Top stories this week on The Digital Story: the ingenious Toshiba FlashAir wireless memory card, personal photo projects, and workshops update.
Story #1 -If you've liked the idea of wireless photo transfer from your camera to the iPad, iPhone, or computer, but got fed up with the configuration hassles of using Eye-Fi cards or wonky built-in WiFi, then I have great news for you. The Toshiba FlashAir Wireless SD Card
I've been testing the 8GB FlashAir with my Olympus OM-D, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Why is this technology better than what we've seen in the past? Toshiba has embedded a WiFi access point in the card. All you have to do is logon to the network with you iPhone, iPad, or computer, and you can grab your photos using a simple web browser or from a handful of apps designed for wireless transfer.
Currently I'm using the free Olympus Image Share app and ShutterSnitch 2.9 with the FlashAir card. The procedure is simple:
- Insert the card into your camera and turn on the power.
- After a few seconds, go to the WiFi settings on your computer or mobile device and choose the FlashAir card.
- Enter password 12345678
- Launch Olympus Image Share, and you should connect to your camera.
At some point, you might want to create your own 8-character password by launching your web browser and typing in http://flashair/ This will log you on to the card and allow you to change its settings. It uses WPA2 Personal security.
Downsides to the FlashAir card are few, but you should know:
- Limited to 8 GBs of camera storage.
- Class 6 speed.
- Doesn't seem to change WiFi channels when in a network congested area. This affected performance in my testing. (It stayed on channel 6 even though two other access points in the area were using channel 6 too.)
- Performs best for me when I use Raw + SM Jpeg on the OM-D.
Bottom line. I've just left it in my OM-D, especially when I'm on the go and want easy file transfer.
Story #2 - Personal Project - I'm a big fan of personal projects and encourage others to do them too. My current project is "Overpasses of I-5" that I wrote about recently on TDS. Even though we share these pictures with others in our community, the projects are designed for personal gratification. By focusing solely on a subject of interest to the photographer, we often try new things without worrying about what others will think. The upshot is often growth.
Story #3 Workshop reservation forms for the current batch of listed workshops are going out this week. I'm also accepting applications for an advanced workshop on March 22-24, 2013 to cover the Artisan Cheese Festival in Petaluma, CA. This is an "Event Workshop" where photographers will work every aspect of the event with me and receive bylines for their published photos. Two spots are open, course fees are $250. Write me at derrick@thedigitalstory.com to apply.
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Monthly Photo Assignment
The February 2013 photo assignment is Furry Friends.
More Ways to Participate
Want to share photos and talk with other members in our virtual camera club? Check out our Flickr Public Group. And from those images, I choose the TDS Member Photo of the Day.
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Will the Olympus Image Share app work with a Nikon camera or would I have to use the Shutter Snitch app?
The Olympus Image Share App works with any camera, as long as the camera has a Toshiba FlashAir card inside. It's free too!
If I got an SD to CF adapter, do you think I could use this Toshiba card in my Canon 5d Mrk II?
Derrick.... Lightroom can "Auto Import" a watched folder. Meaning it can watch a folder and automatically import any new photographs that show up.
It appears that it can watch a folder on a network (I'm out of town and can't test this at the moment)and I'm thinking that maybe it could watch a folder on your camera! If so then this would allow tethering of any camera that can use this SD card.... Allowing tethering beyond just Nikon or Canon. What a great teaching tool if nothing else. This is very interesting.
Can Aperture do this... you might check this out!
THANKS for the great review.
Just wanted to clarify....
So, I can shoot both RAW and JPG on my camera, but then choose to only import the JPGs onto the iPad? Is that right?
I've been looking for a way to do that. All of the other import schemes I've seen requires importing both the RAW and JPG pairs together (the iPad can only perform edits on the JPGs, but requires import of the pairs). Do you know of any other "nimble" workflow that permits direct import of JPGs only from the camera card directly to the iPad?
Thanks
btw....Just recently started listening to the podcast....well done !
Hi Mike, Yes, if you use the Olympus app for iOS, it will ignore the RAWs on your card (you can move those to your computer later) and display the JPEGs. On my camera, I have a variety of JPEG options when shooting RAW + JPEG, so I don't take up any more room on the iPad than necessary. It's a great little workflow.
And welcome to our virtual camera club!
I took your recommendation and got the Toshiba Flashair card. It took some work to make it function properly with my Nikon P7000. The problem was that the WiFi network from the card would turn off. I thought it was the setting in the card's setup utility on the second tab labelled "card settings" - bottom item.
Here's how I got it working. I had to increase the auto off time in the camera's settings to 5 minutes because the camera shuts down before I can get logged in and start viewing files on either my iPhone or Mac.
I just wish the card would let me select a few images and dump them all at once time instead of saving one at a time.
Just wanted to say thanks and share this tip in case others had the same problem I did.
I also encountered the problem that Kevin experienced. Easily solved by increasing auto off time but there will be a battery penalty to be paid.
I decided to try ShutterSnitch since it allows real time transfer which is great. I have the Nikon D800 which has slots for a CF and SD card. I can set the RAW to go to the CF card and the JPEG to the FlashAir in the SD slot. I definitely had a 'wow' moment the first time I pressed the shutter with this setup and watched the photo appear on my iPad seconds later.
Thanks for sharing this with us Derrick.
I also encountered the problem that Kevin experienced. Easily solved by increasing auto off time but there will be a battery penalty to be paid.
I decided to try ShutterSnitch since it allows real time transfer which is great. I have the Nikon D800 which has slots for a CF and SD card. I can set the RAW to go to the CF card and the JPEG to the FlashAir in the SD slot. I definitely had a 'wow' moment the first time I pressed the shutter with this setup and watched the photo appear on my iPad seconds later.
Thanks for sharing this with us Derrick.
Paul,
My neighbor and I just purchased Flashair cards for our D800's. We both placed the card in our cameras and waited and waited....the network never shows up.
I've placed the card in my Leica and it works flawlessly....what settings need to be changed on our D800's?
-Michael