They're two of the hottest photographic tools around. The Fuji Finepix X100 and the Apple iPad 2. However, it has recently come to our attention that these two devices may not always work perfectly when used together. More specifically, the camera takes much longer to start up after a memory card has been connected to the iPad using an Apple Camera Connection Kit. Credit for finding this idiosyncrasy and temporary workaround go to our friends Nicole Young and Rich Legg. Hopefully firmware technicians at Fuji are aware of the problem and working on a solution.
Photographers who are on the go constantly have undoubtedly recognized the convenience of being able to download images directly into the iPad from either a memory card or direct from the camera. Nicole and Rich are among those who use it on a fairly regular basis. However, they noticed that the start up time on the Fuji X100's had become significantly longer for no apparent reason. After some investigating, the common link identified was the Apple Camera Connection Kit.
When images are downloaded to the iPad through the Camera Connection Kit, some kind of data is written to the memory card. It has been suggested that this data helps the iPad differentiate between images that have already been downloaded, and those that have not. Either way, this data confuses the X100 when the card is reinserted into the camera, resulting in a much longer start up time. By simply formatting the memory card, this data is also erased, and start up times are returned to normal. But formatting the memory card right after download is not always practical or desired, particularly when in the field.
The temporary solution (until a firmware fix is developed) is to switch the SD card to "read only" mode BEFORE inserting it into the Camera Connection Kit. By simply moving the locking switch on the SD card to the locked position, the iPad/Camera Connection Kit can still read the information, but is prevented from writing any data to the card. Just make sure to change it back after you have downloaded the images, otherwise you'll find yourself out of the picture making business until it gets switched back.