After posting about a ShutterSnitch/Eye-Fi combo on Monday, which lets you beams photographs approach from your camera to an iPhone or iPad, I was sold, and I paid for both. After regulating them for a integrate days, it turns out which the Eye-Fi, in the Pro form during slightest, pretty most sucks.

I went for the Pro as it is a only one that functions with TENDER files. It is ultimate Class 6 (X2 in Eye-Fi terms) fast-transfer chronicle, with 8GB memory, Wi-Fi and geo-tagging. It’s a most appropriate card Eye-Fi creates, as well as price me €131, or a silly $171. On top of this I paid for the ShutterSnitch App for $8. I was right away in for roughly 180 bucks. What did I get for it? Not much.

Geo-Tagging

While a Eye-Fi Pro will geo-tag JPG images, it won’t tab TENDER. This is since TENDER files, nonetheless they make use of customary EXIF metadata (the information about a print such as shutter speed and ISO), they put it in non-standard places. That’s excellent. You can only fire RAW+JPG in-camera as well as afterwards make use of a desktop program to copy it opposite on import, right? No. There is no way to do this without resorting to third-party apps.

And if you make use of this (or any alternative Eye-Fi label for geo-tagging, be prepared for delayed imports. The approach a Eye-Fi functions is to accumulate interpretation about a surrounding Wi-Fi networks as you fire. Back at a mechanism, when you import, this interpretation is sent up to the Eye-Fi servers as well as converted to location interpretation. It’s how the iPod Touch functions out your place in a Maps app, usually done on Eye-Fi’s servers.

The complaint is which to get this to work, you need to let your photos import over Wi-Fi. Even yet a cards come with their own (pretty great SD-card reader, you have to import over a network to get the geo-data, even if a card is in a card-reader. This, if you have been sharpened TENDER as well as have more than the couple of photos, takes perpetually. Worse, if all your machines aren’t upon the fast 802.11n network, you’re seeking during hours to lift in a photos from a full label.

Compare this to a cheaper alternative, a GPS tracker. For around $50, you can cling to a keychain-sized dongle on your bag, get real (and some-more accurate) GPS interpretation and afterwards mix with the photos later, in seconds.

Could I only import a photos with the unchanging card reader and drag them all into a Eye-Fi Center program? Nope. Done this way, it mysteriously stops noticing a RAW format of a files.

Tethered Shooting

Done straight to a mechanism, transfers are rock plain, and fast if you have the fast network. Using ShutterSnitch, yet, things have been less arguable, as well as that’s being inexhaustible. I managed to get direct transfers operative just twice over the past days, and even afterwards not all the photos would make it to a iPad. And approbation, I followed the instructions, and review a forum threads as well as did what I was ostensible to do. But really, this should only work, as well as it doesn’t, creation it useless as anything more than a newness.

Direct Uploading

The alternative functions, similar to approach uploading to a web, work good. But as I would never send the photo to Flickr but during slightest a little tweaking, it’s indecisive for me at slightest. It’s additionally speed-limited by your internet connection, that means which vast files will take a whilst to upload and thus empty a battery. Which brings me to…

Battery Life

In reduced, regulating a Eye-Fi for wireless send drains a battery quick. Geo-tagging doesn’t crop up to means the complaint, though a strain of lucent images opposite the network sucks during the battery holdup. If you suspicion a days of stealing the card from your camera to transfer photos were over, you’re passed wrong. It’s a great thing a label comes with the own reader.

More

There have been more niggles. The Eye-Fi Center software, used for configuring a label, is clunky and irritating. For e.g., it pops up a dialog box each time you save the setting (and you have to save prior to you can pierce to the dissimilar tab). This needs to be clicked to boot it, each singular time, as well as which gets aged, fast.

The application also runs on Adobe Air as well as inexcusably installs the runtime upon your mechanism but asking. The first thing you’ll know about it is when Air starts contacting Adobe’s servers as well as perplexing to refurbish itself.

The end seems to be which if you don’t fire many images, or if you take crappy, low-res snapshots and send them true up to Facebook, afterwards a single of a cheaper Eye-Fi cards competence be for you. On a alternative palm, you can do all that with the cellphone you already have. If you’re a pro, or an enthusiastic amateur like me, the frustrations and limitations have been so numerous you should probably look elsewhere. For wireless transfer, suck it up and make use of the USB wire. For geo-tagging, buy the poor GPS-logger. Right now, a “Pro” chronicle of a Eye-Fi line is half-baked during most appropriate.

Eye-Fi Pro [Eye-Fi]