By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
We were surprised to come across a bunch of Eye-Fi Home SD cards at the Black's Kiosk in Toronto's Dufferin Mall. The Eye-Fi cards, which are basically Secure Digital Cards that have Wi-Fi connectivity and features. They allow instantaneous downloading to either a PC or a photo sharing website (provided Wi-Fi is available) have been around for a year but have only recently made it to mainstream retailers in the US.
More after the break.
As with many things tech-related, Canada usually has to wait a few months to a year (i.e. iPhone) to gain local access to these devices. The appearance of the Eye-Fi was a local reseller was a great surprise but the pricing was a bit dissapointing. In the US the 2 GB Eye-Fi sells for US$75, in Black's it goes for $99.00 Canadian plus tax.
Home Edition
The Eye-Fi Home version offers users the most basic of Eye-Fi features. You can wirelessly upload photos from your camera to your computer via your home wireless network.
This is convenient if you don't want to fiddle with USB connectors and adapters. Transfers are fairly quick but would depend greatly on the quality and speed of your connection as well as your file sizes. For a price you can upgrade the functionality of the Eye-Fi Home card and add Geotagging and the Webshare feature.
Webshare gives you the ability to automatically upload photos to any of the following the more popular online photo services such as Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, MobileMe, PhotoBucket, SnapFish, ShutterFly and others.
You can also subscribe to a hotspot service which will allow you to upload photos while one the go provided you live in the US and are within area coverage. For photographers, the Eye-Fi offers a number of conveniences and tmakes most digital cameras (that that SD cards) wireless devices.
In a home studio setting, the Eye-Fi can transfer photos directly to a Mac or a PC for viewing on a large screen within seconds. Not only is the flie saved in two places (the Wi-Fi card and the computer's hard drive) but you can quickly make adjustments to the photo to compensate for any flaws.
The friendly salesperson at Black's said they ahd been carrying the Eye-Fi cards for two weeks but we found it surprising that they weren't prominently displayed in the store nor were they advertised. They are more expensive than standalone SD cards but for photographers that take a lot of photos and need quick transfers, these will quickly pay for themselves. Some newer cameras like Nikon's D60 and D90 DSLRs are even Eye-Fi enabled and they can sense when a card is in their slot. They regulate their power and shut-off settings automatically to enable the Eye-Fi cards to transmit all the files before the power off. Expect your battery life to take a substantial hit.
We plan to write a more exhaustive review of the Eye-Fi SD cards once we've had a chance to get a test unit and integrate it into our own shooting workflows.
