Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card, $50 (4GB)
Let me start by saying I’m super obsessive about keeping my photos organized, backed up and accessible anywhere (which is interesting because I’m not a very organized person in most other things). At any given point, all my photos are synced to about 5 computers, backed up online in 2-3 places, and viewable from a web photo gallery. I have many thousand pictures from about 10 years and they’re all organized and cataloged.
The premise of the Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card (Amazon link) is to make this whole process easier by wirelessly uploading your pictures to your computer and any online site you choose, just by turning the camera on. Since all the magic is in the card, it works with [pretty much] any digital camera that takes SD cards.
When I first got it, I’ll admit, I was skeptical. It did the uploading part fine, but I didn’t really see how this would actually save me any work — I still had to catalog the photos and upload them to various locations and computers. But as I set up the software, I quickly realized this was going to be a HUGE timesaver. With one quick setting, I could have the Eye-Fi send my pictures not only to my computer, but also to the online backup site I use (which happens to be Gallery2). The more I took pictures, the more I realized how much easier it was to just turn the camera on when I got home, and let the pictures flow automatically to several places at once.
So basically, this ended the days where my camera had hundreds of pictures sitting on it, waiting to be hooked up to the computer and moved to the right place. Now, the pictures go there immediately, and I just have to move them to the right folders. They’re backed up and available anywhere, effortlessly. In fact, I took some pictures the other day with an old SD card, and it’s frustrating having to find the cord, hook it up, and do all the transfers myself.
There only drawback I’ve found so far is that, while small, the Eye-Fi will drain the battery on your camera a bit faster since it is set to automatically seek out wireless networks and connect to them. So bring your charger just in case if you’re going on a long trip. I ended up missing the last few shots of a ski trip because my battery was dead. A friend had a camera too, so it wasn’t a big deal, but going forward, I’ll just make sure to charge every night or two when I’m taking a lot of pictures.
Overall, awesome product. If you’re looking for the best way to manage a huge set of pictures, I suggest using Google’s Picasa Web Albums, since they let you store online and it also works great with the Picasa desktop program. If you sign up for one of their $50/yr+ plans, they’ll even give you a free card. If you want a little bit more geeky of a solution, check out the post on my other blog, The Holy Grail of Photo Management. I wrote it before I had the Eye-Fi, so some of the steps there are even easier now.
Good luck!