Use first generation iPod shuffle with iPad Camera Connection Kit

The iPad Camera Connection Kit allows you to connect your iPad to a USB cable or SD card. This is to allow you to import photos into your iPad.

It’s easy enough to connect your iPad to an iPhone or other camera, or to use an SD card from your digital camera. It’s a bit trickier to copy high resolution files to your iPad from your camera.

When you use iPhoto to import photos to your iPad, they max out at 2056 pixels. So if you take a high resolution from your iPhone, import it into iPhoto, and then synchronize with your iPad, the photo will be at a lower resolution.

Instead, if you connect your iPhone directly to the iPad, you can import the full resolution photo into the iPad. If you forget to do this at first, it can be hard to go back later to do it.

One workaround is to use the first generation iPod Shuffle as a thumb drive. Most thumb drives won’t work with the camera connection kit, but the shuffle will work as a thumb drive when connected.

To import photos, simply create a folder at the root of the shuffle, DCIM. You can copy photos into this directory, and then connect the shuffle to the camera kit to the iPad, and import the desired pictures (in full resolution), as you normally would.