I remember growing up in the 70’s the “I Spy” series of books which covered everything as diverse as Trees, to Aeroplanes.

I remembered them yesterday as I was picking up my eye fi card from my local Jessops.

For those not familiar with the product it effectively combines a SDHC media card with a WiFi link, so potentially enables most SDHC compatible   cameras to become Internet enabled. Higher end cameras such as the Nikon D700 tend to be based around CF memory, whilst a CF to SDHC adapter can be used, eye fi themselves do not support this functionality, and forum postings would indicate that a reduced range tends to apply and other assorted issues.

Twiggy my Bengal cat was the first to make it to the ether, hence here picture associated with this blog.

The eye fi pro card enables the camera to effectively beam up the images captured to selected social media sites and also enables remote storage of the files until the “host” computer is switched back on again, when the files (RAW and jpeg) are routed back to the host computer.

How this works in the field remains to be proven, but I intend to go to the Kent 2020 show on Thursday to see if I can get a live feed from the show, if it works out the pictures will end up here.

What I am sure it will remind me is the need as a professional photographer to get it right in the Camera, as these images will not have been processed in Photoshop.

What will be even more interesting is when the next generation of cameras come onto the market with WiFi functionality built in.

I look forward to undertaking a full review down the line when I’ve had the card for a while and also perhaps found some of the commercial uses for the card such as delivering photographs back to the point of sale in event photography.

Roy 21st April 2010