Wi-Fi card for K3

Hi all,

Am thinking of getting a wi-fi card for my K3 II. Has anyone any experience of these they can share? I usually upload my shots to Dropbox before editing and quite like the idea of being able to do this `on the move`. Any good brand recomendations?

No personal experience, I just use a large enough memory card and upload to the PC when I get home. However Eyefi cards allow users to wirelessly transfer images and videos directly to their smartphone or tablet whereas the Pentax Flucard offers the option of wireless remote control of the camera on a smart device, including live view. So seems you need to source an Eye-fi card. Be aware that if you take raw images the file sizes are huge so may not be suitable for public wi-fi networks, and also consider the privacy/security risks of public wi-fi (which would put me off doing this.)

I find them cumbersome and slow. I've had the Pentax branded one for use with the K3II and, well, used it 3 times, got frustrated each time - either with a dropped connection, vanishing files, or just the time needed to do so. I ended up buying an sd card adapter for my Apple devices. It's cheaper and faster, allows me to dump everything onto my phone/tablet and maintain a backup this way, share the jpgs with family on social media etc; in your case, it would be uploading to Dropbox from your phone. There are adapters for every type of smartphone.

Now I have the K1, with integrated wireless, and while it's definitely a smoother and somewhat quicker solution, it's still a hassle compared to the old fashioned way of sd card to whatever medium. You need to switch on the wireless (don't want to keep it on all the time as it drains the battery); connect to the network; if using a new device then input the password; while at it, you are disconnected from Internet unless you are on LTE. And it still much, much slower then physically taking out the card and sticking it whenever.

That said, I have no idea if any of the software allows you to transfer directly to the cloud as I store my images on a private server; don't trust other people's computers all that much

Maybe get a second hand one, every now and then one pops up for 20 quid or so. That way, if it doesn't work, you won't mind too much

I use the Toshiba FlashAir. It's pretty good but the app stopped working on my phone (still works on my wife's though) so I need to use the browser method to get photos off it by wifi, which is a bit of a pain.

I always have another card in the K3 and only copy to the wifi card the shots that I want to send to my phone. It's extremely useful to be able to send photos to my phone while on the move.

I use an Eye-Fi card all the time for anything in the house or garden. Very fast for 10MB Jpgs off a K-5.... 10 secs each. RAW is slower.

This was a test from the garden with a Netgear Trek repeater half-way. Single test shot then a pause and then 5 quick shots all transferred quickly.



--

Be careful not to buy an older Eye-Fi card should anyone be offering one for sale. I purchased an 8GB ProX2 card in 2012 for £75. I had an email from Eye -Fi in June 2016 to inform me that this product was now obsolete and should not be used after 16th September 2016. Only their Mobi or Mobi pro products are now useable. In truth I never found it useful. Far too slow for K5 or K5II jpeg files - usually 30 secs or longer in my experience.

Eye-Fi have now released software to allow the camera to PC transfer on old cards

http://x2migration.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/224155567-UPDATE-Information-Rega...
http://x2migration.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/226579288-Setup-Eye-Fi-X2-Utility...

Mine's an old card and I still use the original software which is blocked from the internet.

Toshiba and Eye-Fi have now combined which I presume will allow Eye-Fi software to be used on Toshiba FlashAir Cards.

http://www.eyefi.com/toshiba-pr

--