Report on traveling with DSLR/Android/ipad and questions about things that didn't work

[Nancy Everds]

Lightroom Version

LR 12.1

Operating System

1. Windows 11

This is a trip report about traveling with DLSR, smartphone, and iPad, and syncing to LRC on a desktop on return. First, NZ was awesome! We traveled the entire country from the tip of the North Island to Stewart Island in the south. Just magnificent. My plan for DSLR/Android/ipad worked well. The two things that didn't work well were the Files app on the ipad and syncing to LRC upon my return. The majority of my questions are at the end with the LR to LRC syncing. I include all my experiences for anyone who thinking about doing the same thing.

Android LR app for taking photos. I liked the flexibility and options. What I didn’t like and would love to know if there are fixes:
• If you leave app running, the phone overheats and turns off, and the app sucks down the battery fairly rapidly. This occurs even if you restrict battery usage when running in background
• There’s a 0.6x option on the Android app camera, but there’s no such option for LR
• Since I had to keep turning off LR to stop from the battery being drained, it took forever to start. By the time I could take a photo, the moment had passed ☹. I often switched to the native app when this happened. I don't see a fix for this.
• I found the exposure compensation clunky. I would change it by accident, or lock it by accident. I like having the option, but didn’t like having to check each time I took a photo to make sure I didn’t mess up the exp comp.

Downloading from DLSR card via Anker hub. Perfect. This was quick. I made an album per day to keep my photos organized. This helped me to know what files to back up to the EHD (although I backed up from the card, not from the ipad). I also put a different folder on the EHD for each day, just to keep consistent. I didn’t bother reviewing images before saving them to EHD (see below for more info on EHD).

Doing first review on ipad. Worked well. I left more than I need on the ipad, because I want to do a second culling when I have a larger screen—I shoot a lot of wildlife, and it was hard to tell which image was the best sometimes.

Copying to EHD from camera card via Files app on ipad and Anker device. Painful, I will be looking for an alternative. If I copied more than about 125 raw images, the app froze (when I opened it you could see the circle showing completed copies, and it froze shy of 100%). When it froze, there were some images that were copied completely and some that were copied, but were only 0 kb in size on the EHD. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to which were copied successfully, so I ended up deleting and starting over again.

I found that I could copy about 125 images at a time. Even that was a pain, since as soon as I started copying, the file app would close, and when I reopened it, it was on the card folder and not the EHD folder. However, I could re-navigate to the correct file and watch the copy process. It seems that there may be 3rd party apps for the ipad that are more stable/functional.

Editing/Social media
I had no trouble editing the images on the ipad and exporting them for social media or emails. For wildlife, I found it irritating that I couldn’t look across images all at some magnification to check eyes for focus. I got around that by making a crop on one representative image, then copying/pasting that crop to all the similar images, and then keeping/deleting.

Syncing with the cloud. This did not work well on the trip. It was likely due to intermittent internet and slow upload speeds. I took about 4000 photos over 7 weeks, and by the time I got home, about 2500 of them had successfully synced. The rest synced quickly in the US. However, this lack of syncing was not a major concern since I already had redundancy.

Syncing down to LR Classic I did not take my laptop PC on the trip, and I had turned off the laptop because I left it in an area with no internet. Yesterday and today, I synced to LR Classic to a folder called Sync with Cloud on my external PHOTOS drive within my LR catalog, and saved by date. For the most part, it’s truly amazing. The folders have the same number of images as my phone and my ipad in the lightroom apps, but I encountered several issues, detailed below.

• By far the most disturbing problem was that LRC just closed down/crashed several times during the process. It was the only program running, the computer is less than a year old, and should be sufficiently powered to handle this. Each time, I restarted LRC, and it seemed to do fine for awhile, then quit again without warning or error message. See below for PC hardware/software; I don't think it's a windows/PC issue.
• Now that I’ve synced my LR photos down to LR Classic, can I move the folders (from where I had told LR to put them) without issues, just like I’d move other photos?
• The collection that LR Classic made automatically (called From Lightroom) has 4168 images that are in subfolders by date (not sure if that is the default, or if the collection takes that info from the edit/preferences/lightroom sync choices). However,

o This collection has a different number of images (4168) than the folder that I called Sync with Cloud and from the images in the LR app on my phone/ipad (5142)​

o The collection folder doesn’t have all the images that I can see in the image folder named Sync with Cloud that I stated in the preferences​

o The date folders in Collections are not sorted correctly. For example, for 20221215, there are photos with the date 20230115 (I checked the metadata, and it correctly lists the date)​

Thanks in advance for your help
Nancy


Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz 2.30 GHz
Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.6 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

 

[Gnits]

Thanks for such a detailed report. I no longer use synch myself, so I will let other experts revert on your queries.

1. Which Anker hub did you use.
2. what might you do different the next time. ( you may wish to wait for further feedback to answer this).
3. Any tips on travelling to NZ. I spent 3 weeks on the South Island and my conclusion was that I needed 6 weeks. Awesome experience, but felt I missed so much…

 

[tspear]

Android is at a disadvantage due to no standard hardware interface for cameras outside of the primary camera.
As a result, I basically never use the camera in LrM and instead use the auto-upload feature from LrM after taking images with the built in camera app for the majority of phone camera shots. My phone camera has a "pro" mode which gives me full control over the camera.

LrM is very chatty with the Adobe servers. If your cell coverage is questionable, you will see the phone heat up as LrM keeps prompting the cell phone to talk to the towers at max power. This uses up the battery among other things. I have found two solutions, one put the phone in airplane mode, or two pause syncing on LrM. Both solutions should allow you to keep LrM running just fine in the foreground.

Tim

 

[Nancy Everds]

Thanks for such a detailed report. I no longer use synch myself, so I will let other experts revert on your queries.

1. Which Anker hub did you use.
2. what might you do different the next time. ( you may wish to wait for further feedback to answer this).
3. Any tips on travelling to NZ. I spent 3 weeks on the South Island and my conclusion was that I needed 6 weeks. Awesome experience, but felt I missed so much…

--Anker USB C Hub for USB-C iPad, 541 USB-C Hub (6-in-1) with 4K HDMI Port, Multi-Function USB-C Port, SD and microSD Card Slots, for iPad Pro 5th Gen / iPad Air 5th Gen / iPad Mini 6th and Later (Gray)
--Hopefully some solutions in terms of the LC mobile /LRC syncing...
--7 weeks was still a whirlwind. Since this is off-topic, PM me and I'll answer any questions you have...

 

[Nancy Everds]

Android is at a disadvantage due to no standard hardware interface for cameras outside of the primary camera.
As a result, I basically never use the camera in LrM and instead use the auto-upload feature from LrM after taking images with the built in camera app for the majority of phone camera shots. My phone camera has a "pro" mode which gives me full control over the camera.

LrM is very chatty with the Adobe servers. If your cell coverage is questionable, you will see the phone heat up as LrM keeps prompting the cell phone to talk to the towers at max power. This uses up the battery among other things. I have found two solutions, one put the phone in airplane mode, or two pause syncing on LrM. Both solutions should allow you to keep LrM running just fine in the foreground.

Tim

Thanks--I didn't think about LR trying to ping towers. I think either of your solutions would have worked well. Next time.....

 

[clee01l]

My experience is with an M1 iPadPro and Nikon NEFs with camera cards directly importing into the iPadPro using a standard USB-C CF Express. Card reader. I do not have or use Cellular service, only WiFi when traveling. Sync’d via (Hotel or similar) WiFi has never been a problem eve when the WiFi signal is slow. I don’t know why you would need a hub unless this is an Android Limitation. I think Tim is right about the hardware disparity with Androids devices.

Since All of my imported images are local to my iPadPro (1TB of storage) Syncing to the Adobe cloud is of little importance while traveling. On Short trips i usually let the Adobe Cloud syncing take place when. I return to my 1gigabit home WiFi.

So, my recommendation is not to sync using cellular when traveling and sync only when you have a decent WiFi speed

I use a USB-C Connected EHD to creat a backup of my image files while traveling


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Nancy Everds]

My experience is with an M1 iPadPro and Nikon NEFs with camera cards directly importing into the iPadPro using a standard USB-C CF Express. Card reader. I do not have or use Cellular service, only WiFi when traveling. Sync’d via (Hotel or similar) WiFi has never been a problem eve when the WiFi signal is slow. I don’t know why you would need a hub unless this is an Android Limitation. I think Tim is right about the hardware disparity with Androids devices.

Since All of my imported images are local to my iPadPro (1TB of storage) Syncing to the Adobe cloud is of little importance while traveling. On Short trips i usually let the Adobe Cloud syncing take place when. I return to my 1gigabit home WiFi.

So, my recommendation is not to sync using cellular when traveling and sync only when you have a decent WiFi speed
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

This makes sense to me. I used the Anker and didn't take a card reader (as the Anker doubled as a card reader and a way to get from the card to an EHD without much effort). I didn't try syncing with cellular in NZ, but Holiday Parks (campground) wifi was pretty limited, so that's probably why my wifi experience differs from you. In the future, I'll probably just not worry about the cloud until I return to decent wifi.

 

[Jim Wilde]

• The collection that LR Classic made automatically (called From Lightroom) has 4168 images that are in subfolders by date (not sure if that is the default, or if the collection takes that info from the edit/preferences/lightroom sync choices). However,

o This collection has a different number of images (4168) than the folder that I called Sync with Cloud and from the images in the LR app on my phone/ipad (5142)​

o The collection folder doesn’t have all the images that I can see in the image folder named Sync with Cloud that I stated in the preferences​

o The date folders in Collections are not sorted correctly. For example, for 20221215, there are photos with the date 20230115 (I checked the metadata, and it correctly lists the date)​

I'm a bit confused by the terminology that you use in this section of your otherwise excellent report. The basic process when you sync LrC with the cloud and thereby ingest a bunch of new assets is that LrC will create (if not already created earlier) the "From Lightroom" collection SET. Being a collection set it can only contain collections, not sub-folders, and those collections will match (both name and contents) any new albums that have been created in any Lightroom app since the last sync.

If the total number of images in the collection set differs from the total number of images in the designated downloads folder, the most likely explanation is that there are a number of images in the cloud which are not yet assigned to albums. The totals would only agree if ALL images in the cloud have been assigned to albums (and those albums would all have had to have been created in Lightroom, not created by syncing a collection from LrC first).

"The date folders in Collections are not sorted correctly": again, these are not folders, they are collections which relate to albums in the cloud. They are not created automatically, and contents are not automatically added to them. So if you have manually created albums with dated names, the likely explanation is that you have simply added some photos to the wrong albums.

Apologies in advance in case I have misunderstood what you are reporting.

 

[clee01l]

In the future, I'll probably just not worry about the cloud until I return to decent wifi.

That makes sense in my book. The Adobe cloud is just not that important until you want to bring your travels back into LrC.

 

[Gnits]

I think that is a VIP point.

 

[Nancy Everds]

I'm a bit confused by the terminology that you use in this section of your otherwise excellent report. The basic process when you sync LrC with the cloud and thereby ingest a bunch of new assets is that LrC will create (if not already created earlier) the "From Lightroom" collection SET. Being a collection set it can only contain collections, not sub-folders, and those collections will match (both name and contents) any new albums that have been created in any Lightroom app since the last sync.

If the total number of images in the collection set differs from the total number of images in the designated downloads folder, the most likely explanation is that there are a number of images in the cloud which are not yet assigned to albums. The totals would only agree if ALL images in the cloud have been assigned to albums (and those albums would all have had to have been created in Lightroom, not created by syncing a collection from LrC first).

"The date folders in Collections are not sorted correctly": again, these are not folders, they are collections which relate to albums in the cloud. They are not created automatically, and contents are not automatically added to them. So if you have manually created albums with dated names, the likely explanation is that you have simply added some photos to the wrong albums.

Apologies in advance in case I have misunderstood what you are reporting.

Oops--my error on the terminology; thanks so much for correcting and explaining how collections work in this process. I certainly did misuse the terms collection and subfolders when I should have said collection set and collections. And you're right--I somehow copied some Jan 15th photos (LR mobile/Android phone) into the Dec 15th album created when I imported DSLR photos within LR on my ipad, and had forgotten that I had done so. Jeesh. I'll blame it on jet lag.

LRC is going to be my main platform. I have a few LR mobile/LRC questions about next steps. I will consult the Missing FAQs book a bit and then post any unanswered questions in the appropriate forum. My first step is to add GPS coordinates to DSLR photos and to delete any rejects!