I‘ll admit it, I was thrilled when I heard about the Eye-Fi, a wifi-enable SD memory card that can upload photo files straight to many photo websites. I’ve been frustrated recently that though my camera phone can upload photos to the web, my good camera still need a computer and internet connection to do so. I wanted a camera-to-cell bridge so I could upload photos from my good camera without needing a computer and internet connection. I thought the Eye-Fi would at least be that but over the net, not cellular.

Sadly, not really. The Eye-Fi has to be configured with each local network you use and you it can only be configured via the Eye-FI USB dongle. Worse the Eye-Fi software can’t play with most hotspots, free and hotel wifi points. So much for photos on-the-go without the laptop which was my primary desire.

The real let-down to me, however, is that the upload from camera to photo sharing site (in my case Flickr) will upload every picture on the card. You cannot limit it to just some. I’m too bad a photographers for that. Also the Eye-Fi currently does not support any of the config settings I use with Flickr, so all titles, descriptions, tags, and groupings have to be done manually at Flickr.com which i find to be time consuming.

At this point the only thing I can use the Eye-Fi for is to wirelessly transfer photos to my laptop, which it can do but only if I have unhooked my router from the internet or explicitly block the MAC address of the Eye-Fi. (I’ll be doing the latter.) A configured router is required at the moment to wirelessly transfer to a computer, so I’ll still be bringing my USB cable with me as it’s lighter and doesn’t require a power source.

I do not mean to downplay the technical wizardy of the wifi-enabled SD card, and there are some pretty neat uses if you are ready for all photos to be uploaded - imagine using camera in range of an accepted wifi point and live stream of photo uploads from say a party straight to web viewers - but I’ll be patiently hoping that more functionality gets rolled out soon, because as is, I can’t see how I can use the most of the functionality.

If anyone understands how to use it better, please let me know.