What card reader do you use? Need help
 

I have a game camera w a sd card and don't know how to view the pics in the field. I am not the most tech savvy guy so would appreciate your help In Recommending s product and perhaps process.

I have a iPhone six and iPad Air. My laptop is less practical bc it does not have a sd slot. It does have a USB but would like to use iPhone or iPad ideally, or other card reader. Something easy pls

If you want to view pictures in the field your best bet is an actual card reader. Mine is wildgame I believe. Phones,Ipads etc require internet to use unless they have actual sd slots.

I have 2 cards for every camera and swap them out and check them on the computer when I get home/back to the truck. I only use the card reader when I need the information before I go home or back to the truck.

I carry my phone with me and bought an SD adapter off Amazon for my c-type port. Works well, small and I don't have to worry about extra batteries. I have a Moto Z force so i have plenty of screen size to view pictures.

Does it work without internet?

Buy extra SD cards and just do card swaps in the field and view pics back at home/camp with a laptop or tablet.

Boneview makes an SD card reader for both apple and android phones. No internet is needed. All you're doing is pulling the file from the SD card to the phone. You may need to download an app to put them on. I use I-USBKey on my iPhone. It's much more exciting to look at them while you're waiting in the stand.

My Boneview works at my house because I have the internet. It does not work at my hunting cabin,

I was in Walmart the other day and i saw that stealth cam has a similar viewer as Boneview. I would try that

My brother turned me on to a SD micro card reader where the USB cable stores in the body of the card reader. Plugs into the bottom charging port of my Android Samsung Galaxy 4 Android phone. No internet needed.
I can sort thru the captured Images on the SD card and open what I want to see or store the pictures right on my Samsung phone. I now can see images while out in the field quickly.
Pretty sure there is an Apple version.
Ten bucks at Walmart or Dunham's. Or a Farm n fleet.


Google WAl-Mart and micro sd card reader.



JW

Are you guys sure those don't require internet? Every one ive seen that plugs into a phone uses an app that requires the internet to function.

Guess I never thought about it.

I'll double check when I get back north.

I know it uses an OTG app. But no where while searching on the net did it say the OTG function needed the net.
So I don't know.

And I see now that picture I put up is just like the boneview.

My phone tells me it is downloading via USB and I find my photos in All Files under USB.
Pretty sure I dont need the net as it downloads faster than I can log on the net. But then I'm not a PC genius

I hope I'm wrong because I would sure like to have one that hooks to my phone and doesn't require internet but as far as I know all the ones that hook to your phone require an app that requires internet.

EDIT: Looks like you are right, it says you don't need internet. Thats new to me, I'll have toget me one of those.

Like I said $10.00 bucks.
Now rather than waiting till I am back in camp to view my captured images. I can sit on my stand and view what was there and when.
I still download to a PC. But for $10.00 it was a very good cheap addition as I use my phone for Solunar tables, to look up regulations at times, I do use On Xmaps (digital platt book and with my phone's GPS shows me where I am on somebodies property.) Also shows property borders. For a compass. To text my wife so she knows this old man is AOK.
I also take pictures to send to my grandkids.
I actually carry a Mofie too. Battery backup.
JW

Just beware as most of the smart phone readers do require internet. Make sure you get one that doesn't if you are going that route.

The OTG adapter I have for my Android phone and tablet doesn't use internet.
It's just an adapter that allows you to read the SD card, that's it.
My tablet is wifi only and it works fine in the woods.

I use this same exact reader. Was cheap and is easy to use. However I have not been able to use it with my s8 phone. Works great on old s5 though.

^^^That's interesting. I tried to use a card reader with an S7 and couldn't get it to work. I gave up on a field card reader but prefer looking at the pictures on my desktop at home anyway.

A little background: I own four plots totaling over 100 acres. Among these parcels of land I run 10 trail cameras, seven of which are on my two main hunting grounds.

Dorky as it seems I typically bring my laptop into the woods when simply checking cameras. It has an SD card slot (which is why I don't buy Apple laptops anymore - Thanks Jony Ive!) This lets me view the pictures and keep them for archiving at home. (My home NAS drive has hundreds of game videos dating back to 2013).

Now, when I'm hunting and don't want to drag around a laptop, I use a 7" Kindle Fire. I can view all photos and videos and store them to bring home. This Kindle Fire (which is going for about $29) also lets me read and play games while in the blind/stand. Since the Kindle has a microSD slot, I make a point of buying microSD cards with the adapter. They're the same price as the miniSD cards, at it allows me to use either the miniSD (laptop) or microSD (Kindle) for reading.

I don't understand the appeal of buying a dedicated SD card reader. They generally cost more than a Kindle and do far less.

Do you need a subscription with your Kindle?

No, but there is one thing to look out for...

I use a "freeware" app called "File Manager" (or something like that) to let me copy files from the SD card onto my local storage. Every so often I will go into the woods and it will refuse to run saying it has "expired". All I needed to do was connect to the Internet and it would work again, but it gave me no warning.

Even in this case, the truly free app VLC allows me to view videos on the card.

I'm looking to find another app that doesn't deliberately fail on me when I least expect it.