Eye-fi + mobile hotspot (mifi) = almost anywhere uploads

[Allan Jeffers]

I heard something a long time ago about the Eye-fi cards but was not too interested in them since my major cameras use CF cards. Well I have a point and shoot camera, a Lumix zs3 that takes SDHC cards. I also have an ipod touch 4g and droid, both don't have good cameras.

I got this idea after using the mifi with my ipod touch to upload a photo. First off, I wished there was a way my slightly better P&S camera could directly upload to my flickr account or facebook or what not with out a computer. Turns out there was. The eye-fi

The one I got from best buy cost 40 bucks, its a 4gig card, connect X2 and there are more expensive models that even geotag (sort of) and will upload directly to your PC even in ad-hoc mode and even at hot spots like starbucks.

Depending on what format your camera records, you could possibly upload movies to youtube. The 60D should work as should the rebels / t2i cameras / g12 and possibly almost any other camera that supports SDHC.

for 40bucks I think its a great item

Just thought I would give you a heads up if you wanted to just directly upload your shots almost as soon as you get them.

I have not really tested things out but being able to wirelessly dump your images to your PC as soon as you are in range of your network is nice and if you have a mobile hotspot (mifi) you can likely upload directly to your facebook or flickr or a few other photo sharing sites

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

It's a neat idea, but with current 3G upload speeds, even assuming a stable, strong connection and that you're not doing anything else on the internet like live-streaming, it's going to take a lonnnnng time to upload photos. I mean even shooting JPEGs the 60D will spit out 6 to 7 MB files. That's 10 seconds upload per photo, which isn't terrible -- but if you're like most people and shoot hundreds of photos per storm, it might not be practical. In reality, cruising around the plains you're only likely to get half that upload speed and even less in convergences. Shoot a dozen quick photos of a storm and it'll be around 2 to 5 minutes to upload those shots; meanwhile your radar grabs are dragging.

Now, on the other hand, having instant dump to your PC is an AWESOME feature. You used to have to pay through the nose to do this with a wireless transmitter. Instant backup is about as cool as it gets. I'd buy the card just for this feature alone, if I shot cameras that took SD.

 

[Allan Jeffers]

Well, I can't test that theory now as I dropped my P&S camera last night.

Ryan, you do have a point, I did not take in account the upload speeds of 3G. I would have been using a point and shoot and I could have shot a lower resolution, but whats the point of that.

Oh well, it was an idea. I will just have to wait until starbucks moves in near my job

 

[Allan Jeffers]

I did get a new camera (g12) and was able to test this theory. And it worked. I took some shots at the park with my mifi and slowly my photos ended up in my flickr stream. The bad thing? This cannot be good if I want to keep my data usage down, but I am only uploading photos that are about 1024 x 768 and when I got home and turned my computer on, the files transfered to my PC. The other bad thing is, the cheaper card I got will not wirelessly transmit the raw images, but its not that huge of a deal, I can shove the card in the reader to get those