Eye-Fi Card Setup

Overview

Nikon DSLR (D90) + Eye-Fi 8Gb X2 + laptop + Linksys WRE54G wireless repeater + Adobe Lightroom import

The Eye-Fi card is supposed to enable wireless transfers of photos from the DSLR to a computer.

The catch is that it only works if there is a very strong signal between both the Eye-Fi card (while it’s in the camera’s SD slot) and the wireless router, and a strong signal between the wireless router and the Eye-Fi receiver that gets plugged into the computer’s USB slot. They all have to be in the same room, basically.

Eye-Fi Setup

Eye-Fi, even when it's working, is super-slow. Importing about 15 shots takes well over 10 minutes. Switch to tethered import with a long USB cable. The maximum length for USB cables is 15'.

• Put the SD card in the receiver and plug them both into the laptop’s USB.
• Start the “Eye-Fi Center” software.
• File > Settings > Eye-Fi Card
• “Networks” tab
  • Private Networks tab > select the appropriate router. It will try to connect and give a message indicating whether it was successful or not.
• “Raw” tab > Select destination folder for photos.
• Note: It seems like they have frequent firmware updates for the cards. The settings, esp “network”, don’t take unless the firmware gets installed. Keep an eye out when starting up.
• Close the Settings dialog.
• Eject the Eye-Fi card using the eject icon, and remove the Eye-Fi card from the receiver.
• With the camera powered off, insert it in the DSLR’s SD slot.
• Now when you shoot you should see the images should (slowly) import into the Eye-Fi center on the laptop.

Camera Setup

• Make sure that the camera is powered off when inserting the card.
• Make sure not to power off the camera before the transfer of the latest photo(s) has completed.
• Make sure that the camera doesn’t go into power-saving mode before photo transfers complete.
  • D90 Custom Setting Menu
  • c2: Auto meter-off delay: 10 minutes (or whatever it takes)

Importing Photos into Adobe Lightroom

Workflow

• Eye-Fi support page for this topic
• Use date-based subfolders for the Eye-Fi import & take at least one exposure to force Eye-Fi center to create a subfolder for the current session.
• You have to then delete the existing photo before making the directory into a watched folder in Lightroom.
• Lightroom: File > Auto Import > Auto Import Settings
  • Enable Auto Import: checked
  • Watched Folder: Eye-Fi import folder
  • Destination Folder: Another folder where Lightroom will copy the photos

Example set-up

• Photographing in studio with eye-fi receiver in laptop.
• Ultimate destination for photos on desktop in office.
• (See mounting the remote drive on the laptop)
• Mount the desktop drive on the laptop.
• Set up Eye-Fi card to import photos onto local drive.
• Start Lightroom on laptop. Open Lightroom catalog that resides on the desktop and points to photos/files on the remote drive.
• Watched folder is the local drive.
• Destination folder is the remote drive.

See Also

• Configuring WRE54G Wireless Repeater