Eye-fi (SD) Cards

Just to give you a better idea of what your paying for
here's one and the reader taken apart link

Looks like the operating system is run on the Atheros chip
which has an integrated RISC processor with 512KB of flash
memory. There's also the equivalent of a USB WiFi dongle
in there

There's also a free Imagewatcher program on that site,
which I haven't used and it's a few years old.

You can buy the 4GB version on ebay for £36.48 Post Free
link
The 8GB version isn't needed because the shots are
transferred to the PC as they are taken.

The Eye-Fi was meant for Amateur use.... they haven't
brought out a Compact Flash version which most Pro
cameras use.

For Pro use people like Canon offer alternatives at
$1,200 link

Now can you explain why I need one?

Regards
Stan

Sounds like you don't!

Of course that doesn't stop me "wanting" one. It's rather like all my electronic gadgetry which was mainly acquired "because it was there"

Regards
Stan

You could try justifying it on the basis that if you only have a few shots to transfer at a time, you're causing less wear and tear on the card door.

If you left it open for any time there'd be the risk of accidentally snapping it off, too.

So I reckon, once you factor in the cost of a trip to the service department, you're actually saving money...

That is a very compelling arguement for this item. So far I've used an 8gb card using jpeg+raw and not come near filling it. The door could made so it opens a bit more for people like myself, with big hands/fingers to be able to get hold of the card, the slot has a fair grip on it and somehow I don't think pointed nose pliers are a solution.

While on the subject of doors I don't like the rubber door which covers the remote connection have been using the 2 second timer instead but must remember to reset it to "normal" when I go to hand-held I've cursed myself a few times: compose, click, beep beep beep, kerchunk, delete blurred photo

Regards
Stan

Couldn't agree more. I hate the sort of doors that have rubber or plastic bendy hinges, and I equally hate slidy doors that rely on a bump on the plastic moulding to hold them shut. You just know they're going to snap off, or work loose if you keep gear for any length of time.

The AF-540 flash battery door is like this - a horrible design, and the AF360 is even worse, I understand.

Given the level of Pentax's build quality generally, these 'features' really niggle with me.

Chris, in use how do the images appear on your computer screen and how easy would it be for an assistant to flick through them for a client?

Well you can specify the folder you want it to put the uploaded images in, and you can also specify a date-format for subfolders. You have to do this separately for JPGs and RAW files (and videos in fact), which means you can send them to different places.

The so-called 'Eye-Fi centre' thumbnails uploaded images, but only JPGs, not DNGs or PEFs. So for seeing what you're getting, I don't think it's much use.

While it's actually uploading you get a square icon about an inch and a half across at the bottom right corner of the monitor, with a progress percentage that goes up as it uploads.

I have Picasa set up to monitor the relevant folders, so I view them with that when they appear in Picasa.

The only drawback is that Picasa shows K-5 DNGs very dark, even if they're well exposed. It won't show K-5 PEFs at all, though it does import them. I imagine if you used Bridge it would be fine.

I think on the mac, you can use AUTOMATOR and APLLESCRIPT to set up some watched folders and workflows to get the previews imported and set up for APERTURE..... so I could wing that easily on my mac....

Was wondering about power consumption during uploading from the card. Does it goggble up the battery power? The ac adapter for a K7 is quite expensive.

Regards
Stan

Don't know the answer to that yet, I'm only on my first battery charge on the replacement K-5. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it does, especially if you have auto-off set to quite a long time (I do), and leave the camera in range of the designated network (it is).

Quite honestly, if it does, I shall buy three or four knock-off batteries from 7DS, and just live with it.

Another few shots today, and no messing with cards. I love it.

For airshows, or other events where I'm going to take hundreds of photos, I'll take the eye-fi out, and use ordinary cards.

Always try to use a fully charged battery. The transfer
speed slows down when the battery approaches about 3/4 full.

I don't think an awful lot of power is used on the transfer
because the cards work with low powered point and
shoot cameras as well.

When I start up the other PC it still finds the card and
flashes up a warning saying the the card is set to upload
to my laptop and do I want to leave it like that or change
it to this PC..... so it must store that info on the
card itself.

What I need to find out now is if I change PC's does
it upload all the files again to the 2nd PC or have
they been flagged as uploaded. I can't test that at
present, because I've deleted all the files off the
card.

I would think, unless the card uses "cut" "move to" or something rather than "copy" the images would still be be on the card rather like using copy and paste with any sort of transfer.

Of course trying it out (and letting us know )would be the way to go.

I do remember many moons ago making a back up copy of microsofts works installation files onto floppy disks and as each file was copied to disk it deleted the original file on the hard drive and of course sods law disk 8 was duff but it had still deleted the original file. I don't think that idea gained in popularity

It will delete photos after they have been uploaded if it's
running out of memory..... what they refer to as endless
memory. The one's I'm on about I deleted myself from the
other PC after I copied them over.

There are some review videos on Youtube, although some are
quite old from when they did 2GB cards.