I know the D800 manual say it will work with a D800 but I am wondering just how practical this is with the D800.
With a 12mp camera I can see this working pretty good but moving the huge NEF files from the D800 seems to me will take way too long to download.

To me using an eye-fi card to just use at home seems useless, you might as well plug your camera into the computer with the usb cord, it will be way faster.

Using an eye-fi card on location to use as an instant backup by downloading your photos as you take them to a laptop through wi-fi seems like a great idea ..... but this will only work if it is fast enough.

I have never used an eye-fi card but was about to go buy one when I realized that it might not be feasible with the D800.

Anybody here using an ey-fi card ? do you think it will be able to download the photos fast enough when using it in the D800 ??

I looked at this to , the amazon reviews seem good . Most say its great / works as advertised .
Some were sending it to smart phones . Being that even a tethered monitor runs slow loading RAW files I have to agree with you . Maybe small jpg.s are quick to transfer ?

Perhaps there is a quicker version coming as its listed in the manual as a useable transfer .

Hans K.

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I have an Eye-Fi 8GB Pro card (which is a SD type card).

All of my cameras use a CF card except my Nikon D7000 and FujiFilm X100. I have only used the card in the X100 to transfer images to an iPad. The X100 is a 12 megapixel camera. Those transfers go very fast, however the upload from the iPad to the Eye-Fi website which then sends them to your computer is very slow.

Also keep in mind the Eye-Fi card is a class 6 speed card and is very slow compared to the class 10 cards. It is very noticbly slower in the X100 compared to a Sandisk class 10 card and I am only using jpeg images which are usually only 4mb file after compression. I can't image how slow D800 nef file would be writing to the card. The actual transfer might be fast to the iPad but I would think you get overall poor performance unless you were only taking a few pictures.

Obviously, CF cards aren't supported, so you might have some luck with a fast CF card in slot 1 on the camera and write Nef files to it and write medium size Jpeg file to slot 2 which has the Eye-Fi card.

Dudley

One other thing to add that might help..

Yesterday I took the X100 to a local arboretum and took 22 pictures and when I got back in the car, I woke up the iPad so the X100 could transfer the pictures to the iPad.

The total size of the 22 pictures (once they eventually got loaded onto my home computer is 98.7mb). My guess (I didn't time it) is it took about maybe 3 minutes to load all 22 pictures from the camera to the iPad which was sitting 10 inches from the camera.

So, with that info, depending on how large (or what compression and 12-bit versus 14-bit raw), you might get only 1 file every 2 or 3 minutes if you are using 14-bit uncompressed raw files --or-- 1 file every minute if you are using 12-bit lossless compressed raw file.

Now that I looked at this info, my statement that the transfer is fast really only applies to 4mb compressed jpeg files!!

Dudley

>One other thing to add that might help..
>
>Yesterday I took the X100 to a local arboretum and took 22
>pictures and when I got back in the car, I woke up the iPad so
>the X100 could transfer the pictures to the iPad.
>
>The total size of the 22 pictures (once they eventually got
>loaded onto my home computer is 98.7mb). My guess (I didn't
>time it) is it took about maybe 3 minutes to load all 22
>pictures from the camera to the iPad which was sitting 10
>inches from the camera.
>
>So, with that info, depending on how large (or what
>compression and 12-bit versus 14-bit raw), you might get only
>1 file every 2 or 3 minutes if you are using 14-bit
>uncompressed raw files --or-- 1 file every minute if you are
>using 12-bit lossless compressed raw file.
>
>Now that I looked at this info, my statement that the transfer
>is fast really only applies to 4mb compressed jpeg files!!


Yes that makes sense ! I can imagine a uncompressed 14bit RAW file that is around 70MB will probably take around 2 min to upload if you have a nice strong signal .... according to my calculations I will fill up the card before it will have time to download, so you will have to put the camera down and let it finish which might take another 10 min or so probably ....

Doug Box - Texas PPA President and a top portrait photographer - is using the Eye-Fi and iPad setup to display medium sized JPEGs and share them with his clients on the fly. He can be on a portrait shoot and the client can immediately see the JPEG images straight from the camera. I've seen him use the setup - complete with a custom bracket to hold his iPad. I don't see any need to download RAW files.

Eric Bowles
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While it is true that using USB wire in tethered mode would be faster, I cringe every time I do so with children in the studio. Even I, have come close to pulling the camera over by tripping on the wire, I certainly don't trust a 4 year old not to do so. As mentioned by others, I plan to save the raw file to the CF while transferring a small jpeg to the ipad for client viewing as the session is in progress.
KM

>While it is true that using USB wire in tethered mode would
>be faster, I cringe every time I do so with children in the
>studio. Even I, have come close to pulling the camera over by
>tripping on the wire, I certainly don't trust a 4 year old not
>to do so. As mentioned by others, I plan to save the raw file
>to the CF while transferring a small jpeg to the ipad for
>client viewing as the session is in progress.
>KM

Spot on KM, i can feel the anxiety as I read your post

Richard

HI, my experience with the new eye-fi cards with the "direct connect" feature is that from my D7000 (16MP) sending a jpg to my Ipad takes aprox 15 seconds perhaps less.

Now how much longer for the D800 ? Not sure.

Check the video out below on the new "Direct Connect" Eye-Fi cards.


http://fstoppers.com/how-to-tether-your-camera-to-an-ipad-without-jailbreaking


I picked up the Pro X2 8mb version and I am happy with it.

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