Portable Dual Screen Setup

My latest twist on being mobile is neither novel, nor unexpected.
People who know me, know that I, years ago, bought an iPad mini. The proclaimed integration of iOS to OS-X "Mavericks" was the trigger. And guess what, I was totally disappointed! The iPad hence ended up being a YouTube watching device only.

Some months ago, I learned about the software Duet Display. Today, finally, I gave myself a push and purchased the iOS app.

Why could my post be any interesting to any photographer?
Lightroom can be set to show a live display on a second screen. Nothing new here either. That second screen could be an iPad, when using Duet Display.
And here comes the interesting bit. Assuming your main computer's screen is color calibrated and the iPad is not, the iPad could provide an impression how a photograph will look when viewed (online) with regular equipment, while the main screen will provide color of the image being printed.

My present dual screen setup is pretty portable: 11in MacBook Air + iPad mini. Probably the smallest available kit for the functionality.

Travelling (Ultra) Light

Travelling in not my thing! This statement needs to be taken as a preamble to the whole thing I am about to write now.

Neither the journey, nor the travel bothers me, its the luggage one hauls about, e.g. I hate waiting for a suitcase carried on a conveyor to come out the little hole in the wall... terrible!

Years ago, I reduced the stuff to travel with such that it would fit in a cabin case. Although this prevents me from standing at the conveyor, there is still this aggravating wait until one can reach the overhead compartments to collect the cabin case.

Just as an experiment, I decided to travel really light during my next 1 week trip.

Actually, I followed some tips from Eric Kim and this lady.

While Eric mentions, next to camera and bag choice, synthetic clothes. The lady explains in detail how to clean the synthetic fabric cloths and, in particular, how to dry those quickly.

As to Eric, there are 2 cameras which join me on my travel, either the Ricoh GR (as Eric mentions) or, more often, the Samsung NXmini. Both cameras have the advantage of being chargeable via USB. More and more hotels around the world offer USB wall sockets to charge mobile phones, perfect for such cameras! 

In this respect, the Fujifilm X70 and X100T come in mind too.

Eric keeps referring to a MacBook Air. Yep, that's what I choose too. However, there might be some room to improve. My MacBook Air got a 128GB SSD only, hence, in order to store data, I do need to carry an external HDD too (several thumb-drives might do the same job too). Despite the fact that this HDD is also used for TM-Backups, which is a good thing, it is still annoying to carry it about.

So, here we go with just another idea from another light traveller: Jens Lennartsson. 

Jens is certainly more the Social Media / Cloud kinda guy... but... what's wring with that?

His video was inspiring enough, so I ordered the folding keyboard (quite happy with it!). Concerning the devices I use it with, I am not sure if I would like to go as small as Jens. To my disposal is a Windows Phone (somewhat larger than an iPhone) and an iPad mini. While the Windows Phone is a very good device to have phone calls with, I am not so sure about the table function, size-wise. However, the iPad mini seems still too large to carry, despite being just half the size of the MacBook Air. 

Going small should be small but still usable. Not sure where this will get me yet.

Anyway, besides gadgets and all, there is this issue about doing laundry on the fly. Using a mild detergent, e.g. shampoo, was covered by Eric previously. However, the lady from "Howcast" got a very interesting hint here: use a towel and do a towel roll with the laundry inside. And of course, if one towel was not enough, take another one!

This seems trivial, however, I have not thought of it before.

My view on Fujifilm cameras, Apple devices and cameras of other makes.

Fujifilm, for whatever reason, decided to not allow to mount the camera's memory card as a drive. Importing into Photos and Lightroom works fine, even for RAW files. However, not being able to control what is going on with the memory card leaves me with an uneasy uncertainty.

At the end, what I might do is to carry a sufficient amount of memory cards, making the computer redundant.

In that scenario, not having a computer to write the images to, the question of decent back-up devices arose. Price-wise, WD was up to something, with the My Passport Wireless, however, the device is, according to reports on the internet, not ready for reliable backup yet.

Consequently, you might want to travel with synthetic fabric cloths, a camera that charges via USB and enough memory cards to cover your trip.