Digital camera, memory card, and wifi

Any of you readers into digital photography?

I was wondering about a way to transfer photos from my camera, a Canon EOS 20D, to my computer wirelessly.

Looking around a bit I found a cool flash memory card with integrated wifi called Eye-Fi Pro X2.

My camera – I believe – is too old to handle this new and very cool card.

Any other ideas?

Otherwise, I suppose one of these days I will need to deal with my camera, which has some … well… duct tape involved.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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11 Comments

  1. Gaz says:

    I was going to say, “send the memory card by carrier pidgeon” but, judging by your comment on duct tape, it sounds like you’ve already tried that with the whole camera!

    You know what they say about duct tape: if you can’t fix it with duct tape then you’re not using enough.

  2. Warmiaczka says:

    How about this:
    http://www.wi-pics.com/
    It does support Canon 20D.
    (Looks professional – that is, expensive…)
    What’s the distance between your Eos and computer? Somebody has told me if it’s more than 10 m, LAN will not work.
    (I’m so attached to my Canons that I’ve never tried any wireless thing. You have been warned.)

  3. rhetoric57 says:

    According to Wikipedia, your Canon can use either Compact Flash card type: the II is a little thicker.
    With all the duct tape is the CF card accessible? To use the Wi-fi SD card – about $90/not cheap… – you will need a CF adapter – about $15 according to Amazon.com. You may also need to update the Canon’s firmware. Tim

  4. zapman449 says:

    No, your 20D will not support the eye-fi. Your camera uses CF[1] cards, and eye-fi only makes SD[2] cards.

    CF cards have basically been relegated to the very top end professional cameras these days[3][4]… Eye-fi, being a more ‘mass market’ card is wisely only building/selling SD cards.

    The official Canon Wireless transmitter for the 20D is the WFT-E1, priced around $950 new, but discontinued now. It had decent range, but only supported the ‘B’ wireless speed[5], and required an available FTP server.

    –Jason

    [1] Compact Flash
    [2] laughably named ‘Secure Digital’.
    [3] and they’re disappearing from that too.
    [4] And top end pro cameras have more expensive options available to them for wireless.
    [5] 802.11b, not even G unfortunately.

  5. KevinSymonds says:

    You can take a memory card, put it into a storage expansion and download that way.

    -KJS

  6. It is possible. Alternative is possibly use the Canon adapter (B-only speed) which costs approx $1000 and must be removed to replace batteries.

    Potential Problems:
    1. You need an SDHC (not simply SD to Compact Flash (CF) adapter.
    SD requires less than 2GB. Using the adapter is not directly supported by Eye-Fi, but many Canon (and other) users with CF are doing this. $20-25 investment.

    2. The amount of metal metal of the older cameras and also on the CF adapter card cut down on wifi reception and transmission range.
    Some have removed the metal cage of the CF to get better range. (Maybe a chance to break out more duct tape). The use of adapters also creates some latency, but CF is an infrastructure extender so it is not like storage translation. It may be possible to find a bare card or plastic cased adapter (although metal is the spec). Transmission takes place on as camera completes the file write (synchronously).

    3. This only supports direct WiFi, not WiFi that requires a web page authentication. It can work with ad hoc or access point setup.

    I have met and talked with the owner/creator and the key is to get the 8GB pro version which will soon (if not already) support connectivity to your iPhone as well. Only the 8GB Pro edition is capable of the firmware update which is planned to be free.

    Worst case:
    You spend $25 and are ready for using Eye-Fi on an SDHC-based camera and have an adapter to use SD and SDHC cards in your current camera.

  7. SK Bill says:

    I use EyeFi cards in both of my Canon cameras (Rebel t2i and an older PAS) and am sold on them. If you take a lot of photos, in my opinion it would be worth it to upgrade the camera and get an Eye-Fi card. If you use an online photo service (I use SmugMug), you can transfer direct to it anywhere you have WiFi — extremely handy when traveling. I also transfer photos wirelessly to my iPad or iPhone via the EyeFi, as a kind of belt-and-suspenders approach to always having things backed up off-camera, even when not around WiFi.

    The downside of wireless transfer from EyeFi: It isn’t quick (if you have more than a few photos, it can take quite a while to get all of them uploaded), and it does use what seems to me to be a lot of battery. (Note that if you have the EyeFi and iPad/iPhone set up to transfer photos wirelessly from the camera, you won’t notice the delay as much, since the photos will transfer while you are between locations/shots; however, you will need to keep an eye out for low battery warnings — I carry a second, charged, battery for the Rebel and backup AAs for the PAS.)

  8. SK Bill: That was helpful.

    Do you have any opinion about the relative merits of sticking with the 20D or getting a new camera? I guess my question revolves around whether or not these new Rebel models are actually superior the old 20D.

  9. SK Bill says:

    Father, I don’t own a 20D and have never used one. The reviewers seem to think the Rebel models are an improvement over the 20D. However, at least one comparison cites a few specifics in which the 20D may have an edge over the t2i (for example) (clearly, whether these are an edge or not depends on the user, and the t2i has a much longer list of “better” items in the comparison): http://snapsort.com/compare/Canon_EOS_20D-vs-Canon_EOS_Rebel_T2i

    I have chosen not to “upgrade” to the t3i because it doesn’t seem to me to offer any significant benefits (for my purposes) over my current camera. I admit that my purchase of the t2i may have been more in the category of “ooh, shiny!” and it was almost a dead heat between it and the similar Nikon model – Canon won because of the menus and ease of use.

    I do highly recommend the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 telephoto lens for the t2i/t3i as a walkaround lens, as an addition to or in lieu of the kit lenses that Canon offers, should you decide to get a new camera. On our trip to the Baltic last month, the kit lens never came out of the bag — the Tamron did everything, including great macro shots.

  10. Organorum says:

    I have the Canon EOS 5D – I still have my original EOS 1000 from twenty-odd years ago! – but I like to make sure there is a hard wire between my camera and my iMac.. Somehow I don’t think I’d trust a wireless download of precious photos.

    Btw…it was my 5D which I used to take photos of the Latin Mass in York Minster (U.K.) earlier this year, some of which appeared on the NLM website!

  11. Peter in Canberra says:

    Father, I can’t quite picture what the damage to your camera is but it does sound like contemplating another camera body might be in order. I understnad that one can get very good deals on refurbs and second hand kit in the USA. Another option might be repair? Though that is sometimes expensive.

    Good luck, and thanks for your bird photos.

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