I almost always shoot raw files with my camera, but when I am traveling it would be great to share some snapshots occasionally even if I have no laptop with me. My camera supports transferring images to my phone via bluetooth + wifi, but I tested it recently and it is quite flaky, so I am looking for other options.
One thing I considered is just shooting an extra mid-quality JPG and sharing that. I imagine I could pop out the SD card, plug int into the phone’s USB-C port with a card reader, which will somehow mount it as a directory I can access.
Should this work? Or do I need extra hardware? I have dim memories of things called USB OTG cables but now when I read about them I get the impression that they are no longer required unless I want to connect the camera directly to the phone.
Once I have the file transfer figured out, another option would be sticking to raw and then doing a bit of development on the phone. I can’t imagine doing anything else than exposure correction and applying some preset profile though, and probably it is CPU/GPU intensive on the phone and would drain my battery quickly (is it?).
Also I did not find free (as in beer) apps that do this other than Snapseed. Are there actual FOSS options?
To get raw from camera to phone I simply connect USB-C of my camera to the USB-C of my phone, then the gallery app let me import both RAW and JPEG files.
Regarding the edition on the phone I indeed drain the battery but still doable if only doing it for a few photos. My process for that is:
Open the RAW in LR mobile, select a few photos I want to edit, convert them to .DNG with LR;
Remove everything from LR, move the .DNG from the Lightroom folder to my picture’s folder;
Import the .DNG back into LR.
This allows to bypass the paid RAW editing feature on the mobile version of Lightroom
There is the Saulala app to edit raw but with limited adjustments, and a lot of RAM is required in my experience. So let’s wait for darktable mobile
I was also able to connect USB-sticks and even an SSD to my phone by USB-C, but I guess it depend on your mobile OS and phone capabilities, and on the output voltage your phone can provide to power the SSD.
Nay, micro USB. The issue is not the connector type but the speed.
Easier to pop the SD card out (and then, lose it in a café, realize it two hours later, frantically search for a new SD card in a rural area where the most advanced technology is bells worn by the goats, etc; all the fun of traveling )
The new c-type card reader you have coming in should work out of the box. I think most new hardware like that is wired correctly for OTG already. I seem to recall some android phones needing to allow OTG connections. Check your settings if things do not auto-magically connect. Worst case scenario you need to make or purchase an OTG cable/adapter.
I made a couple OTG cables years ago following simple DIY instructions. You need to accept ugly cords in your life (or be way more adept at soldering than I am) if you DIY.
I now set my camera to small jpg+raw to make the wifi transfer easier. I find that I’m not prone to tweaking on the go but that I occasionally want to share images. I have no use for larger jpegs as basically all my images get developed from raw. With smaller jpgs (1920x) the transfer is instant and reliable with my Pentax and I don’t need to share larger images than that from the phone.
Is it that slow with a cable connection? On my camera I can choose what I want to import, for ~10 photos the speed is OK and I prefer no to remove my memory card (and I can avoid carrying an adapter )
Thanks, but after trying that it seems that it only develops DNGs, which is not what my camera produces.
As tempting as it is to develop raws, I realized that it would defeat the purpose of the exercise. I tweaked the settings on my camera so that I am OK with the OOC jpegs for quick sharing with family, and it is still much better than phone pics.
It turns out that on my phone, I need to enable USB OTG and then it is willing to act as an USB host. A minor inconvenience is that it turns off if not used within 10 minutes, but that is something I can live with. With that, it handles an USB-C SD card reader just fine.
I’ve used the Camera Connect & Control app for this exact purpose and it works quite well - it can transfer over WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB OTG cable. It also lets you filter by either JPG or RAW so you can easily just select the OOC JPG and avoid the RAW files.
As an alternative to using the OOC JPGs, I sometimes also use a script I wrote to send the RAW file from my phone to a server and convert it to a JPG using darktable on the server (by feeding it a preset file I made). I can then share the resulting JPG. This is still rough around the edges, but if others are interested in it (and are willing to use the terminal on your phone), I can try to polish up the code
That is not true, it’s built with libraw, so it should support everything that libraw supports AFAIK (I’ve done a couple of playraws with it, but I’ve stopped since it’s not FOSS)
I tried just transferring the JPEGs (with a cable) on a recent trip, but found that I shoot quite a bit with exposure compensation -1 to -2 (to capture the highlights which would otherwise burn out), but then the JPEGs are unusably dark.
I could of course fiddle with them on the phone, but at that point it is just easier to wait until I have a few minutes with a laptop and apply a preset in Darktable and use that for quick sharing.
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