Eye-Fi And MiFi, A Great Combination

I bought an Eye-Fi 4GB Share card recently for my camcorder. For those that don’t know what an Eye-Fi card is it’s an SD card with a built in WiFi chip, it allows you to transfer photos and videos over wifi on your home network to a computer without having to deal with docks/cables/card readers etc. Once the card is configured with your chosen access points it’s just a matter of turning the camera on and the transfer automatically begins. Depending on the type of card you get you can also send photos and videos directly from your camera to online services e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Facebook etc.

The great thing is that you don’t have to be on your home network or even near a computer to use one. If you turn on the camera to transfer media and it doesn’t detect your computer, either because you’re on a different network or the computer is turned off it will upload them to the eye-fi servers for storage until a time when your computer can be detected.

A few months back I bought a MiFi unit from 3UK with a 5GB per month data plan. With this access point configured on the card I can take photos and videos when out and about then upload them to their servers and share them on Flickr instantly wherever I am. Then when i get back home I just turn on the computer and everything taken that day gets downloaded and imported into a new event within iPhoto, or you can just have them downloaded into a new folder depending on your chosen configuration.

One of the reasons I tend to mainly take photos with my iPhone (other than because it’s always with me) is because of the lack of connectivity a regular camera/camcorder has. But all that has changed thanks to the Eye-Fi and I carry a camera with me a lot more knowing that if I take a photo or video that I would like to share I can do so instantly.

This photo was taken with my Sanyo camcorder and an Eye-Fi card, then uploaded to Flickr straight away whiles I was there using the MiFi. They are quite expensive when compared to a regular SD card of the same capacity, but if you like to share photos or hate dealing with cables docks and card readers then the eye-fi is worth the extra cost.