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Tethering to iPad

Yowza, Eye-FI released an amazing update to their mobile app! (A while ago now, it was recent when I wrote this…)

A while back I read a blog post by Lee Morris of FStoppers about tethering your camera straight to your camera via the Eye-Fi memory card and the jailbroken app MyWi. I joined the club. It was amazing. I love the flexibility I now had with my photography! I didn’t have to chimp at the lcd screen when taking self portraits (not that I do it…) and better yet, no showing clients the back of my camera! They had the leisure to flick through all the images on their own, not distracting me from shooting to check on the results. The problem with this method is it requires a jailbreak and almost $30 in apps.. Which to me isn’t a big deal, but to others it is. It also required the most expensive card Eye-Fi produced at the time, the ProX2. Long explanation short, MyWi lets the iPad/iPhone create a wireless network the card can see and link to, but its not a traditional network, and the ProX2 is the only card that is able to see and connect to this type of network (The ProX2 is also the only card that will transfer RAW images). The use of ShutterSnitch gathers the images from the Eye-Fi card and displays them in its gallery.

But no longer!! Now with Eye-Fi’s iPad app and (I believe) any X2 card that supports direct mode, you can tether straight to your iPhone/iPad! They introduced a new feature called Direct Mode, which enables your Eye-Fi card to generate its own wireless network that the iPad can see and connect to, which previously it could not. Images are gathered inside the Eye-Fi app in a fairly simple gallery. So no more jailbreaking, MyWi or ShutterSnitch!

I definitely recommend this for several reasons:
– The larger screen on the iPad helps when shooting with low depth of fields to make sure you nailed your focus
– If your camera only has one memory card slot vs 2 (Hooray Nikon!! Sorry Canon..) you now have the ability to save a copy of your image in another location if you are unfortunate to have a card go corrupt on you before you copy it.
– If you find yourself being slowed down by pesky clients who want to chimp every other photograph.
– It reduces the risk of a camera drop if you are the trusting kind and hand over your camera to your clients to flip through! I’m dreading the day I make an insurance claim against my camera..

(Although MyWi is a fantastic app for the iPhone still, I use it to share your cell data plan with my laptop & iPad, even my wife’s iPhone which has a smaller data cap, *wink* )

*Please note I am not affiliated with any of the above (Eye-Fi, Intelliborn, or Fstoppers), I just love what they do! Please do your own research as well, there are so many solutions out there! Find one that works for you and run with it!

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