[tsvetan]

Hello to all of you! Does any one have any experience with those EyeFi WiFi cards? Do they work fine with the k-30 and a windows pc? Would you recommend them, are there better alternatives? Thank you!

[JimJohnson]

They work, but I don't have one. If you really need a wireless connection, I suspect they are invaluable. Here is the biggest reason why folks are dissatisfied - speed. Think about it. Your K-30 has a 16mp sensor. Even if you shoot jpeg only at its lowest quality, that is a fair chunk of data to send over the air to a Wi-Fi receiver. Unless you are the type who takes one shot and moves on to another subject, you will likely be unhappy.

[tsvetan]

Thank you Jim! You are certainly right - speed must be the biggest issue about them. And maybe this is why I would not buy one. I only thought about keeping the k-30 as longer closed and sealed as I can. I noticed when I forget to close the cable socket really well and zoom in and out I feel the air coming through it, I guess this sucks dust as well...The zoom goes much easier as well, so the k-30 is really well sealed, when it is closed...I have the camera since the begin of February and I am still excited about it and take a lot of pictures. But I must say I also experienced it already many times hung and I always wonder is it because of the SD card or is it the k-30?

[6BQ5]

I have an Eye-Fi card in my Fuji F550EXR and I love it. It's a 16 MP P&S camera. The card works really well in my Fuji and I hope it will work equally well in my K-30 when it arrives this week.

My transfer speed isn't too bad. My biggest problem with it is that the card has a hard time negotiating with the computer through the WiFi router. Every now and then I need to pull the battery out to power cycle the camera (once a month). I don't know if that's because of my router dropping the IP address if I don't transfer often enough. The card does drain the battery a bit and that compartment (card + battery) gets a little warm. My computer space is far from my router and I discovered that my camera's distance to the router affects speed. Faster transfers happen if I move the camera closer to the router. Ten to twenty feet is a good distance. Fifty plus is almost too much.

The transfer itself is great. Once I come home I turn on my camera and let the transfer begin while I wash my hands, change, etc. A few minutes is all it needs unless you have hundreds of pictures. If you are hosting a party or just wandering around your property then you can leave the computer on while you take pictures. The downloads happen in the background.

-=- Boris

[tsvetan]

Hi Boris,
Thanks for sharing! The way you tell the story it sounds really appealing, than I am not a professional and not really in a hurry to transfer the images...
Cheers,
Tsvetan

[pvanni]

@6BQ5,
maybe you can force the router to assign everytime the same IP address to the eye-fi card,
to see if it work better

[6BQ5]

pvanni,

I heard that I could be helped by having static (non-changing) IP addresses assigned to certain devices. My wife is the big IT guru in the house and she did this for our computers, mobile devices, and printer. It helped a lot! My computer used to lose its network capability before and now it doesn't. There are a lot of people in the neighborhood here getting WiFi routers because the number of available locked networks has increased dramatically recently. I wonder if there is too much interference between the different routers as the all compete for that narrow WiFi frequency band?

I've been transferring pictures every day recently (i.e. items for eBay, outings with the family, etc) and the transfers haven't had any problems working.

Oh, one more note about the Eye-Fi card. Don't ever format the card! Use the camera's "Erase All Pictures" function instead. Formatting the card will remove the internal software and drivers needed by the card itself to control its wireless connection. Along with that, be aware that the software takes up some space. So, your 4 GB card is actually a little less.

-=- Boris

[JimJohnson]

Hi Boris,
Thanks for sharing! The way you tell the story it sounds really appealing, than I am not a professional and not really in a hurry to transfer the images...
Cheers,
Tsvetan

Do you like changing camera batteries more often? Remember that the camera has to be left running while doing a park & transfer. For what it is worth, this is also a reason I am not a big fan of the USB cable either; I move my SD card to the SD card slot on my computer. Besides the SD card hatch is easier to close and seal than the USB port hatch.

[6BQ5]

Hi Jim,

Here's my reasoning behind being an Eye-Fi advocate (or wireless transfer in general).

With the amount of pictures I take I find myself cycling between my two tiny Fuji-sized batteries every five to seven days. I know I can extend this by dimming my LCD screen. It's on the bright side now. I can also be more careful with how long I leave my camera on while waiting/composing for the shot. My flash rarely gets used unless absolutely necessary. I'd rather go for longer shutter speeds and brace the camera or myself against something steady.

Compare that to the at-least-daily cycling of the SD card I would need to do. The camera contacts would feel it and so would my computer's built in reader. Sure, my battery would stay put and it would stay put for longer than five to seven days since there is less drain. However, the trade off with extra SD card cycling seems "expensive" to me. I see how sturdy my battery looks in comparison to the near-paper-thin SD card and I want to leave my SD card alone as much as possible! I know, I know... there are a lot of smart engineers who did a lot of design work to get the number of SD card cycles up in the thousands and tens of thousands. I'm sure I'll toss my Fuji into the trash well before anything wears out.

I'm also not so keen on handling a small SD card. My dexterity is poor. It's ironic since I have pretty steady hands.

Personally, I think the future lies in wireless transfer with physical transfer as a backup. I thought Panasonic and Samsung are already starting to do this. Its very convenient. Let the electronics do the handshaking and transfer. If that fails then you should be allowed to take the card out.

Digressing, I thinking that chargers will one be wireless one too day (not tomorrow). They will use induction charging with physical connector backups. Just set your camera on a charging pad overnight while you sleep.

If a company can do all of that then it would be possible to have a truly sealed camera!

-=- Boris

[JimJohnson]

I'm also not so keen on handling a small SD card. My dexterity is poor. It's ironic since I have pretty steady hands.

I understand. Due to topical steroid use for a skin condition, I have reduced sensation in my fingertips and reduced flexibility in my fingers. For better or worse, the spring in my Pentax cameras is fairly robust. If I press and release the SD card it jumps right out of its slot. SD cards (at least better branded SD cards) are pretty rugged. I've accidentally put one through a washing machine with no damage. And actually, regular extraction and insertion helps keep the electric contacts more corrosion free. It is the same reason why as a computer technician I repaired a number of misbehaving computers by simply pulling out and reinserting the plug-in circuit boards.

In addition to induction charging, within a few years I suspect many devices will have a next-generation high speed NFC (near field communication) embedded transceiver. My expectation is NFC will be as fast or faster than today's USB data transfers. I also expect that memory chips will be a lot like today's micro-SD cards - removable so you can select how much storage you wish to pay for, but not really intended to be regularly swapped in and out of a device. That is the point at which I will cease moving a card back and forth from my computer. I'll just touch my camera to my smartphone and let the smartphone move the photos/videos to wherever I have designated.

[EarlVonTapia]

Hey there. I've been using a K30 + Eye-Fi card for nearly two months now.

The wireless transfer option of the Eye-Fi card functions quite well. I have it set up so that I can choose a single picture to transfer to my phone, as opposed to just pushing every picture to my phone as that would drain the battery quite rapidly.

I do have a gripe with it though. Basically, the Eye-Fi card is falling apart on me.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/general-technical-troubleshooting/226987-...-apart-me.html

Now, I was all doom-and-gloom in that thread because I was a little upset at the whole situation. However, after settling down and just using the damn card, it's functioning well enough that I've decided to continue using it. I do want to note that another prong did break off, but it still functions as it should.

I suspect that the reason the card is falling apart on me is because of the way you have to eject the SD card from the K30. My experience (echoed by others) is that you kind of have to "flick" the card out because it's jammed in quite tight into the K30 body. I did that for months with a regular SD card with no issues, but I suspect that because the Eye-Fi card has a little more guts to it, that the body isn't quite as tough, and thus needs a little more care.

Anyways, I'm still going to use it. The main reason I bought it was for the wireless transfer abilities, and so far it has performed flawlessly in that respect. So it stays. If and when it falls apart, I will raise hell of course.

E

[tsvetan]

Thank you every one for sharing your thoughts and experience! I am really amazed by the community! I guess I will soon get a card of this type and will share my experience here as well!
cheers,
Tsvetan

[6BQ5]

I have been using my own Eye Fi card in my K-30 now and I'm happy to report that the card works well. In fact, it works better in my K-30 than it did in my Fuji F550EXR! I think this has to do with the lack of metal in the K-30 body. The card/battery cover has a metal plate on the bottom and the card is pressed right up against the battery. I imagine these two features muffle the signal strength, induce transmission errors, and subsequently slow down the transfer.

Each JPG produced by my K-30 is about 7.8MB in size. I haven't timed the transfer but it feels like a 10 to 15 second transfer time. It is really fast!

One thing I noticed is that the system does not transfer RAW images. I imagine that the system must look for updated files in a specific directory or for files with a certain extension on the card and ignores everything else. There were a few times when I had to use my Eye-Fi card in a pinch as an external device and the Eye-Fi didn't transfer those files when it was powered up. I don't know if I need to configure something in the system to make the transfer work for RAW files too.

[monochrome]

I just ordered a Mobi for my wife and a ProX2 for me for our Q's based on the discussion in this thread.

Supposedly a Mobi is jpeg only and a ProX2 will transfer jpeg or raw to a computer (but not to an iPad, where there is prohibition at the receiving end). I think you can set up either for individual transfer ad hoc or auto transfer single or bulk whenever first in range of a preset device.

[tclausen]

SD cards (at least better branded SD cards) are pretty rugged. I've accidentally put one through a washing machine with no damage.

That's a bit extreme ... isn't in-camera formatting enough for most purposes, or do you really regularly take such smutty pictures that you figure detergent and a spin-cycle is necessary ?