MacMegasite

One of my favorite products from Macworld Expo is the Eye-Fi card, a SD card with built-in WiFi that will work in almost any camera that uses SD cards. I’m using it in my Nikon D40x and it works exactly like any regular SD card.

Before using the Eye-Fi card for the first time, it needs to be set up from your computer. The package doesn’t include any CD. The required software is on the card itself. You simply open the installer from the card to install the Eye-Fi Manager application.

The Eye-Fi manager runs at login and puts an icon in the menu bar. The first time you run it, you’ll be prompted to create an account. It will then let you set up the network connection for the Eye-Fi card and choose where the pictures should be uploaded.

Eye-Fi supports several popular photo sharing services, including Flickr, Picassa, PhotoBucket, Webshots, SnapFish, and Facebook as well as uploading to a folder on your computer. If you’re not uploading to your computer, you don’t have to be running the manager application. As long as you’re able to connect to one of the configured networks, you don’t even need to have your computer turned on.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

You can take pictures normally, even if you’re not within range of a network. As soon as you enter the range of a configured network, it will automatically start uploading pictures. If the upload gets interrupted (such as the camera powering down), it will resume when the power or network connection is restored. For best results with many cameras, including my D40x, the power off timer should be disabled or set to a minute or longer.

I found the Eye-Fi card to work flawlessly and uploads were reliable although not particularly fast. After trying it with Flickr, Picassa, and uploading directly to a folder on my MacBook Pro I found that I prefer uploading to Picassa, since I don’t use it for anything else so I can set the pictures by default to non-public, which gives me a chance to clean them up & get rid of any bad shots before I share them in a public album.

The card can be configured for more than one network, so you can upload from any of the supported networks, even if you’re away from home. I haven’t tried it with a network that requires logging in on the web (such as T-Mobile), however.

If you enjoy photography and want an easy way to share your pictures, I highly recommend the Eye-Fi card.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.