Eye-fi card test report

The Eye-fi card is a remarkable new concept in Engineering.

As someone who started with a Commodore Pet and saw the rise and fall of a variety of platforms, each with a range of, what is now, limited features (although at the time were the bee's knees) I never cease to be amazed at what can be packed into a given volume. An 8 Gig memory card for a camera seems incredible since, when you look at it, it seems mostly plastic packging. To consider packing anything else into there is, frankly, ridiculous.

Eye Fi, based in California, the home of free-thinking is that ridiculous Company. It has packed a WiFi Software and Hardware facility into the card. With, currently, a 4 and 8 Gigabyte card available you can shoot stills and have them instantly uploaded to another WiFi device (PC, iPad, iPhone etc). It can upload to any of 15 popular websites such as Facebook, Flickr, snapfish etc.

Geotagging will label your photo with the location where it was taken and Emdless memory Mode ensures that the card wil never fill up - once it gets near full, it will start deleteing the oldest images that have been successfully uploaded.

Click here for full spec and pricing details.

Enough of the hype, then. How easy is it to use and how useful is it?

Features

The eye-fi card currently comes in three different types.They are all Class 6, which is fast enough to store video steams without pausing. They all have 802.11 b/g/n capability - i.e standard WiFi connectivity. They all can upload stills and video (although only the Pro supports RAW format). They all support endless memory, which deletes the oldest uploaded files if the card is getting full ('full' being a user-defined parameter in terms of % of the capacity).

The first two differ only in their capacity - one is 4 Gigabytes ("Connect X2"), the other is 8 Gigabytes ("Mobile X2"). The third ("Pro X2") is also 8 Gigabytes, has all the above features and also supports Geotagging (using WiFi positioning Service - WPS) so that you will never be stuck with the 'where was that taken?' problem again. The Geotagging information can be used by several of the online services such as Flickr and can be used as a search criterion. Finally, the Pro can also use the thousands of WiFi hotspots around the world. 1 year's subscription is included and this can subsequently be renewed.

The Connect and Mobile can also be upgraded to the Pro features, indicating that it is just a Software feature change.

Test results

Overshoot has so far only tested it on a standard DSLR (Nikon D3400) but the principal reason for buying it is to use it for Aerial Photography as the images can be dowloaded as they are taken for instant review. This test will follow in due course, but currently the weather has not been favourable for flight tests.

Installation was straightforward. You plug the card into your PC (SD to USB converter included) and run the 'install' program. This install the Eye-Fi software which has some basic selection and editing features, followed by a print option. You need to add the card to whatever WiFi Network that you are using (I used my mobile 'phone as a WiFi hotspot and this worked. It will keep track of up to 32 WiFi Networks. You select the folder that you want to download the images to - it offers a default one but I found it more convenient to change this to a more accessible folder.

Advanced features such as uploading to Social Media and Photo sharing websites can be set up or ignored. Default 'endless mode' settings is "disabled". The Software did glitch during installation, but handled it gracefully and installed correctly second time.

After this, just pop the card into your camera and start snapping away. On my Nikon the LCD information screen now shows handy icons giving WiFi signal strength as well an upload progress.

I found that the card can take a while to connect up with your preprogrammed Network. I was wandering around taking photographs and once I got out of range, it took a while to recover and start downloading once back in range. However, once it had synchronised, it was lightning fast, shifting 3-4Megabyte images in 1-2 seconds. This aspect was really impressive. I was shooting clients and my assistant was receiving the images before we could take the couple of paces back to the PC.

Pros

• Lightning fast when uploading in range
• Simple, clean Software interface
• Impressive to clients

Cons

• Takes a while to lock on to a Network after getting out of range. This needs further testing as I was using a Mobile Phone as WiFi hub, so needs testing with a 'proper' hub to see whether it is the hub or card
• Range can be limited if there are obstacles. I was shooting outside with only the canvas of a couple of tents in the way and this was enough (along with the camera body) to attenuate the signal out of range. Again, this needs further testing as this could easily be down to the limitations of the antenna in my 'phone, whereas a proper antenna would work better.

Conclusion

Based on the limited testing so far, when it is locked on, it works really well. Subject to further testing, I would also stick my neck out and say that the cons listed above are probably more to do with my set-up than with the card.

There is plenty more testing to be done and I will update this page in due course, but for now, I would certainly recommend it if you have a need to upload images regularly during a shoot.

They are popular, so can be a bit hard to get hold of. You can get it from Maplin if it has stock. Feel free to use the following codes to get a discount at checkout (all goods, not just WiFi cards !). Note that these were valid intil 23rd December 2011 so may not still ba valid - awaiting new ones!!

discount3 £3 off £30
discount5 £5 off £50

I got mine by ordering online from Jessops for an in-store pickup. However, when I got to the store, there was none waiting for me - the store had not had srock for a while and no-one bothered checking. If they had, they could have called me and saved a wasted trip. I'd advise you to call ahead and make sure that the stock is there if you use them to order online.

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