Eye-Fi

A few weeks ago I posted an entry touting the entry - level SLR camera, namely the Nikon D40. I am a very happy D40 owner, it serves as my secondary camera and a great learning tool for the family members. We use Picasa as a "cloud" storage for photos and one thing I would really love to have (and have been writing about for a while) is eliminating the PC as a man-in-the-middle between a camera and an Internet photo storage / sharing site.

Last week I have finally found some time to configure and test the new release of the before mentioned Eye-Fi SD card. Eye-Fi is a special storage card. On the outside it looks and behaves just like any other SD card. 2GB capacity may not sound big these days, but it is plenty enough for casual usage. D40 reports it can store some 500 snaps on it, which is more than enough. But the Eye-Fi is not an ordinary storage card. It has a dedicated computer and a communication device inside. Namely an 802.11 b/g WiFi transceiver and antenna. And what it does it automatically uploads pictures to the Internet. Take a picture, wait a few seconds and it is automagically on the photo sharing site of your choice. Provided there is a WiFi network present.

It still takes a while to configure (this is done by plugging it via the supplied USB reader to the PC and running the configuration software). You set up a list of known WiFi networks and passwords, destination targets (be it a folder on your machine or an Internet digital photo service). For direct-to-PC uploads, you have to take care of the firewall software (in my case this required a reboot of Vista OS). And you also have to take care of the camera power settings (to keep the Eye-Fi powered long enough to let it transfer the files). The good news is there are Eye-Fi "aware" cameras coming up (the Nikon D60 is a good example here).

After the configuration is done, everything works as expected. You snap the pictures and they automatically land on the Web. You turn your PC on and the pictures are downloaded to your local folder. It is exactly what the digital photography experience should be for most of us. Seamless and asynchronous. The next step should be digital HD television sets pull down those pictures with a touch of a remote. Beautiful, easy and seamless PC-less world. With concepts like the Eye-Fi it is not that far away.