How to transfer photos from a digital camera to an iPhone/iPod touch
This guest article was submitted by Andreas Ødegård.
One of the major complaints about the iPhone is that you can't transfer anything to it, like photos from a camera. Even the old iPods could do that using the iPod Camera Connector! Without the ability to get pictures from a decent camera over to the iPhone, blogging software like WordPress for the iPhone is rather useless. Or is it?
In the video that follows, I'll be posting an entry to my WordPress blog from an iPod touch (!) via 3G using pictures taken with a full-sized digital camera (an old one, as my main one is the camera I used to record the video) and transferred directly to the iPod. From inserting the memory card to loading the blog post in Safari, it takes 3 minutes 49 seconds. Read on to learn the trick that makes it possible.
Equipment
I won't lie to you and say it's something everyone can do, as you need a Nokia S60 phone with Joikuspot Premium or possibly a Windows Mobile phone running WMWifiRouter (if that supports local networks in the same way). If you wonder what these apps do, read my article on using cellphones as WiFi routers.
In addition to the cellphone, you need a camera that supports SD and a microSD card with an adapter to make it work in full-sized SD slots.
You also obviously need an iPhone or an iPod touch, which has to run the application called Files. There are similar apps to Files that might work, but it needs to have the ability to save photos from its own memory to the default image directory on the iPhone, at least if you're going to send the picture somewhere or blog it like I'm doing.
Procedure
First off you need to be aware that the iPhone's internal photo viewer won't display pictures over a certain size. I have no idea what the limit is, but when I did the video the first time I ran into a problem where the 3.2-megapixel photo I had taken wouldn't show in Photos. As such, I set my camera to VGA resolution (640×480), which is enough for a lot of stuff really when the optics are good.
After you've taken the photo, insert the microSD card into the phone. Start up JoikuSpot and put the phone down. On the iPhone or iPod touch, make sure the device is connected to the JoikuSpot WiFi signal. This is crucial even if you have an iPhone with a 3G signal of its own, as it will only work using the JoikuSpot WiFi (or alternately any WiFi signal where the phone and the iPhone/touch are on the same network).
Start up Files and make sure the server is running. I saved a bookmark for the address on my Nokia E51, but the first time you do this you'll have to enter in the URL manually. It's given to you by Links and should be an internal IP like http://192.x.x.x:8080. Enter this into the Nokia phone's browser and connect via the JoikuSpot access point. In doing this, you're telling the phone to access the server on the iPhone/touch by using the network the phone itself is generating. You have to connect using the JoikuSpot signal and not 3G (of course, if you do this over normal WiFi you connect with that instead).
Doing this should bring you to the web page interface that Files is generating, normally used to transfer files to the program via a web browser on a computer. Browse to the file you want on the SD card, normally stored in the DCIM folder that cameras create to store photos in. Select the right photo and upload. The upload will be fast and totally unrelated to your 3G speed because it uses a direct WiFi connection between the two devices.
Close the web browser and grab the iPhone/touch. Find the recently transferred photo and open it, then select "add to photos," which will add the photo to the native photo library on the iPhone/touch.
Congratulations! You just did what people have been whining about not being possible for two years.
The rest of the video (if you haven't watched it yet) just shows me blogging the picture to WordPress, which is a really nice and simple thing to do using the WordPress application. Being able to get photos from a digital camera means that the blog post will be a lot better than it would have been with pictures from the iPhone camera.
Andreas Ødegård is currently finishing the second year of a three-year bachelor's degree in Economics and Administration at Lillehammer University College in Norway. He loves gadgets of all sorts and has been writing for Anything But iPod since January 2008, as well as updating his own blog.
