iPad for photographers – a justifiable business tool or not?
Posted: April 8th, 2010 | Author: wade | Filed under: Gear, Software, Technology, Web | Tags: Apple, Business, iPad, OmniGroup | 3 Comments »
The iPad sounds like it caters more for the photography audience than photographers themselves but I’ll speculate that it will be quite useful to us nonetheless. We know that it’s not going to be a primary computer any time soon, and it’s a consumer oriented device for sure, but priced at well under a grand I think it’s easy enough to justify, especially when you consider a few of these possibilities.
It will become your digital portfolio For around the same price as a high-end leather folio, this thing looks as good and has the advantage of holding as many separate portfolios as you might like. Meeting a client to show them your work and they mention they have a particular shoot coming up? Pull out a more tailored book then and there and perhaps even book the assignment too.
Manage your model releases on location A couple of iPhone apps appeared on the market last month that create model or property release contracts along with the ability to sign them with your finger tip on the touch sensitive display rather like couriers now do. You can shoot an ID picture, and add it to the contract and send the whole thing off as a PDF to your email account or synchronise it to a server. And I happen to know of a much more sophisticated and polished app in this category that is about to hit the market so watch this space.
It will become your shot list This one’s a no brainer. Dispense with the wooden clipboard and replace it with the a digital one. Neater, more organised and synchronised with your office computer. Plus it backs up by itself as you go.
You’ll use it as an external viewfinder To me the most interesting prospect of all is that of the iPad becoming a wirelessly-tethered display on which Art Directors or clients or whoever else can follow the progress without them having to share the viewfinder with you and without you needing to set up a computer on location for them.
It’ll be a digital wallet If you’re carrying it with you for the above purposes anyway, you might also like to use it to backup your shoot as you go. You’ll use either wifi or the external SD card adapter but be limited to less than 64 GB right now.
Process payments then and there Already a possibility on the iPhone, there are several apps that will make it possible to action credit card payments on the spot, in the field.
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In case you can’t tell I am already sold on this thing but then I am a bit of a gear freak. Others have made well argued cases against it because of the lack of USB and SD card support, not to mention Apple’s questionable Flash boycott (use Flash on your website I bet?). Like it or not though, once it’s released globally on April 24, much like it’s smaller cousin, the iPad is sure to spring up everywhere and test your resolve.
I’ll be lining up. AR