Wi-FI camera

June 6, 2008 1:17 PM

How to use Wi-fi or eye-fi flash memory in my compact flash based DSLR.

I have a Sony Alpha 100 that I love. I want to use an eye-fi card or something similarly wi-fi to facilitate the uploading of photos wherever I am. The camera uses Compact Flash. I see you can get an SD to Compact Flash converter. Just curious if it would work, or if it would break hamper it so it doesn't work. what do other people do, besides just normal transferring with the card or a cable?

posted by Amby72 to technology (10 comments total)

Googling for "eye-fi compact flash" immediately answered this question - yes, you can just use an adapter, and yes, it will work without a problem. Heck, it may (this part isn't as clear based on my five minutes' searching) even come with an adapter. Or you can buy it in a bundle with one. Anyway, yes, adapt away.
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:51 PM on June 6

I know I can physically do it, I just want to know if anyone has done it, and if it worked alright with the compact flash to SD converter.
posted by Amby72 at 2:10 PM on June 6

Whoa there partner! Not so fast.

Check out the Eye-Fi compatibility page. Specifically, this quote from the top of the page:

Note: The only manufacturers that are known not to work are Olympus and Sony, since they do not support the SD format.

Will it work through an adapter? Maybe, maybe not. I have a small, no-name camera that supports SD cards but does not support the WiFi feature of my Eye-Fi card, though it still takes pictures just fine. So even though a camera can write to an SD card -- even an Eye-Fi SD card -- it does not necessarily follow that Eye-Fi's WiFi will work.

Caveat emptor.
posted by mosk at 2:15 PM on June 6

thanks mosk, that is the kind of info I am looking for. hopefully some people have tried to do this. most regular sony cameras only take memeory sticks so the conversion would be pretty hard. I guess I am wondering how this function is implemented.
posted by Amby72 at 2:18 PM on June 6

I have an eye-fi card, and it automatically uploads via wifi when plugged into a standard card reader instead of my camera. I think the eye-fi card simply does an auto upload whenever it has power, and doesn't require anything else from the camera. My guess is - yes, this will probably work.

However, it doesn't transfer movies off of my powershot, so no idea what it would do with raw files. Jpegs ought to work though.
posted by Caviar at 2:27 PM on June 6

I wonder if it is a power issue for the sd card, that it requires a certain level, and there could be different levels provided. I don't know. Maybe a directory structure issue. not sure. Looking for DSLR users who can shed some light.
posted by Amby72 at 2:30 PM on June 6

I think it's primarily a power issue as well, though there may be other showstoppers buried deeper beneath this primary issue.

FWIW, I was trying to use it with a FlyCamOne2, a very low power, small form factor "stick" type camera that runs from a very small rechargeable battery. The WiFi feature would work fine from my Canon, but not from the FlyCamOne2. Meh.

As for supported formats, buried in the Eye-Fi site is the nugget that it only support JPEG "at this time".
posted by mosk at 2:54 PM on June 6

You should just ask here. CF uses more power than SD so I would guess you might be okay, but eyefi support should know for sure.
posted by damn dirty ape at 3:14 PM on June 6

Yeah, I was disappointed that the Eye-Fi was SD only - until I read this DPreview article which mentioned the dismal transfer speed: "if you came home with a card full of images (2 GB) it would take three hours to download all images (if the camera battery could last that long)." Yikes! Not an answer to your actual question, I realize, but thought you'd like to know if you didn't already.
posted by zanni at 11:32 PM on June 6

Re: transfer speed - I think it's less useful as your primary method of getting pictures off of your camera. I use it on my powershot instead of my 40D, and it makes getting pictures off the camera onto flickr completely effortless. This saves a LOT of time when I just want a quick picture to share with someone, or to illustrate something. For me, this isn't often gigs of photos, since if I'm going to be taking that many, I'll use my dSLR in raw mode anyway.

This is sort of agreeing with the above comment, and keep that in mind if you're intending to use it with your primary camera.
posted by Caviar at 1:20 PM on June 7