So I finally bought the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit.
It works, but I have hit two very frustrating limitations.
My intention was to use it with my Navman MiVue dashcam, so I could directly transfer video from the camera onto my iPad, then edit it up using iMovie and upload to youtube or whatever.

The problems are thus.
Using the SD card reader: the iPad photos app will correctly recognise the SD card, and allow me to import videos from the /DCIM folder.
However, the camera, when you press the "Emergency" button to save a clip and prevent it from being overwritten, saves the video file into another directory /EMER. The Photos app can and will only look in the /DCIM folder.
So I can't access the videos I actually want, the protected ones on the camera. I can successfully import videos in the DCIM folder, so the process does otherwise work.

Using the USB connector: when I connect the Navman to the USB connector, I get the error message "The connected device uses too much power".
A well documented work around is to use a powered USB hub.
This may indeed work but is completely inconvenient, the whole idea was to be able to copy off selected videos onto my iPad, without leaving the car.

There does not seem to be any way to browse the contents of a device (outside the /DCIM directory) without jailbreaking, which I do not particularly want to do.

Any clever ideas?

Cheers,
Joseph