I am looking for software suggestions for an Android based downloader app for travel with OM-1. It needs to remember what photos (files) were downloaded in previous sessions and have a UI that DNS (does not s…k). oi.Share is close but not quite there. I’ve tried several apps but TAS (they all s…k). Thanks for any help yo can give. Read on for more details…
I travel a lot with 2 OM-1s and currently use oi.Share but am unhappy with it’s performance and want better. I don’t travel with a PC but use a tablet (Samsung S6 Lite, not sure if that is significant) for review, light editing and social media sharing. It doubles as backup storage for my “good” shots. I like that I can charge the OM-1 battery and use WiFi to download photos via oi.Share at the same time. However, the download performance is terrible. Full size jpegs take around 40 seconds each - well below what WiFi is capable of. A mere 90 photos takes an hour and I usually shoot a lot more than that in a day, a LOT more. I can speed it up by reducing the download size but I want to use full size as a backup in case of card failure or camera/card loss. By the way, WiFi support is really great because I can do it while riding in a vehicle with my camera and tablet safely tucked away in the bag.
Ideally, OMDS would fix io.Share’s terrible performance but that is probably wishful thinking and unlikely to happen.
Maybe they could support USB as an alternative transport and speed things up a lot? Unfortunately, that doesn’t allow charging while downloading.
So, barring a miracle at OMDS, I’m looking for an Android download app that allows easy preview and selection for download plus remembers what was downloaded. Most of the apps I’ve looked at are really clunky and do not remember what was downloaded in a previous session. Plus, their UIs are almost unusable when dealing with large numbers of files.
Because of bad experience, I would backup my output every night during my travelling.
Since along time ago, I used photo banks (a HDD enclosure having a built in battery, a 3.5" notebook HDD inside, an integrated card reader plus a button under a simple backup command). Later I changed to smartphone until now.
IMHO the native file manager of smartphone would do, although looking like manual selection of files, but far more safe. WD had an external HDD using wifi was discontinued could be because of reliability issue.
To me, a smartphone, an OTG card readers, using the Android File Manager as OS, internal memory as a temp storage, then USB flash thumb drives for backup…
I’m inclined to agree with Albert on this one and use either a proper computer or none at all to store images when travelling. SD cards are cheap there’s no need for external storage - just buy more cards.
That said I have used Android phones for the purpose with mixed results. If shooting raw files I used a dedicated editor - but only as a viewer. If you are an Adobe subscriber you have access to both Lightroom and Photoshop on your phone anyway, but if not there are some good alternatives like Photo Mate or Portfolio (which I still have on my current phone). Alternatively you could use something like USB Media Explorer that I used for years and is still available, it can read from formats that some phones don’t allow (like exFAT for example). It’s not a photo-specific app but leans in that direction and is generally more useful than a (bad) file manager.
Speaking of file managers… There are good and bad, and generally the free one that comes with the phone fits the latter category. If you want a nice reliable file manager that can do everything - including viewing images and videos - as well as the usual file manager things you could try Cx File Exporer. It offers pretty much the same set of features as its counterparts on PCs or Macs and is all I ever use these days if I want to browse jpegs from a camera on my phone.
Thanks. Though, you don’t need a card reader. Just the right cable. In my case the tablet has USB-C so the charging cable works between the phone and tablet. Just set the camera in mass storage mode.
I tend to agree. I would rather spend the money on newer faster SD cards with larger capacities than stuff around with apps and devices. Cards are readily available and extremely reliable. Older cards can be used for storage. In any case, where I’m going there isn’t any Wi-Fi so I don’t intend to take a laptop.
Regarding IO.Share, Olympus/OMDS have never been big on software design. It’s always been just barely enough to cater for those with nothing else.
While I don’t disagree about using quality cards as my primary storage, camera theft/loss does happen. Cameras and cards can be replaced. Not so for many days of unbacked-up shooting. So, I want some sort of separate backup at least. Since I use social media, my posting device (tablet) makes sense as a backup. The fact that it also supports viewing and simple editing makes it a slam dunk.
I’ve got a 256 GB card in it now but will move to 512 GB. On my recent 18 day Vietnam trip I took about 230 GB of photos though only downloaded about 1/4 of that to the tablet.
IMHO for those who would perfer to do backup during our trips away from home, are not really facing storage spaces issue, but to have 2 copies in case 1 might go bad or lost or whatsoever.
I do backup, but the images on the SD cards will be kept until they will be off loaded to my computer back home. That extra backup copy might never be used. Touch wood I do not need them yet.
True! Of course, if your livelihood depends on it, backups, one with you and maybe one in the cloud, is essential. As an amateur, if all is lost, too bad how sad, travel companions will have their phone pics. The good thing about companion’s phone pics, is that I’m actually on them, for a change
My biggest issue is, I take picture of my wife on my cam. If my SD card will go bad (failure, lost, mis formatting etc), it would be a disaster. Not on the opposite side since I seldom take pictures myself .
To backup on line is a good option. But I have stopped using the free Google Cloud account for a long time for various reasons, and not intend to subscribe one.
BTW, to do on-line backup overseas could be a tiresome and expensive option. I am happy to have a backup copy on a 2nd card/thumb drive and stored in separate carriage.
We travel with two OM-1’s and an EM-1 Mk II as backup. Each camera is set to save to both SD 1 and SD 2. SD 2 uses a micro sd card. This card fits into my Samsung tablet and using an OTG plug and 2 SSD I backup all my RAW files quickly (sort of). Yes I use large cards, however when shooting birds I have taken over 3,000 shots in 4 hours. Previously, I used flash drives but prefer the SSD.
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