Hi Everyone,
I had no idea how my world would change when I purchased
my first Smartphone, but I have to admit that how I interact with the world is
vastly different now. I won’t go into all the specific ways that my life has
been changed, but one thing is for certain; it has definitely impacted my
outlook on photography.
As soon as I got my Smartphone I very quickly realized
how easy it was to share photos taken with the phone with my family and friends
via social media. Pre-Smartphone, in order to share an image to a friend or
family member via social media, I would have to upload my photos from my
camera, and then upload them to whatever site I wanted to share them on. With a
Smartphone, I can just take the image and instantly share it with whoever I
want.
Although this is very convenient, you end up with image
files that are much inferior to an image taken with a dedicated digital camera.
I was willing to sacrifice image quality for convenience in many cases, but
this trade-off is no longer necessary for most people.
Eye-Fi has recently announced Direct Mode for their X2
SDHC wireless memory cards, which allows a user of these cards to connect their
digital camera wirelessly to their Smartphone or tablet. This means a user of
these memory cards can quickly access photos that they just took with their
camera on their Smartphone, and share them via Facebook, Twitter, etc…, while
still retaining a high quality copy of these images.
The Direct Mode actually creates its own Wi-Fi network
that your mobile devices can connect to. Keep in mind that this will require
installation of the appropriate free mobile application on your mobile device,
and as of right now Eye-Fi is concentrating on an iPhone/iPad and Android
applications.
Direct mode is included on new Eye-Fi X2 SDHC memory
cards, and if you purchased an X2 memory card in the past you can upgrade your card to include Direct Mode free of charge.
Another service that Eye-Fi cards feature that, as a
photographer, I could see being very useful is Eye-Fi View. This service allows
a user to wirelessly upload their images to be shared with approved family and
friends, or to be transferred to your personal storage device at a later date.
No more worrying that you might lose the vacation photos you just took.
For me this seems like a very handy service; I can be on
location, upload what I have shot, and then access these images at a later
date. I should point out that, with the basic service, your images will only be
stored for seven days, but Eye-Fi does offer their Premium service which would
give you unlimited storage and access to your images on their servers. Their
premium Eye-Fi View service costs $4.99 a month, or $49.99 a year.
There are many other features of these cards that I can
envision users finding very handy, and to read all about these cards you can
visit their website. The only real criticism I have for these cards is that
they don’t have a Compact Flash version; most Professional cameras primarily
use Compact Flash memory cards for storage, but I could see a number of
business uses for this technology.
I have to say I am thoroughly amazed that in such a small
package these memory cards can not only hold up to eight gigabytes of data and
connect to an existing wireless network, but can transmit their own wireless
signal to a nearby wireless device. If my camera took SDHC memory cards I would
be getting one today.
Happy shooting!
Karina-BBY
on:
A Gift for my Wife
on:
How To Gift A Mobile Phone
