iPad Camera Connection Kit

This would be the second time I’m getting the iPad Camera Connection Kit. The first time, I returned it because it didn’t meet my use case. This time around, having understood its limitations, and also a slightly different use case, I was going to give it another shot. I was going to bring it with me on my holiday to Japan, so that I can more conveniently transfer photos between my Sony RX100 and my iPad.

In case you were wondering what exactly didn’t work out for me the first time, well, here’s why. I had expected to transfer photos from my phone via a USB connection the the iPad. Another scenario would be to transfer photos from my standalone camera (a Samsung compact point-and-shoot camera) to the iPad. When I connected my phone via USB to the iPad, the iPad complained that my device (i.e., the phone) was drawing too much power, and it would not work with it.

Alright, perhaps my phone was dumb enough to want to charge itself, and hence sucked more power than my iPad was happy about. Next, I connected my Samsung compact point-and-shoot camera, and I met with exactly the same results. Very disappointing. It did work with an iPhone connected via USB though. But that’s not what I bought the iPad Camera Connection Kit for.

This time around, I was just going to pop out the SD card from my camera and slot it into the Camera Connection Kit. This worked alright.

There are actually two pieces to the Camera Connection Kit. One piece is used to connect a USB cable, while the other one lets you slot a SD card into it.

As you can see, this is the older iPhone/iPad (i.e. non-Lightning) interface. Interestingly, while these USB/SD card reader sells for S$38 together, the newer Lightning interface versions are quite a lot costlier. For the Lightning interface, the USB adapter and the SD card reader sells for S$42 individually.

The Camera Connection Kit pretty much works as you expect it to. Of course, note the limitations I shared about concerning connecting via USB to unsupported devices due to power draw. Whether you use the USB connection or the SD card reader, the way photos are imported are identical. The iPad’s Photo app is used for that.

$38 seems pretty much for a USB/SD card reader adapter, but hey, at least you get two of them; Lightning connector folks have to pay more for just one or the other.