Saturday Shout: Wi-Fi Memory Cards

Wi-Fi has started to appear as a built-in feature in a few digital cameras, most notably with the Kodak EasyShare One, but earlier this week a company called Eye-Fi revealed plans to make Wi-Fi available to a whole lot more digicams by embedding wireless into an SD card. In an earlier Saturday Shout you gave your opinion on whether Wi-FI was a good thing, the general concensus being that it needed more support to succeed (more camera, software, networks support etc). So do you think a Wi-Fi SD card would open up the market and create more interest in this feature? Is this the best way of adding Wi-Fi capabiliy to digital cameras? Would you buy a Wi-Fi enabled SD card for your camera? Shout out now…

Published: Saturday, May 06, 2006

Reader Comments

1. Hurry, hurry, buy, buy -
   Now besides cancer in your telephone ear
   You can get more cancer in your viewfinder eye.
   
   Technology! Technology! Yummy, yummy!

   Grim Reaper at 01:13pm on Saturday, May 06, 2006

2. A WiFi card (SD or other) is probably the way to go. This makes WiFi an optional feature, so that people interested in it ca add it to the camera they want. People not interested can still buy cameras but won't be charged the WiFi premium by camera makers who think WiFi is a good idea.
   
   One major problem now is that a few models have WiFi capabilities which really limits the consumer's choice of adopting WiFi. There are probably people who want WiFi but don't buy a WiFi camera because the current choices available don't fit their needs as a camera.

   Itai at 01:24pm on Saturday, May 06, 2006

3. I have been waiting a long time as my Mio 168 GPS takes SD cards and I would love to have wifi as it is also a small computer so I can attach it in a plane or so I have heard that is the way to go. I could send my photos home on the run

   Fredy Ross at 02:38pm on Saturday, May 06, 2006

4. Absolutely.... except it'd have to be based off the Memorystick for me. T-T

   DirtHerder at 03:58pm on Saturday, May 06, 2006

5. I'd like to have some wireless way of transfering pictures from the camera to the computer, but I don't think putting it into a SD card is the way to go. 11a/b/g might be useful for some when they want to display pictures taken immideately on a screen, but I think that for most people downloading when they sit down at the computer is more important and then something that require less power (and has shorter range) would be OK. Bluetooth would work fine except for the current slow transfer rates.
   Also, I think they should build the wireless into the camera in stead of into the card. I'd much rather have a larger capacity card and the wireless chips cost almost nothing so it shouldn't add much to camera prices.

   Svein at 06:14pm on Saturday, May 06, 2006

6. If they made a wifi memory card that was fast enough to keep up with my Canon 350D than shooting RAW, I'd be all over it.
   
   I'm not holding my breath.

   Neko at 05:47am on Friday, May 12, 2006

7. It depends upon the antenna. I'm already using a Nikon P2 in an application but am going to replace it with the Canon SD-430. The Canon has a better antenna. It doesn't help to be wireless if you can't communicate with an access point!

   Charles Copeland at 03:06pm on Friday, May 12, 2006