card reader, and connect the Samsung T7. Copy the contents of the subfolder I just created to a parallel folder on the T7.
Now I have two backup copies of the images in addition to the original copy on the SD card. I won't reuse the card during the trip, but I could if I needed to. If your iPad has limited storage, you could now delete the copy on the iPad at this point. I needed about 30GB for this trip.
- Open Lightroom on my iPad and import all of the images from the "On My iPad" subfolder for the day (or from the T7, if you deleted the iPad copy). Since I have LR set up to use Adobe Cloud to Sync back to my desktop, it will immediately start this process if it is connected to the Internet. Note that you need an Adobe Cloud subscription with enough capacity for the transfer; this was a problem for me when I first used this technique years ago. The extra subscription cost is well worth it to me.
On this trip, I was in hotels with good wifi service. The sync time will obviously depend on the number and size of your images, and the speed of the wifi. For me on this trip, the sync ran pretty quickly. This means that all of my images were already imported into Lightroom Classic on my Mac by the time I got home.
Furthermore, I typically write a blog while I'm traveling and edit pictures to post, using LR on the iPad. These edits are again automatically sync'd back to LrC on my Mac as they happen. This happens very quickly, as it's only the edits themselves and not the image files that need to be sync'd.
Yes, I know that only a paranoid would need five copies of their images from a vacation (SD card, iPad, T7, Adobe Cloud, LrC on my Mac). And this doesn't count the additional backups made from the primary storage on my Mac. Six if you count the microSD in my Nikon Zf. But it's pretty easy, and I'll delete the files on the iPad and T7 once I'm home.
And as a former IT professional, I know that the only thing dividing us is that some of us have had storage failures, and the rest will have storage failures eventually.
So I got home last night, opened LrC this morning on the Mac and all of my edited pictures are there to enjoy! Pretty sweet.
