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How's the Eye-Fi SD card? Anyone used it, have opinions?

post #1 of 15
4/14/10 at 10:43am
Thread Starter 
I'm thinking of getting my wife an Eye-Fi Explorer x2 card for an anniversary present -- she's gotten into photography as a hobby. I like the idea that it will automatically upload photos to her computer when nearby. And it has some sort of geotagging feature, that could be fun.

But I don't know much about these cards, and they're very expensive compared to a normal SD card. Do they work well? Is the wifi-based location system robust?

Thanks for any insights.
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post #2 of 15
4/14/10 at 11:09am
It seems like something that sounds cool in idea but never gets used in practice.   Personally am not interested, YMMV =)
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post #3 of 15
4/14/10 at 1:18pm
That does seem like a lot of money for the convenience of not needing to either take the SD card out or connecting the camera to the PC via a USB cable.  I think their comparison chart on prices of standard class 6 SD cards is off, too. I bought a 16GB MicroSD class 6 card for my Droid Eris phone for the price they are listing for a 4GB card.

Considering that my wife has to nag me all the time to upload the photos from her point & shoot camera, though, it may be worth it just for harmony in the household.
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post #4 of 15
4/14/10 at 4:01pm
 I have one of the new ones and it works just fine.  It geo tags my photos and uploads them to my laptop. Given the fact that my MacBook Pro doesn't have a SD card reader, this is a very nice feature.  It is also nice because when you take a shot you can see it on the laptop screen to make changes. JPG is fast but the RAW images take a bit just because they are so large.  

Don
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post #5 of 15
10/25/10 at 8:49am

  I happen to see this gadget online and went ahead and tried one. I have a TV hooked up to a Dell Studio Hybrid downstairs but my router was upstairs. While it worked great with my Canon T1i, it was really slow uploading from downstairs. So I had a spare router rigged as a repeater close to the Hybrid. That worked wonderfully! I had a party a few days later and guests were surprised to see themselves already on the screen on the ongoing slideshow!  They even started borrowing my camera to take pictures then wait for them to come up the screen!

  All in all, it was a novelty if not a good thing for convenience. Will I keep it?...probably not....

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post #6 of 15
10/25/10 at 9:01am

One way to really damage an SD Card is to take it out of the camera and plug it into whatever you are going to use. I have always been told just to leave the card in the device (unless you are going to upgrade to a larger or different capacity unit) and then use USB, etc. to upload the pictures to my PC.

 

Being able to leave the SD card in your camera would be great and would probably be easy to set up and use but is the price difference of a similar sized SD worth it when all she really has to do is to hook up the USB cable to the PC from the camera? Personally I would just spend the money on a larger SD card so she can take a lot more pictures along with other things you know she would like and call it a day. That is unless she has been asking for one of these cards then I think you know what to do.

 

 

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post #7 of 15
10/25/10 at 9:15am

BTW, what type of camera does she have? Is she going to be uploading the pictures to a Mac or PC?

 

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post #8 of 15
10/25/10 at 9:44am
Thread Starter 

Parker, I bought my wife the Eye-Fi for our anniversary and it's been a hit. I recommend it for:

* The spouse who has most everything already, and is a photo enthusiast

* The spouse who doesn't transfer photos to the computer until six months and four outings have passed (and for the computer / data maintainer spouse who finds this stressful... smile.gif )

* Anyone who wants a geo-tagging upgrade to their existing camera for much, much less than the cost of a new camera

* The gadget enthusiast

 

 

Yes, it's as much as 4x the price of a cheap 4GB card from NewEgg, but ... well... this is a forum where people spend $1,000s or $10,000s on HT toys. What's $60 extra for an SD card? And for regular use, 4GB is more than enough for my wife.

 

She has a Canon SX-10is -- it's the '08 or '09 top superzoom from Canon. The wifi-based geo-tagging has worked well so far, though we've not traveled much with it yet. I like that when I'm shooting product photos for eBay, it auto-uploads to her Mac as I'm shooting it. That means she can start fixing my white balance problems before I'm finished. She likes the geo-tagging feature. And I like that photos are getting off the camera and backed-up sooner smile.gif

 

The one problem is that the camera can shut itself off in the middle of a large photo transfer. So, she goes out, shoots 400 photos, and comes back in. Turns the camera on, and the EyeFit starts transfering photos. It's 15 minutes of transfer, but the camera has a 5 minute auto-shutoff timer. A minor inconvenience and only hits us with big shots, like vacation.

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post #9 of 15
10/25/10 at 1:44pm

I'd rather use the money for an additional SD card or two. Can't justify that kind of markup for wireless transfer. And I wanted geotagging that worked using traditional GPS (try using an Eye-Fi somewhere like Yosemite or Yellowstone) so I bought my own dedicated GPS module and it's a great tool.

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post #10 of 15
12/2/10 at 2:44pm
Thread Starter 

So far the Eye-Fi has been a champ. And my wife definitely likes it for easy photo transfer. I like it to: when I shoot ebay sales shots, they transfer as I shoot, which is a nice convenience.

 

Its expected weakness was revealed on a recent trip to Lake Placid: if there's no wifi, it can't geo-tag properly -- it seemed to use the last known location, instead of being void of location. And in one case, it seemingly mis-identified the available Wifi and located it 1000 miles to the West.

 

While it's not everyone's cup of tea, I think $40 is cheap for a fun, useful camera accessory. And while dedicated, external GPS might be of similar price, it's the sort of thing that if it's not automatic, it won't get used (by my wife). So this really is a great gadget for my wife.

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post #11 of 15
1/16/12 at 2:03pm

An interesting item announced at  CES 2012.

 

Standard SD-cards (and CF?) with WiFi support. Potentially to be used in older cameras without inbuilt WiFi support.

Two version (and the combination): "W" for WiFi, "D" for (home-) networks.

As they say: Eye-Fi may not like this. But then again, I'm not under the impression that Eye-Fi has conquered the (or "a") market already.

 

Curious about the intended price-point.

 

 

Cees

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post #12 of 15
1/16/12 at 3:41pm
Thread Starter 

That could be good. We like our Eye-fi card, but they're so expensive that we've got just the one. And the software solution is custom to Eye-fi, which can be a problem when they're lagging an iPhoto change.

 

But no indication this new wifi standard provides geo-location. That's a nice perk for Eye-fit.

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post #13 of 15
1/17/12 at 1:06am

According to Thom Hogan, in his comment on Jan 16th, the plan may have to get abandoned already (or get more costly) following protests of Eye-Fi.

 

He also argues that an in-camera support of WiFi is better than having to pay for a "heavy" CF-card all the time (duh!).

 

 

Cees

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post #14 of 15
1/17/12 at 4:08pm
Thread Starter 

Eye-fi has the power to stop an industry standard? That seems like cameras not having built-in flashes because a manufacturer was afraid of losing their flash-bulb business. confused.gif

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post #15 of 15
1/25/12 at 12:12am

Dave,

 

No, I think they're too little for that.

 

But I suppose they would like some money.....

 

 

Cees

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