Wednesday 10th March 2010

I purchased an Eye-Fi Pro 4GB SD card last week for Euro 148. According to the manufacturers web site, this SD storage card also has a built in wireless transmitter, so that as soon as a picture is taken, it will transfer it automatically via any open wireless network either into my laptop or PC, or upload it directly onto my Facebook page; it is also supposed to save the location that the photograph was taken with geo-tagging, so that you can check in the future (for example on Google Earth) exactly where that photograph was taken (very useful for my goldfish memory). So much for the theory, which sounds too good to be true ....
.... and in practice, it is too good to be true. The geo-tagging simply doesn't work at all. I initially thought that it was because (according to the geo-tagging web site listed in the Eye-Fi handbook) I live in an area of weak reception (and most of the locations that I have already visited and plan to visit are also in areas of weak reception - annoyingly, this information isn't supplied to you before purchase !!); but after three days in Berlin (the capital of Germany), geo-tagging still doesn't work !! The upload to Facebook (once a network connection has been found) doesn't work either.
The wireless transfer of the photographs from the Eye-Fi SD card in my camera to my laptop does work well at home (via my wireless router), taking almost exactly 30 seconds per 12GB RAW data file - perfectly acceptable, so that by the time I have finished a portrait session, most or all of the photographs would already be uploaded into my laptop and ready for viewing / selection. However, I cannot get the Eye-Fi card in my camera to see the ad hoc network connection to my laptop WITHOUT my wireless router, so I cannot use this upload facility when I am away from home with just the laptop (which is exactly when I need it most, to avoid having the camera tied to the laptop via a short USB cable !!!)
The icing on the cake is the above photograph - it was meant to be of a painted bear statue in Berlin, but the data on the Eye-Fi SD card is corrupt, rendering the picture useless. Luckily I only took that photograph for this blog, and not a paying client !!!
Maybe I have been supplied with a faulty Eye-Fi Pro card from amazon.co.uk, but until this has been resolved, I would strongly advise you to steer well clear of this expensive non-functioning gimmick.

(Nikon D5000 : Sigma VR 18-200mm f3.5-f6.3 : f4.5 : 1/20" : 44mm : ISO 200 : 10.03.2010 17:34:48)



After that rant, here is a picture of the Bauhaus museum that the Eye-Fi Pro 4GB SD card managed to save without corruption !!!

(Nikon D5000 : Sigma VR 18-200mm f3.5-f6.3 : f11 : 1/125" : 44mm : ISO 800 : 10.03.2010 17:25:24)