I’ve been playing with my new iPhone 14 Pro for about a week now and I love it! The photos are spectacular and the video is astonishingly good.

I’m beginning to determine which accessories I will need to assemble for mobile photography and videography with this most impressive iPhone. I bought the 256GB iPhone 14 Pro since is the storage I’ve always chosen for my past 3 iPhones and it was more than adequate. However, with the new 48 megapixel camera and the ability to shoot in Apple RAW and ProRes, I realize that I will be able to gobble up that 256GB capacity very quickly while traveling. So, I started exploring how I could easily offload photos and videos onto external storage while on the road. It turn out that this is not as simple as I’d hoped.

The obstacles I discovered are a due to 2 factors:

1. Apple chose to keep the Lightening port in the iPhone 14 Pro instead of upgrading to a USB C port. Most of the major SSD makers are using USB C ports for faster data transfer.
2. The iPhone 14 Pro apparently cannot provide sufficient power for most of the large (1TB or higher) SSD storage options.

A Good Solution

After a few days of exploring and testing, I have found a good solution for my travel needs. This solution requires the following items:

• the Apple Lightening to USB3 Camera Adapter
• the Samsung T7 1TB Portable SSD
• a portable charger like this one INIU Portable 1000mAh Charger
• a suitable cable to bring power from charger to Lightening port on camera adapter: Short Lightening 2 pack

Note: I am an Amazon Affiliate and these links help support this website.

Here’s what the setup looks like:

This is a light-weight solution that works well with my mobile/travel photography and videography. The data transfer rate is not as high as it would be if the iPhone 14 Pro had a native USB C port, but it is faster than using AirDrop (which I have found to be a bit flaky at times). Also, AirDrop requires another device (iPad or MacBook) to transfer the data.

I will be experimenting with doing some editing (both photo and video) directly from files on the SSD. I will report back here once this exploration is complete.