Reading XQD/CFExpress card for dummies

[Shashinka73]

The dummy in question is me. While I generally know my way around a camera, other things still cause me far too much hassle, so here I am.

Long and short of it is, I'm starting to consider a new camera and I've narrowed it down to a few options. One is the Z7 (mark 1), as there are some very reasonable deals going on with the24-70 and the adapter for the DSLR-era lenses. Well within my budget.

I do my post processing in Lightroom on an iPad Pro, 2nd gen (2017, according to Google), 12.9 inch. I have the standard apple reader white dongle thing where you just stick the card in and transfer the pics to the iPad. Works fine with my current camera, but that uses regular old SD cards.

What I've been trying (and failing miserably) to determine is, what (if anything) I would need to do if I wanted to do the same with an XQD / CFExpress card. All I've gotten from my searches is a headache. I keep reading about using multiple different gadgets the names of which mean nothing to me, and people going on about "needing to provide a power source to the iPad before you can do it". I can make more sense of written Chinese than I can of that.

If there's one single gadget which will let me transfer pictures from an XQD or CFexpress card to an iPad with the specs mentioned above, I would happily get one.

If it's going to require a degree in technological supernerdery and eight different gadgets, I'll just drop the Z7 from my list.

Can it be done? Thanks for anyone who can explain as if to a three year old.

 

[Kirnbichler]

As your iPad doesn't have a USB port, you can't directly attach USB card readers to it.

There are adapters that add a USB host port, onto which you can attach USB devices such as card readers.

iPhone USB Camera Adapter, 3 in 1 Dual USB Female OTG Adapter with Lighting Charging Port iPhone Adapter, Compatible with iPhone 14/13/12/11/X/XS/XR/8/i-Pad, for USB Flash Drive, Tastatu, Mouse: Amazon.de: Electronics & Photo

iPhone USB Camera Adapter, 3 in 1 Dual USB Female OTG Adapter with Lighting Charging Port iPhone Adapter, Compatible with iPhone 14/13/12/11/X/XS/XR/8/i-Pad, for USB Flash Drive, Tastatu, Mouse: Amazon.de: Electronics & Photo

www.amazon.de

This is such a device.

But you don't need a card reader, as you already have one: your camera. Attach the camera directly with a USB cable and you're done. (You'll need one with USB-A connector on one end, the large rectangular one, and a USB-C connector on the other, the small reversible one).

A dedicated card reader would give you no speed advantage, as the limiting factor is your iPad's "Lightning" connector.

Some USB devices take much power to operate. The iPad via an adapter as the one above can only supply power up to a certain level; the specific adapter I've linked provides a power input (via a lightning connector) to which you can connect your iPad's power supply, this is supposed to help.

There's yet another way to transfer images: Wireless via Nikon SnapBridge.

That is an App you can get from the AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/snapbridge/id1121563450

Finally: Be aware that the Z7 is a 45MP camera that creates very large image files. A typical RAW file is around 50 MB in size, so both takes quite some of your iPad's limited storage space and time to transfer via the slow USB connection of your iPad, which limits the transfer rate to less than an image per second.

 

[madecov]

Need a reader for firmware updates.

He can also transfer vis snapbridge directly to the iPad, but of course lower rez images

 

[Kirnbichler]

Need a reader for firmware updates.

And use an iPad to put the firmware files on the card? Yeah, that might work with the "files" app, but you'd need to extract the firmware file first.

 

[Shashinka73]

OK, I understand that you can connect the camera directly to the iPad, where it will presumably be recognised as a storage device. That much I can follow.

However, while trying to understand all this and going grey in the process, I've been doing more googling, and now I get the impression that my iPad Pro (2nd Gen) cannot do this "without being connected to power" because it doesn't, by itself, have enough power to import from the Z7.

Now, just to prove how utterly useless I am with any piece of technology that isn't a camera, I literally don't understand what that means.

The iPad has one single place which you can use to power it. The same slot is used to transfer photos via the Apple lightning camera adapter thing.

I assume this means that you need some other gadget to allow two things to be used at once, i.e. the means to connect the iPad to the mains, and the camera (or card reader).

Am I even in the ballpark here?

 

[Kirnbichler]

However, while trying to understand all this and going grey in the process, I've been doing more googling, and now I get the impression that my iPad Pro (2nd Gen) cannot do this "without being connected to power" because it doesn't, by itself, have enough power to import from the Z7.

When connecting the Z7 via a USB cable, this does not apply.

It does, when using a power-hungry USB device, which the Z7 isn't, as it comes with it's own battery.

CFexpress/XQD card readers will surely fall into the category of power-hungry USB devices.

When you use the adapter I've linked to in my first answer to you, you can attach an external power source to the adapter, so the power limitation doesn't apply in that case either.

 

[Boudewijn van der Drift]

Need a reader for firmware updates.

And use an iPad to put the firmware files on the card? Yeah, that might work with the "files" app, but you'd need to extract the firmware file first.

Nikon got finicky about extracting firmware files outside Windows, On linux I was able to extract, but no more. At the moment the only reason for a windows partition for me, May be Apple can extract?

New Z7 firmware seems unlikely though :-(

 

[Shashinka73]

However, while trying to understand all this and going grey in the process, I've been doing more googling, and now I get the impression that my iPad Pro (2nd Gen) cannot do this "without being connected to power" because it doesn't, by itself, have enough power to import from the Z7.

When connecting the Z7 via a USB cable, this does not apply.

It does, when using a power-hungry USB device, which the Z7 isn't, as it comes with it's own battery.

CFexpress/XQD card readers will surely fall into the category of power-hungry USB devices.

When you use the adapter I've linked to in my first answer to you, you can attach an external power source to the adapter, so the power limitation doesn't apply in that case either.

Thank you. This is slowly starting to make some kind of sense!

 

[Kirnbichler]

May be Apple can extract?

Well, Nikon supplies two formats. Self-Extracting ZIP in *.exe format for Windows, and DMG for macOS, which is a disk image format.

I rather doubt that iOS can handle either of these formats.

And I definitively don't get why Nikon doesn't in addition offer the *.bin file contained in both these container formats.

It is understandable that Nikon wants to offer some kind of protection against tampering with downloads, that is the reason why they use these container formats.

But for containerless *.bin files, Nikon could publish the SHA-256 checksum, thus allowing knowledgeable users to verify the authenticity for themselves.