Question about transfering pictures and videos to my iPad

Question

I just found out that I am getting an iPad as a birthday present, which is cool and all but I never ever even thought about owning one, the main reason is because I already own a pretty good laptopp with a good enough hard drive and the reasn why I love this is because when I go on vacation or whatever, I can take my Samsung camcorder which records in 1080p (mp4 files) and has a pretty decent 60gb hard drive but recording in HD requires a lot of space so whenever I run out of space in the cam corder, I just unload all the videos to my laptop in my hotel room and start again from sracth, that way I can come back home with 80 to 90gb worth of high definition vacation footage.
Now that I am geting an iPad, I want to use it as a laptopp replacement, it fits every category perfectly except the one I just mentioned, which leads me to my question.
If I purchase the usb adapter to transfer pictures and videos to the ipad, will this recognize my samsung camcorder? I dont remember the model as I dont have it here but it records in HD and the format is .mp4 so I don't see why I shouldnt.
the iPad I am getting is most likely the 64gb version, which is still pretty low on HD space compared to a regular laptop but if I take an empty ipad (no music and very few movies) to my vacation, I guess I still have a good 50gb or so to dump all my videos from my cammera and unless I am on a long vacation, I shouldnt have any trouble about running out of space but all of this would be moot if my iPad wont even recognize my camcorder in the first place. I don't even care if the iPad wont play the 1080p files properly (does it?) all I care about is if the ipad can at least store them until I get back home and transfer them to a real computer, thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not saying NO your iPad won't work with your camera, but you are clearly going to run out of storage space quickly, so it hardly matters.
I would try to convince you that you should think of your iPad as something to consume and share your media with, not store it. Keep using your laptop. BUT as you go through your photos and videos each night during vacation, throw the best ones onto your iPad to show your friends and family the next day. You can even set it up to down convert the videos for transfer to the iPad without losing the original 1080p files.
If the iPad DOES work with your camera (probably just photos), then you could do a quick transfer of selected photos and use the iPad to review them in the field (instead of your camera's screen). But I'd clear them off pretty regularly and just do proper transfers to the ipad of just the best stuff.
But anyway, everyone gets to use technology however they want. I don't think the iPad sounds right for what you want to do, but that's your call - why not give it a try.
(ever considered using mobile me or another cloud solution to store your photos. You can password protect them, upload from your iPad, and retrieve from your iPad (with mobile me and some other choices).