Why I Hate the Eye-Fi Share Wireless SD Card

On 18-Aug-2008, at 20:42, Glenn wrote:
> This last weekend, my wife and I threw a birthday party for my older
> son, Ben, who turns four today. I took pictures like crazy over a
> couple hours, and because we had the party at the house, most of
> those photos were already on my computer and up at Flickr by the
> time the party was over


OK, Now *THAT* is worth the price of admission right there, isn't it?
I know my parents and in-laws, as well as extended family, would love
it if I had one of these for the next birthday/Christmas.

OTOH, I've never really 'gotten' Flickr, so the single event 'feature'
for iPhoto and the daily album would annoy me as well. OTOH, I
usually have to merge/split events anyway, so maybe not.

I use the .Mac gallery publishing... er, MobileMe gallery publishing
to share all the photos I want to share. It's not a price thing, I
know flickr is stupidly cheap, or free, it's just the convenience of
having a one-click gallery published from iPhoto is a bit hard to pass
up.

Yeah, I know, some people hate iPhoto. I love it. I can go through
several hundred pictures, adjusting them, straightening them, removing
red-eye, and culling the duds in an hour, click "mobileMe", click
"ok", and walk away. Voila, a new gallery is created. In fact, the
reason I am up this morning is that I finally went through about 400
photos from earlier this month and put up 4 new galleries (temporary,
they will eventually get merged into a single "0808 Glenwood" or
soemthing gallery) and then wrote a long email to family and some
friends about them. I've been at it about and hour and a half now,
but the last half hour has been spent writing the email and catching
up on last night's emails as well.

And with 20GB of space now, I don't even worry about the sizes anymore.

If I bought an Eye-fi I likely would not use it all the time, but I
think I might buy one just for events where I can provide people with
a nearly real-time gallery of pictures.

Adam,

I bought an Eye-Fi card (the original one) for my wife, and she loves
it. She uses it for taking pictures of the products of her hobby,
which are then posted in various groups on the internet. She finds
that the Eye-Fi card is perfect for this. We only use it on our home
network, so we don't have the hassle of reconfiguring the card all the
time. She finds that it saves her lots of time, and she never has to
worry about damaging the SD card by improperly removing it from the
computer of camera. When my daughter took our SD camera on a trip, I
purchased an SD 2 CF adapter, which worked perfectly with the Eye-Fi
card in an older Nikon Coolpix camera, and an even older Casio camera.

I could see this being used at events. The photographer can circulate
through the crowd, sending back a constant stream of photographs to
the helper, who can crop, adjust and print the images, making them
available as souvenirs.

One problem that you didn't mention is that because there is no
automatic way to delete the pictures after they have been successfully
uploaded, the memory card and become quite full. We discovered that
when you reach 350 to 400 images on the card, it can take a very long
time to upload new images. It seems that the algorithm is to check
each and every one of the images on the Eye-FI card to see which ones
need to be uploaded. With many pictures this can take a lot of
time. Once the already uploaded pictures are deleted, the speedy
operation returns.

Bruce

At 5:38 AM -0700 8/19/08, Andy Baird wrote:
>"Little irritates me more than finding my camera battery dead after
>I've left the house. This is an insurmountable problem..."
>
>On the contrary, it's an easily surmountable problem. All you have to
>do is carry spare batteries.

It's a nice idea, and if I'm planning on being out for the day and
taking a lot of pictures, I'll stuff another battery in my pocket,
but if I'm just grabbing the camera in the possible event of a few
quick shots, I won't bother with extras.

Besides, it's immaterial - if modifying my behavior to meet the needs
of technology is the point, I could watch the Eye-Fi uploads like a
hawk and shut the camera off as soon as it's done. I prefer not to
serve technology like that.

>For example, I carry two spares for my
>Canon SD1100 IS at all times. You could easily do the same with the
>small, flat NB-5L batteries used in your SD870 IS. They need not be
>expensive, either--third-party batteries from makers such as Lenmar
>work just as well as Canon's pricey batteries, in my experience.

I haven't tried third-party batteries in place of the NB-5Ls, but I
did for whatever the PowerShot 100 used, and I was wildly unimpressed
with the performance. Since then I've stuck with official Canon
batteries only.

cheers... -Adam

At 8:33 AM -0700 8/19/08, Bruce Skelly wrote:
>I bought an Eye-Fi card (the original one) for my wife, and she loves
>it. She uses it for taking pictures of the products of her hobby,
>which are then posted in various groups on the internet. She finds
>that the Eye-Fi card is perfect for this. We only use it on our home
>network, so we don't have the hassle of reconfiguring the card all the
>time. She finds that it saves her lots of time, and she never has to
>worry about damaging the SD card by improperly removing it from the
>computer of camera. When my daughter took our SD camera on a trip, I
>purchased an SD 2 CF adapter, which worked perfectly with the Eye-Fi
>card in an older Nikon Coolpix camera, and an even older Casio camera.

Glad to hear it works for her, and that none of the limitations I
mentioned trouble her as they do me.

>I could see this being used at events. The photographer can circulate
>through the crowd, sending back a constant stream of photographs to
>the helper, who can crop, adjust and print the images, making them
>available as souvenirs.

If there's an available network, or one could be set up, yes. It's
too bad it won't work with ad-hoc networks, since that would be
easiest.

>One problem that you didn't mention is that because there is no
>automatic way to delete the pictures after they have been successfully
>uploaded, the memory card and become quite full. We discovered that
>when you reach 350 to 400 images on the card, it can take a very long
>time to upload new images. It seems that the algorithm is to check
>each and every one of the images on the Eye-FI card to see which ones
>need to be uploaded. With many pictures this can take a lot of
>time. Once the already uploaded pictures are deleted, the speedy
>operation returns.

Indeed, though I personally would be very leery of any automatic
deletion, since I like to verify that everything has worked first.

I can say that importing into iPhoto via USB or a card reader with
many hundreds of already imported photos on a normal SD card isn't
slow at all.

cheers... -Adam

I quite enjoy seeing people's pictures from their travels immediately as they post them on Facebook, and I love to post my pix to Facebook as I go - it's almost like an instant e-postcard.

And the workflow of downloading pics from the camera, to the computer, maybe to iphoto, to upload them to Facebook is tedious enough to me that sometimes it doesn't happen, or doesn't happen for weeks after the photos are taken. That's why I love the mobile uploads feature of the Facebook Mobile application. I'm often shooting pictures with my blackberry - although the quality is borderline, it's great to be able to immediately upload the photos and create a travelog as I go.

The Eye-Fi suffers from not having that instant-gratification feeling for me. If I have to be at home near a known hotspot, that doesn't seem any easier to me than the workflow of removing the card and using a USB adapter. And going to McDonald's to upload pictures makes me feel fat.

But a month ago I got a micro-SD card, which fits in the blackberry. And with an adapter it fits in my camera. So anytime there's a picture that I want to share, I do it right then and there -- it takes only a minute or two to pop the card from the camera and into the blackberry, and with the screen of the blackberry, I can rotate, label, and tag the photo as I send it to Facebook.

For several reasons, one of the lesser is this, it's a shame that the iPhone doesn't have a slot for memory cards. I wonder whether any of the ipod media readers work with the iPhone in such a way that the files are accessible to the Facebook application on the phone?

Brian

I hear rumours of spare lithium batteries being frowned upon in
checked luggage: where they cannot be extinguished should they burst
into flame. Carry them in your pocket or cabin baggage so that the
crew can extinguish you if necessary. It would seem to be a good
idea to carry spare metallic change and tools separately, so that
they do not short out the thoughtfully provided spare batteries at
random.

The note was on London Drugs Camera Dept. when I checked for prices
of unrelated items. It does seem to be wise to carry batteries
carefully wrapped; they could start a fire in a tent just as easily
as in checked baggage, anywhere a random conducting surface presented
itself. Have to keep the redoubtable Murphy in his place on all
sides of the problem...

George

I agree with you that there are real limitations with the Eye-Fi card, and I think you have done a service to your readers, and to Eye-Fi by educating buyers on the ins and outs of this technology.

As an extension to your comment about ad-hoc networks, perhaps they could also add support of WiFi enabled printers, then I could get rid of my event assistant altogether? This might utilize the camera's ability to mark the photo's to print, rather than printing every photo? Since I would have to pack up a printer to take a long, I can easily add an Airport Express.

Integration of Devicescape style technology would make traveling with the Eye-Fi card a much richer experience.

Automatic deletion would, of course, always be a user configurable option. It shouldn't be that hard to do. It would require a little more intelligence in the Eye-Fi manager software that runs on the Mac. Since two copies of the photo are uploaded, one to the web service like Flikr, and one to your computer. the chances of loosing both copies is less. Even a function that would delete successfully uploaded pictures after a given amount of time would be another safeguard.

One can not avoid the fact that this product costs about 10 times the cost of a memory card. Is it worth it? All I can say is that it puts a smile on my wife's face, so it is worth it to me.

Yours,

Bruce

Bruce et al.

You mentioned : "We discovered that when you reach 350 to 400 images on the card, it can take a very long time to upload new images. It seems that the algorithm is to check each and every one of the images on the Eye-FI card to see which ones need to be uploaded. With many pictures this can take a lot of time. Once the already uploaded pictures are deleted, the speedy operation returns."

We have addressed this in a recent Eye-Fi Card firmware update. Please be sure that you have updated your Eye-Fi Card's firmware to the most recent version (1.3075). I suspect that that you will notice a difference from earlier versions as you have more images stored on your card.

At 07:41 08/21/08 -0700, George Wade wrote:
>I hear rumours of spare lithium batteries being frowned upon in checked
>luggage

It's not a rumor (or rumour ;-) -- I've heard the announcements on recent
flights. It's particularly when the flight attendants (or for small planes,
gate agents) are explaining that certain items which passengers expected to
carry on might have to be gate-checked. (Aka "valet checked", though
applying the word "valet" seems to be a classic case of inflated esteem.)

I don't recall whether they specific lithium ion batteries or just lithium,
nor do I know whether other lithium batteries are at issue. I imagine that
the airlines would not want to count on passengers knowing the difference.
How many airline passengers even know what lithium is ...

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org