In a nutshell...

This is not a usable solution for offloading large amounts of photos on the go.

I’m talking about the Apple iPod camera connector. Great buy, super simple and it worked without a hitch. Turn on your iPod, plug in the camera connector. Turn on your camera, plug in the USB and plug into the iPod camera connector.

The test :

I filled a card with 327 photos for total of 3.5GB using a freshly charged iPod.

It took 2 hours and drained the iPod battery leaving just a red sliver showing in the battery gauge. The camera is tied up for that time. Too slow and not intended for several card offloads on the road as I might have hoped. There are some card readers (although never intended for a reader) that will work according to some of the reviews for the camera connector at the Apple.com product review forums, but still only able to do one 4GB card without recharging the iPod. I was using an 80GB 5th generation iPod for the test.

After a lot of online research, I decided to take a drive out to one of those national electronics store chains to take one more look at some known and a few more possibilities.

Well. I decided on the tried and true super simple and “just happened to be on sale” solution.

The 8 GB SanDisk Extreme II CompactFlash memory card. 4 of them. Just marked down to $50 CAD each.

No parts, no batteries and likely enough storage to outlast the 5 Lion Rechargeable batteries for the Digital SLR. I’ll will test the new Optex Lion Rechargeables (1400 maph) to see approximately how many shots they’ll be good for expecting about 300 shots or so per battery.

The Apple iPod camera connector might be more useful for point and shoots and or general JPEG shooting to offload 1 or 2GB memory cards if you don’t mind the transfer pace or finding a card reader that works with it. I’ll still keep it handy for a “just in case” back up but have a feeling it’ll spend most of it’s time in the darkness of my desk drawer.

The CompactFlash will do just fine.

Best regards,

Marc Mantha