The Eye-Fi Has Arrived

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The FedEx man just surprised me with my next review item… I’ve been pretty fired up about the Eye-Fi ($99) for awhile, so I’m looking forward to checking it out. As opposed to owning one of the very few camera models with built-in WiFi, this little guy is hardware-agnostic and should work with any camera that takes SD cards – in this case, 2GB. In addition to wirelessly syncing pics to PC or Mac, the press packet indicates 17 photo sharing sites are also supported. I’m generally pretty slow with reviews, but I’ll try to get something up within two weeks.

14 thoughts on “The Eye-Fi Has Arrived”

  3. Looking forward to the review. This is on my list of gifts for my Dad who loves taking photos, loves cameras, but hates to upload and organize the photos. In this digital world, that means I often don’t even see his photos so this tool would be very nice for him to have :)

  4. I got an Eye-Fi for Christmas and have thoroughly enjoyed it. My parents were complaining that I wasn’t posting enough pictures of their granddaughter, so now they’re getting more than they can handle. Every shot goes up on Flickr immediately for them to see.

    My only complaint is that it won’t allow you to upload to multiple photo sites at the same, such as Flickr and Facebook.

    The wireless range seems to be fairly good, and it will remember multiple networks, so I can take it between work, home, my parents and the in-laws without having to make any changes.

  5. Also, the Eye-Fi will only upload JPG images, and I prefer to shoot in RAW. I set my Nikon now to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, so I get the best of both worlds. If I want to stop uploading temporarily (playing with settings or something) it’s easy to do with a flick of the dial.

  11. I’ve been eyeing these up for my mother & wife ever since seeing them on another site. I’m really looking forward to your review.

  13. This is a great idea for anyone who doesn’t like to deal with USB cables or card readers. I’ve heard it’s quite a bit slower than a dedicated card reader or USB cable, so it’s probably not for heavy-use photographers. I’d be interested to see how fast the write speed is – can it be used in a DSLR in burst mode, for example?

  14. OK, I’ve gotten my card configured and have played with it *just a little*… and I’m amazed. Very cool.

    Setup was a breeze. And then you shoot your pics and if the camera/card is in range of a pre-identified wireless network, it’ll upload photos to Eye-Fi’s servers. From there, they are synced to an online service and/or a computer. I’ve got mine sending pics to Flickr (private) and to my MacBook Pro’s iPhoto. In a couple weeks, a new software update will allow you to beam from camera -> computer which should be quicker than reaching out to their servers first.

    After a few days of use, I’ll have a better idea of camera battery life implications and if the naming conventions/organization are good enough, etc.

    Chris, above, is correct that you can currently sync to only one online service – I imagine this would be increased one day. We’ll see.

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