# Eyefi card question



## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

Is there a way for me to take a picture using my Eyefi card (wifi enabled SD card) and have it download automatically to my computer and show up in lightroom 4 beta (like a USB tethered capture but without the USB tether, wirelessly) Thanks a lot


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## NickA (Mar 2, 2012)

Yes.  Is your computer on Wi-Fi?  Check out Eye-Fi's web site for instructions on how to setup your computer (or phone/tablet) to grab the pics after you take them.


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## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

Can I set Lightroom to automatically pick up photos from a certain folder and then have Lightroom full screen it automatically?


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## Big Mike (Mar 2, 2012)

Yes, you should.  
You set up an 'Auto Import' on a 'watched folder'.  Then set your wifi card to put the cards into that folder.

As I understand it, the wifi cards are painfully slow though.  So unless you can set it to only send small JPEGs...this would really slow down a shoot.


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## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

They are slow, but not as bad as one would expect! Oh, for anyone with a wifi card. Can it be used on a ad-hoc network?


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## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

Ps I am doing a test shoot tonight, will see how fast it is and let you all know


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## Big Mike (Mar 2, 2012)

iKokomo said:


> They are slow, but not as bad as one would expect! Oh, for anyone with a wifi card. Can it be used on a ad-hoc network?


What type & size of files are you transmitting?

I'm thinking that it would be pretty darn slow for 21MP Raw files.  But if you could shoot Raw+small JPEG, and only have it transmit the JPEG, it would exponentially faster.


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## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

Thanks for that! I forgot that last time I used it I was taking eBay photos in small mode. Well I will see later on tonight or tomorrow!


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## NickA (Mar 2, 2012)

iKokomo said:


> They are slow, but not as bad as one would expect! Oh, for anyone with a wifi card. Can it be used on a ad-hoc network?



Yes.  It will actually create it's own ad hoc network.

Speed isn't bad for me when I have it connected to the iPad, but I'm transferring jpegs.  Maybe about 10-20 seconds for a 5-6 MB file.  The EyeFi software is not the most stable in the world either.  Sometimes if I exit the app and restart it, it will transfer twice as fast.


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## iKokomo (Mar 2, 2012)

NickA said:
			
		

> Yes.  It will actually create it's own ad hoc network.
> 
> Speed isn't bad for me when I have it connected to the iPad, but I'm transferring jpegs.  Maybe about 10-20 seconds for a 5-6 MB file.  The EyeFi software is not the most stable in the world either.  Sometimes if I exit the app and restart it, it will transfer twice as fast.



Is it possible to have my card send just a small jpeg over the network and keep the raw file on the card for download later via USB cable or card reader?


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## NickA (Mar 2, 2012)

iKokomo said:


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I don't think so, but that would be awesome if it could.  I think anything it writes to the card it tries to send.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Big Mike said:


> Yes, you should.
> You set up an 'Auto Import' on a 'watched folder'.  Then set your wifi card to put the cards into that folder.
> 
> As I understand it, the wifi cards are painfully slow though.  So unless you can set it to only send small JPEGs...this would really slow down a shoot.



Our cards are Class 6 cards, which sustain write speeds of 12MBps (mega bytes). 
They upload at 12mbps (mega bits) so that's 1.5MB.

So just divide your RAW file or JPG, by 1.5, and that's how quickly the card will upload to your computer, BEST CASE. It depends on how strong your Wi-Fi is, how close you are to the computer or router or tablet, etc...


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

iKokomo said:


> They are slow, but not as bad as one would expect! Oh, for anyone with a wifi card. Can it be used on a ad-hoc network?



Our Pro X2 card supports ad-hoc. But you may not need to use ad-hoc. You can buy ANY card, and enable Eye-Fi Direct, to your computer:

Enable Direct Mode to computer | Eye-Fi Support


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

iKokomo said:


> NickA said:
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ABSOLUTELY.

You can choose to transfer the RAW, OR NOT. Totally up to you.

When I shoot in the studio with my D300s, I DO NOT have the RAW uploads, upload through the Eye-Fi Card. I just have the JPG's upload to my tablet, so that I could check the shots. In that case, the uploads are nearly instant, and the entire studio experience is awesome.

When I shoot my kids on the weekend, I never shoot RAW, and all my JPG's go through my Android phone, via Verizon's 4G LTE, to the cloud, and to my Mac back home 
When I shoot events, I shoot small JPG and have them go up to Facebook, in real-time.

The cards can be totally tweaked to do a lot of stuff. We give you a lot of knobs, but try to make it simple, so that "mom" and "dad" would be able to figure it out.

There is also the added fun that you can have with Selective Transfer and Selective Share 

Transfer Mode | Eye-Fi Support

Thx,

Ziv.
Eye-Fi co-founder


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## 2WheelPhoto (Mar 2, 2012)

You may want to use Lightroom's tether option. Wi-Fi is slow as Christmas for transferring RAW files to be processed in Lightroom.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

NickA said:


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I'm afraid that that's incorrect. Please see my responses above.


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## NickA (Mar 2, 2012)

gillat said:


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Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that.  It's a great product and I use it a lot.  Something like this feature should be highlighted in the small user guide that comes packaged with the card.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

NickA said:


> iKokomo said:
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> > They are slow, but not as bad as one would expect! Oh, for anyone with a wifi card. Can it be used on a ad-hoc network?
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The Pro X2 card can connect to an ad-hoc network. Correct. But Eye-Fi Direct is an infrastructure network, so it's just a normal Wi-Fi network, and any mobile device, or a computer, can connect to the card, as "normal" Wi-Fi.

Direct Mode FAQ | Eye-Fi Support

I think that our software can be improved. Totally agree. But if just by restarting it, you get faster speeds - that's a bug. Please contact our support, and they'll ask you for log files, and we may be able to fix something, with your help. I've never heard of that, on any platform.

Our speed is 12mbps, so a 5-6MB file should NOT take 10-20 seconds. If your Wi-Fi is solid (and Wi-Fi, at times, is pure voodoo magic) -- a 5-6 MB file should take about 2 seconds, not 10-20.

Thx.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

NickA said:


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Thx. We try to keep the QuickStart Guide to just the barebones essentials. Remember -- you guys are super technical. This product is actually not made for you   It's made for the Wal-Mart and Target Mom   That's why we sell there.

For you guys -- we have our forums, our support site, etc... There are tons of articles and we've just revamped our support site, so you should check it out.

If you just go through every pane in the Eye-Fi Center software, you'll see all of our features.

Thx --

Ziv.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Mar 2, 2012)

gillat said:


> I'm afraid that that's incorrect. Please see my responses above.



Do you know the usual delay time for a small jpeg?  A friend showed me his and it was still 4-6 seconds.  Totally unacceptable for a shoot. Maybe his config was wrong.  If its "instantaneous" you may have solved my dilemma for the D700 camera to ipad on shoots.


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## NickA (Mar 2, 2012)

gillat said:


> Thx. We try to keep the QuickStart Guide to just the barebones essentials. Remember -- you guys are super technical. This product is actually not made for you   It's made for the Wal-Mart and Target Mom   That's why we sell there.
> 
> For you guys -- *we have our forums*, our support site, etc... There are tons of articles and we've just revamped our support site, so you should check it out.
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> ...



The forums are a good resource for this product.  And I see you've recently updated your iPad app, so I'll give that another go too.


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

Mine doesn't work most of the time, even 10 feet from the wireless router and with sending med size jpgs. I keep meaning to return it.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

2WheelPhoto said:


> gillat said:
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The D700 is a type I CF camera, so we don't support that, at all. Feel free to google, and you'll see that it's possible, but it's ugly. You need to surgery a CF adapter to fit into your CF Type I slot, because all CF adapters are Type II.

Like I said -- Wi-Fi is voodoo magic. You may have your hand over the card door, and your hand, which is made of water -- will block most of the transmission. You may have other Wi-Fi noise, which will slow down the tranfers. You may be far from the router. Your router my be old, etc... But under the best conditions, our cards upload at a max speed of 12mbps, which is 1.5MBps.

I DO NOT believe that 1.5MBps is quick enough for a studio shoot, while shooting RAW. I DO believe that it's amazingly quick enough if you shoot RAW + JPG, and only upload the JPG, during a studio shoot.

BUT

The card does not upload, while it's writing. Then, when the write is done, the card resumes the upload. So if you're writing RAW + JPG, during the 2 seconds or so that the camera wrote the RAW + JPG files to the card, the card is paused from uploads. So it may seem slower, because the card isn't even uploading.

In my D300s, I have the RAW going to the CF slot, and the small JPG's going to the SD slot. So I have 0 delay 

You should just get a D800. It's Eye-Fi Connected

Is the Eye-Fi card compatible with my camera? | Eye-Fi


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


> Mine doesn't work most of the time, even 10 feet from the wireless router and with sending med size jpgs. I keep meaning to return it.



Before you return it - you should call our Support line. We had 300,000,000 photos and videos upload from Eye-Fi Cards, last year   These cards work. 

But I have to admit -- our software needs to be improved. We're working on it.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Mar 2, 2012)

Ok thanks for the reply and info about the D700


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

2WheelPhoto said:


> Ok thanks for the reply and info about the D700



no prob


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## IByte (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


> Mine doesn't work most of the time, even 10 feet from the wireless router and with sending med size jpgs. I keep meaning to return it.


 I would plug it into your computer(into the the USB card device) to make sure you are up to date on your firmware lil lady.  As a precaution make sure your are connecting to the right network, it never hurts to be sure.  For the record my Android app work nicely with the Eye Fi card 8).....Android FTW!!!


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

IByte said:


> Bossy said:
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> > Mine doesn't work most of the time, even 10 feet from the wireless router and with sending med size jpgs. I keep meaning to return it.
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That's good advice.

If after the firmware update, the card works, in the reader, you may be having a problem with your camera, for example, turning the power off, to the card slot.

There are many variables. But if you guys don't feel shy calling Support -- I promise that you won't regret it. 

Our products have to work with a matrix of:

cameras and them turning power off (and that's why we have the Eye-Fi Connected program, where today, 85% of cameras know about Eye-Fi)
firewalls
routers
ISP's
OS's
mobile OS's

It's an insanely large matrix.

Our Support team knows how to handle it all


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

IByte said:


> Bossy said:
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> > Mine doesn't work most of the time, even 10 feet from the wireless router and with sending med size jpgs. I keep meaning to return it.
> ...



Its all up to date, and my wireless works across the house for other devices, yet it only works literally 10 feet from the router. And that was once, I haven't been able to get it to work again. 

I shouldn't have to mess with it that much, its not a inexpensive card. It actually didn't even fit right in the camera, it kept getting stuck and I had to google to find out its extremely common and I had to sand it down a smidge. I know this is your baby Gillat but it has a lot of issues, I'm surprised its even out for sale.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Have you called Support?



They will run through a few things with you, like your camera, router channel, etc...


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

No, I haven't called.


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Oh, one more thing -- about the card slot. Again -- just google it. My D300s has a tight slot. Most cards get stuck. The D90 has a similar slot. Camera OEM's may decide to make the slots more or less tight.

I'm not saying that we're perfect. Far from it. But we're not the only ones making SD cards that are snug...


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


> No, I haven't called.



Please do. They'll help you out, and may even decide that you need a new card. Who knows. But they'll run through a few scenarios with you.


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

Thanks for your replies.


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## IByte (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


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One you might have damaged the internal components of the card, or I would reformat the card completely from your camera, then start from scratch and go through the process of setting up the card within your network.  It's going to be little annoying, but you will rule out everything and know you may have a defective card.  If that fails use the card for another camera like a P&S should be able to accept them also.   Hope this helps Bossy.


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

IByte said:


> One you might have damaged the internal components of the card, or I would reformat the card completely from your camera, then start from scratch and go through the process of setting up the card within your network.  It's going to be little annoying, but you will rule out everything and know you may have a defective card.  If that fails use the card for another camera like a P&S should be able to accept them also.   Hope this helps Bossy.





Thanks iByte.:hug:: I don't know how I would've damaged anything  internal, sd cards are actually pretty hardy (I have one that broke in  half in my backpack, but  I could actually still insert it into my  laptop to save the images ).  I've done everything from scratch, I reset my wifi, reformated card,  redownloaded the programs, I've probably spent over 2 hours just trying  to get it to work again. (and the sanding was before it worked the first  time, so I know that didn't hurt anything. Its only plastic, anyway.) I  haven't called yet though, so I'll try to do that when I have a second.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


> IByte said:
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> > One you might have damaged the internal components of the card, or I would reformat the card completely from your camera, then start from scratch and go through the process of setting up the card within your network.  It's going to be little annoying, but you will rule out everything and know you may have a defective card.  If that fails use the card for another camera like a P&S should be able to accept them also.   Hope this helps Bossy.
> ...



Please post up the experience when you do


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Curious to hear as well. 

BTW, Bossy -- just wondering -- what camera are you using?

EDIT: oops -- just saw -- you're on a D7000.

AMAZING camera. Love it. TOTALLY sticky SD slot. But hey, you have 2 of them, so if we could get you up and running, you may even use 2 Eye-Fi Cards 

Ya, the D7000 has an usually sticky slot. Now, I totally understand why you said that it's a tough fit. But you shouldn't need to sand it down. Poor card :-(


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

gillat said:


> Curious to hear as well.
> 
> BTW, Bossy -- just wondering -- what camera are you using?



A Nikon D7000. I usually send Raw to the #1 slot and med jpgs to #2 with the eyefi card in that one. The time it worked they went to your program and then to LR3.


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## Bossy (Mar 2, 2012)

Ok so I just got off the phone with CS. The gal I talked to was really nice, there seems to be an issue with my firewall that was stopping the images from going through (on a mac, OS X, EyeFi Helper Allowed) but if I turn it off they jet through fast enough. I tried it both with Raw to slot 2 and Jpeg to slot 2 as well as Norm Jpg to slot 1 and both worked after I turned off the Firewall. Range is still minimal, but that could be on my end. There's also an issue with the card reader but she offered to send out a new one so that should fix that.

Thanks for the help, I'm overall really encourage that your CS is so awesome, so I'll continue to use EyeFi and pass on the good word


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## gillat (Mar 2, 2012)

Bossy said:


> Ok so I just got off the phone with CS. The gal I talked to was really nice, there seems to be an issue with my firewall that was stopping the images from going through (on a mac, OS X, EyeFi Helper Allowed) but if I turn it off they jet through fast enough. I tried it both with Raw to slot 2 and Jpeg to slot 2 as well as Norm Jpg to slot 1 and both worked after I turned off the Firewall. Range is still minimal, but that could be on my end. There's also an issue with the card reader but she offered to send out a new one so that should fix that.
> 
> Thanks for the help, I'm overall really encourage that your CS is so awesome, so I'll continue to use EyeFi and pass on the good word



Excellent.

OK, so if the firewall prevents the photos from coming in, the card won't be able to find your local machine, and will re-route through our servers. That'll be much slower. We should figure out how to fix your firewall issue. 

Are you on a PC or Mac? We should be able to create an opening in your firewall software. That's what we try to do, with all firewalls. On PC's, some firewalls may be harder to configure then others.

In terms of the reader -- ya, if you're not on a rev V reader -- we'll send you a new one. So she did the right thing.



Cool.

The range could be maximized by changing the channel on your router. For example, if your router is set to the default 6 -- you may find that changing it to 1 or 11 (or 10) may help. We try to turn our card's antenna to some average channel span, but like I said before -- Wi-Fi is voodoo magic. A different channel may work, in your case.


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## IByte (Mar 2, 2012)

Oooooo a hug and a like, feeling the love for the computer tech here lol.  Hmmm you have ........a Mac Oo?


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## PhotoGav (Mar 22, 2012)

iKokomo said:
			
		

> Is it possible to have my card send just a small jpeg over the network and keep the raw file on the card for download later via USB cable or card reader?



Yes, the EyeFi Pro will do this. Great feature!


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