When I take photos or shoot video, I like to use a nice camera, and then import the photos to my iPad—which is my dedicated photo editing and social media sharing device. But if I want to import video from that same SD card, it’s a more complicated process. Here’s how you do it. Article preview thumbnail The Essential Tools Inside a Pro Travel Photographer's Bag There’s more to a travel photographer’s kit than a camera body and a few lenses. Here are the… Read more Step 1: Buy an Apple Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader These little dongles are amazing for photogs on the go.
All you have to do is plug it into your iPad’s Lightning port, and then stick the SD card in the slot. You’ll quickly see all the images on the card, and you can import as many of them as you like (even RAW images). Whenever I’m traveling, I shoot on a Sony a7R II, transfer the images to my iPad, and then use Adobe Lightroom to make them look even better. It’s a great setup. What you won’t be shown, however, is any video files on the card. For whatever reason, Apple doesn’t make it easy to transfer video files to iPads or iPhones unless it was shot on one of those devices (or already lives on your Mac). It’s a shame, especially since iPads have some decent video-editing capabilities. So, you’ll need to get creative. Step 2: Make Sure You’re In MP4 Format Before I begin, a quick note on formats. Whatever you’re using to shoot, make sure the video files come out as MP4s, or that you can convert them to MP4s. Otherwise your iOS device probably won’t be able to do anything with them. Step 3: Move the Video Files to the DCIM Folder One of the reasons the iPad won’t see your video files is because they’re probably in a separate folder that iOS won’t check. For example, with my Sony camera, video files are stored in PRIVATE > M4ROOT > CLIP, but they need to be in the DCIM (or “digital camera images”) folder instead. If your files aren’t in a DCIM folder, you’ll need to move them. I use a laptop with a built-in SD card reader to do this, but you can also use a USB-based SD card reader. Copy the files from their origin folder, and then paste them somewhere in the DCIM folder. If your SD card doesn’t have a DCIM folder, you’ll need to create one.
