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From camera to computer – wirelessly
11th February 2011
The Eye-Fi SD Card
A few months ago I had read about this product – an SD card with wi-fi capabilities. You could say that I’ve been “eyeing” it for a while. Anyway, I made it a point to stop by their booth at CES in early January to learn more about the Eye-Fi card. There I spoke with Berend Ozceri, one of the founders of the Eye-Fi Company.
After he explained its features and capabilities, I was sold on the Eye-Fi and decided to review this interesting product. When I returned home, I visited a local computer store and picked up a 4GB model on sale for $39. It’s slightly more expensive than a plain vanilla SD-card so I was curious to see if the extra features were worth the price.
The Eye-Fi package includes the wireless SD-card, a USB adapter for the card, a CD-ROM and a short instruction manual. One preliminary step is to install the Eye-Fi software on my PC. When I started the software I was asked to insert the adapter with the Eye-Fi card into my PC’s USB slot and to identify my wi-fi network (entering my WEP security code). This information is written to the card.
I measured the transfer speed. After a fifteen second delay (the software seemed to be connecting to the Eye-Fi card), it took about 90 seconds to transfer ten 3 to 4 MB jpg images to my PC. Not bad.
There are actually several “versions” of the Eye-Fi card.
Connect X2 This is the card that I purchased. All of these cards transfer jpg stills and videos to both PC and Mac computers.
Geo X2 This card add location data to your images – geotagging.
Explore X2 This card adds one year of Hotspot support that lets you share your photos from thousands of open networks such as Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble and others. Also includes geotagging.
Pro X2 This card lets you transfer RAW files in addition to jpgs. Also includes geotagging and Hotspot support.
One caveat is that you’ll need to be no further than about 50 feet or so from your wi-fi receiver. And like other wi-fi devices, the Eye-Fi may not be able to transmit the images through walls or other structures.
Eye-Fi has a few other features such as:
- you can setup the Eye-Fi card for use on multiple wi-fi networks
- you can transfer only selected photos by using your digital camera’s Protect option
- you can use the card as “endless memory”; each image is erased after it is transferred to your computer
- you can use relay transfer to automatically send your images to an Eye-Fi server for seven days; your wi-fi network can do this even if your computer is turned off.
I used the Eye-Fi card for about a month on a variety of digital cameras – simple point-and-shoot models, advanced point-and-shoot models and several digital SLRs. My conclusion is that the Eye-Fi is exceedingly convenient for transferring the photos directly from a camera to a computer without any effort on my part. For me, the bonus is being able to forward these photos to Flickr and/or Facebook automatically thus saving me lots of time.
Is it worth buying one? If you have access to a wi-fi network, the answer is a firm Yes.
You can find more information at Eye.Fi
Written by Arnie Lee
Note: I also installed the Eye-Fi Center software on an iMac. Annoyingly, the Eye-Fi Center software refused to accept my WEP code a dozen or so times while connecting to my network. Although the software told me that my WEP code was invalid, it actually accepted the code despite the erroneous message. Later, I contacted Eye-Fi technical support to learn if this is a known problem but have yet to receive an answer. Except for this installation problem, the software worked flawlessly and I was able to transfer and forward images through my iMac.
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