Even fewer reasons to carry my laptop now

Today I finally caved and picked up the iPad camera connector kit. I’ve been putting it off for a while thinking that I didn’t really have a need for it, but today I’m going to do a little photoshoot for M2O and was thinking that maybe it would be nice to be able to see if I got the headshots and promo shots that we needed before I leave there. Usually I would bring my laptop with me to quickly download and check the pics, but that is a lot of extra weight to carry when I’m already carrying both camera bodies.

So on my way a swung over to the Apple Store to grab a connector kit (btw if I had gotten then by about 9:30 I would have been able to get an iPhone 4 as well, alas I was doing actual work by then) then to a Starbucks to test out the kit with my two Nikons (and snagging the Barista badge on Foursquare as well!).

My first fear was that I would have to switch to shooting in RAW + JPG to be able to load the images on my iPad. Nope, no problem with either the D80 or D300. Then I wondered about doing anything with them…but I remembered I had Photoshop Elements for iPad. No, it isn’t the best thing, but you know it worked pretty darn well for a quick look and edit. Not the quality that I would use for clients as “final copy” but certainly good enough for a blog post!

I think, like many mobile pros, that I’m finding that the iPad fits the bill as something between a laptop/desktop computer and a smartphone. Netbooks? Well, yeah you know they were a great idea, but the form factor of the small keyboard and under-powered for the OSes that it had to use, really crippled them. Writing this post on my iPad, in Simplenote, using the Apple Wireless Keyboard, I have something ready to post when I get home (after putting some links and things in).

As well as emailing off an edited photo to a friend, checking some email, and sending some tweets. Yeah, I’d say that the iPad has truly opened the world up for small, light tablets.