Moving pics from my old PowerBook to my new iPad

The ideal thing to do would be to sync the photos from your laptop to your iPad using iTunes. Your problem, however, is that your laptop and the OS (leopard) are so old, you won't be able to sync your new iPad. You need Snow Leopard (10.6) at least, and I don't know if your powerbook can work with that. You really need to upgrade your laptop, it's OS, or (preferably) both to take full advantage of the iPad technologies.

An alternative that might work is to copy all the photos onto an SD card and use the Camera Connection Kit to load them onto your iPad. The file exensions and folders have to be set exactly right for the iPad to recognize it, but it can be done. Texas Mac Man will likely copy and paste one of his tutorials about this here at some point.

You cannot just copy pics to your SD car and expect the Camera Connection kit to recognize it. The Camera Connection Kit is designed to transfer photos from a card that was formatted in a camera and for pictures that were produced by a camera.

The camera will create a folder titled DCIM. You must create this folder on your card when you write to it from your PowerBook. Also the photo files must have names with 8 characters, no more no less. Most cameras name photos like this: img_1234 to get the eight characters.

tonybassplayer wrote:

Sounds like my first port of call is to get a camera connection kit then give it a go

Many thanks

Tony

Yes, that is the first step. However, as Ralph and I mentioned, getting the files set up and in the correct folders will be critical to your success. You cannot simply copy the photos onto the SD card and then plug it into the iPad. The reason is that the iPad is expecting that SD card to come straight out of a camera. In such a case, the camera formats the card in a certain way to store the photos. The iPad is expecting to see this file structure so you can view the photos. What you are doing is transferring photos from another computer, and unless you use the file structure the iPad is expecting, you will not be able to see those photos. Do not be discouraged, what you are trying to do will work. However, you need to search on this board board or on the Internet to determine the exact file structure the iPad will require. It's not that cumbersome, but it must be done if you want to transfer those photos.

tonybassplayer wrote:

Could I not just put them on a USB stick and connect that ?

You can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit.

Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie/photo files into the folder. The files must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov; DSCN0164.jpg).

Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie/photo files should appear & you can import. (You can not export using the camera connection kit.)

Secrets of the iPad Camera Connection Kit

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57401068-285/secrets-of-the-ipad-camera-conn ection-kit/

 Cheers, Tom 😉