Or, "Using an Eye-Fi card in a Digital SLR to transmit live jpegs to a viewing station without spending an arm and a leg on a Nikon or Canon proprietary Wi-Fi transmitter"...

http://www.eye.fi/

Information: Download PDF

Buy:
Amazon (US)
eBay (UK)

The Eye-Fi card is a 2Gb SD card with a difference - it has integrated WiFi. It was created for the home snapshooter, those that might wish to have their JPEGs automatically uploaded to photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or Picasa Web Albums and their home PC. This review will concentrate, however, on a slightly unusual use for the card - and should be read with that in mind. This is not a review of the card for general use.

At the time of writing (March 2008), the following online services are supported:

Ritzpix - Photobucket - Kodak Gallery - Wal-Mart - Costco - Shutterfly - Snapfish - Windows Live - Facebook - Webshots - Picasa - SmugMug - Flickr - Fotki - TypePad - Vox - Dotphoto - Phanfare - Sharpcast - Gallery

Quite a comprehensive list, I'm sure you'll agree. However, none of these - with the possible exception of Gallery, which you can host yourself - interest me. Why? Well, for the following reasons:

1. I don't want to upload to photo sharing sites

It's quite understandable that Eye-Fi's main target audience is the mass market; those consumers who want to easily share their photos of the latest social event with their friends and family. When the Eye-Fi card starts uploading, it will upload all the new photos on the card. I don't want to do this - I do have a flickr account, but only a very select few of my shots make it onto there.

But you can download shots directly to your PC, right?

2. All transfers were from the Eye-Fi card, up to the Eye-Fi servers on t'internet, before they are downloaded again to your PC.

What? For me, this was a deal-breaker. My home ADSL uplink is something like 576Kb/s theoretical maximum. I use 8Gb CF cards. My D3 usually has two cards in it. You work it out!

However, in February 2008, Eye-Fi made an announcement that made me sit up and listen. Two words. "Smart Boost".

Smart what?

Smart Boost. What this means is that Eye-Fi released a software upgrade for the card that makes it first try to find your PC directly, before resorting to uploading files via your internet pipe. In other words, if the card connects via Wifi to the same network that your PC is on, you're not limited by your uplink bandwidth bottleneck - and more importantly, you don't even need to be connected to the internets at all.

And so...?

I have an old Minolta SD to CF card adaptor. I've had one for years, but very rarely use it these days. However, I reasoned that I could use this to insert the Eye-Fi card into my DSLR. When I'm on a photoshoot, I like to have images displayed immediately as I take them, either for my or my client's benefit. Normally this involves splashing out something like $730 on a Nikon WT-4A or $800 on the Canon WFT-E2.

Surely, this little $99 consumer SD card couldn't compete with those two professional transmitters... or could it?

The setup

• One Nikon D3
  • Slot 1: 8Gb Sandisk Extreme IV, files written in RAW mode
  • Slot 2: 2Gb WiFi SD card, in an old Minolta SD-to-CF adaptor. Files written are Small Basic JPEGs.
• One laptop, running the Eye-Fi Manager software and ImageWatcher - software I wrote specifically for the task.
• One D-Link 802.11g router - though I'm quite sure any decent Wireless-G router would work just as well.
• That's it.
  • Okay, maybe some power and ethernet cables to link the above. And some electricity.

Getting Going

To set all this up, there are (unfortunately) some hurdles that need to be jumped, although nothing too taxing or time-consuming.

Firstly, you need to use the included Eye-Fi card reader to set up your card so that it can see the network you're going to be using. The problem here is that without an internet connection, you can't set up anything! The Eye-Fi Manager software is all web-based, so if you can't get on the 'net from where you are, you can't configure networks on the card. It also means that the WiFi router you will be using will have to be temporarily connected to your home or work network while you get things setp up. Luckily, once done you never have to repeat this step, so it's not a deal breaker.

Secondly, most digital SLRs still use CF cards rather than the smaller CF format. There are quite a lot of SD to CF card adapters available - you must make sure that the adapter you choose will completely contain the SD card. Some cheaper adpaters leave the SD card sticking out of the side - if yours does this you won't be able to shut the camera's card door, or ever insert the card in the first place. Try to find an adapter that has a plastic rather than metal housing - you want to release as much of that precious wifi signal as possible - having said that, mine is metal and works fine.

Of course, if you have one of the newer generation DSLRs such as the Nikon D60 (or perhaps the Canon 1D MkIII) that takes SD cards natively, you can skip this step.

Thirdly, you have to adjust the power saving on your camera. The reason for this is that when the Eye-Fi card is in your SLR, it's only source of power is the camera itself. If your camera decides to so some helpful power saving, such as turning off power to the CF cards, then your connection will just keep dropping - you may not even get any photos transferred.

On my Nikons I can set up a custom settings bank specifically for Eye-Fi shooting, and in this I set the Metering timeout value to unlimited. This causes the camera to keep the meter active, and stops it going into sleep mode. Of course this drains the battery faster, but I've not found that to be a major problem. Some newer cameras, such as the D60 again, can automatically detect the Eye-Fi card and switch into the correct mode all by itself (they call this the "Eye-Fi Connected" programme).

So, does it work?

In a word... YES.

Signal strength doesn't seem to be a major issue - the card will happily connect and transfer JPEGs over wifi from two floors above the router. As long as you don't wander too far from your router when you're shooting, you shouldn't have a problem. I'll be putting this solution through it's paces a few more times soon, and I'll update this page when I have a better idea of the limitations.

I only ever bother sending low resolution (2128 x 1416 on my D3), maximum compression ("Basic" quality) JPEGs to the laptop. That works just fine, and is still higher than my laptop's screen resolution (1920x1200) so no up-scaling is required.

Conclusion

Cons

• Needs an internet connection to set up
• Loses connection if you power down your camera
• Requires a camera that has adjustable power saving settings, or limited power saving.
• Transfer speeds aren't mindblowing
• No support for ad-hoc wifi connections, so you'll need a router.
• Requires the use of the Eye-Fi Manager software - no direct FTP support.
• No features other than file transfer (so no live view, browsing the camera's cards, etc that you may get with the more expensive tools).
• Not officially available in many places (such as the UK).
• A RAW-capable CF-card version is (apparently, according to blog comments) in the works.
• It's orange.

Pros

• Price. $99 vs $800 - that's a big enough difference to take the risk.
• Transfer speeds are fine for sending low-rez JPEGs to a viewing station.
• Won't transfer anything other than JPEGs - so you can write RAWs and JPEGs to the same card, and only the JPEGs will be transmitted.
• Setting up a wifi connection seems to be possible using any SD card reader.
• Impresses clients - this is "good technology".
• It's orange.

Where To Get It

Disclosure: Many of the links on this page are affiliate links. This means I get a small payment if you buy something after clicking on one of them, and that helps me to run this website and develop more free software. This does not mean that these reviews are in any way biased.