Eye-Fi Memory Cards

[Sefirothe]

Has anyone tried these? The idea of never having to take the memory card out of my camera (once set up) is quite attractive to me...

http://www.eye.fi/

[Donald]

Call me old-fashioned, but ..................!

My doctor told me I needed to get more exercise. So removing the card and placing it in a reader helps keep me fit! I'm not sure I need my cards to have a wireless capability.

ps - And you'll still have to take it out when it fails, as one day it will.

[Sefirothe]

Ha, this is true. Of any memory card really. But less wear and tear on the flimsy-ish plastic door of my camera would be good in my mind.

And plus...yes, I am that lazy lol.

[jeffmoll]

My brother-in-law uses one. About all it's good for is very small jpegs unless you're willing to sit there for hours while your images transfer. Not sure what camera body you shoot so I don't know the resolution but he uses a 1D mkIV which is 16 mpxl. The way he uses it is for proofing. Since he uses a Canon 1 series camera he has two card slots, a compact flash and an SD slot. He uses the CF for the actual RAW images and then just uses the eye-fi to send the smallest most compressed jpegs that the camera can make to his iPad for a better look than just on the camera's 3" screen. The files are about 300-500 kilobytes each and even at that it's a little slow.

[Black Pearl]

I've got the Pro version as it supports ad-hoc connections so I can send images to my netbook without a Wi-Fi signal.
It is slow but works well. I used it before Christmas when I photographed the Luna eclipse from the middle of a country lane so I could edit and check the files on a larger screen as it progressed.

[rpcrowe]

I am not really intending to equip my Canon DSLR cameras for wireless transfer but, would not one of these be a better way to go? ( http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Canon_WFT_E3A/ ) Of course it might be inordinately expensive. Tethered shooting is a costless way to achieve these results. Of course, you need to have the camera physically connected to the computer with a wire.

I like to tether when shooting dogs because there are little innuendos of the dog's expression that can be missed when monitoring on a LCD.

I could see how the wireless transmitter might be handy when shooting a wedding. You could have an assistant monitoring the imagery and the shooter could have an earplug receiver (like the Secret Service agents wear). That way, you could have a large size view of the images you are acquiring and communication with the cameraman if something is needed.

However, when I shot weddings, I did it with film and it was usually not until the next day or two before I received the proofs. It didn't cramp my style one bit!

[Sefirothe]

I also was thinking more of the pro version for the ad hoc transfer. The reviews I read were definitely mixed with some complaining of slow transfers and others happy with transfer speeds. I guess it depends on your home network equipment. I ordered a Pro card and will post my results back here.

[Black Pearl]

The largest jpegs from the D300s take about 5-10 seconds to transfer where as the RAW files take 30 seconds plus which isn't particularly fast. That said mine is the older style card with a Wireless G chip, the newer ones are Wireless N so might run faster.

I have also had it linked to the iMac to wirelessly transfer images straight into Aperture (lightroom does the same) which worked perfectly. Not something I need as I don't have access to a studio very often but would be useful on a shoot to chimp images as you went along.

[Szczur]

I'm so happy I found this thread as these cards are something I spotted recently and wanted to ask about. I suspected the transfer speeds might be a bit on the low side so I made myself ignore the exciting blurb on www.eye.fi and decided to ask around a little. I have to say that the possibility of geo-tagging and immediately transferring images to a nearby computer is tempting but..... I have a USB cable that probably does the immediate transfer bit just as well..... and also means I don't have to take the card out.

[Sefirothe]

The card came to day. I ordered the 8 GB x2 Pro version. The geo tagging feature works pretty well so far, tho I have not tested it very far afield. It transfers images from the card to my computer over the ad hoc connection pretty darn fast. I'm shooting Large and Good quality so in general 3-5 megs per file. It does support RAW but I havent upgraded myself to that yet.

I also have it set to send all my photos to a private photo set on my flickr account. This takes a little bit longer, but I find flickr uploads a bit slow in general.

I like that I can also view the photos transferred by the card as thumbnails on my iPhone and info about where they were sent to, geo-tagging info, date and time. As well as wirelessly upload photos taken by the iPhone to web places like flickr or my pc with the Eye-Fi app.

Yea. I'm in love.

[Black Pearl]

Fun aren't they?

Seriously though, its a very clever bit of tech that shows how far miniaturisation has come and can go in the future.

[Szczur]

Well, I'm glad you're happy with your new card, Sharon, but I'm having more doubts now. I follow the Petapixel blog which just yesterday presented something really creepy. Creepy is an app that gathers geotagging data from photo sites like flickr and displays the times and places where the photos were taken on a map. I think, often, it would be worthwhile removing exact geotags from photos that are going to be shown publicly. I don't think I'd want my local axe-murderer knowing that I'd taken photos in his street, for example.
I tried Creepy, just to see if it works, and I'm sorry to report that it does.

[Sefirothe]

Hiding your location info is as easy as hiding your exif info on flickr, if you dont want to disable the geo tagging feature entirely on the Eye-Fi card, which is also possible.

As I understand it, the Eye-Fi card doesnt geo tag via GPS satellite so its not so very accurate anyway. Its not going to display a house number and street adress. What it does, is it pings off of local wifi networks. I havent tried it in a not so populated area so I'm not sure how it works if say you are out in the wilderness.