Eye-Fi geotag

I have just upgraded my Eye-Fi card to include geotagging and have tried it for the first time on my Canon EOS 5D mark III with a Sandisc 8GB card.

At home nothing happened.  I took a few shots in my studio and each image was reported as untagged.  I can see a few other secure home networks around me, so thought that there might be something that Eye-Fi could lock into, but apparently not.  I next walked down to the pub at the other end of the village, where I found that they have a free hotspot.  I turned on the camera, took a few shots and looked at them and the Eye-Fi network connection, but could not determine if anything had been found.

Back at home I uploaded the images using the Control Centre (it happened automatically as soon as I turned on the camera) and a few minutes later had a look at the uploaded images.  All had a red information icon, indicating that something had changed.  I clicked on the first one and to my delight found the correct position information logged with the image.  The Control Centre brought up a map that showed the image having been recorded at the precise spot where I was standing.  I looked at the EXIF details in Bridge and they were shown correctly.

The images were taken in a quiet and slightly remote village with not much in the way of networks around.  So it does give me confidence that I should be able to capture location in most places where there are houses.  I am not sure about very rural locations - perhaps I'll have to revert to my WFT with GPS dongle for that.  I also have the issue of transferring position to the DNG images converted from my RAW files.  But considering the relatively low cost of Eye-Fi cards this is a major step forward.

Sandisk eye-fi with 5D mark III direct mode

As a second part of my test with my new EOS 5D mark III and Sandisc 8GB eye-fi SD card I wanted to get direct mode working.  This is useful if you are outside the range of your preferred wireless networks.  For example, you might be in a studio where the signal does not travel, or on location.

I took my laptop to the far end of my garden, but still could not quite get out of range of my home wireless network, so I just disconnected it.  I switched on my camera and there was no sign of network activity.  It seems that the network software does not get activated until there is something to transmit, so I took a shot and then refreshed my laptop network list.  Amazingly the direct mode network started up on my laptop and the photo transmitted.  I did not even have the eye-fi control centre running, but once I had started it I could see the photos appear as I took them.  I tried shooting from up to about 20 metres from the camera and everything worked smoothly.  The speed was not the greatest, but to allow a quick review of images that is not a problem.

I still cannot quite work out how direct mode fires up an ad hoc network, but it all worked first time.  This is pretty impressive and was a much easier and far faster set-up than with Canon's own WFT device.  The WFT is faster and allows for transmission of RAW files, so still has its place.  But I can see that I shall be using eye-fi extensively in future.

Canon 5D mark III + eye-fi card

I recently purchased a Canon EOS 5D mark III and was very keen to try out the dual card support and especially the latest eye-fi cards.  On my 5D mark II I had been using a rather expensive and heavy WFT device from Canon.  While this did the job and also allowed me to plus in a USB GPS dongle to geotag my images, it was rather bulky and I did not really want the expense of a similar device for the mark III.

The EOS 5D mark III supports both CF and SD cards.  The configuration is very flexible.  You can select and individual card for writing, have it automatically switch to the second card when full, or simultaneously write to both.  If you select the last option you can choose to write in a different format and resolution on each card, and it was this that attracted me, along with the use of an eye-fi card.

I purchased a Sandisk 8GB eye-fi card.  It comes with a mini USB card reader and when you plug in to reader and card the software installs automatically.  It asks you to specify your wireless network, then enticingly tells you to go and take a picture, and it will automatically appear in an open window.  Well this is about half the story.

The first thing that I found, without having done any extra camera configuration, was that the eye-fi setup in the camera consistebtly showed the card as not connected.  Unlike the WFT device, where you have to configure in the camera, all of this work should have been done in the eye-fi control centre on the laptop and downloaded into the card.  The theory is that, once ready to transmit an image, the card will automatically seek out the wireless network that you set it up with in the control centre setup.

After a little re-configuration I changed the camera setting so that images were written simultaneously to each card, thus ensuring that some data was activating the card.  That did it.  As soon as I wrote a jpeg image to the card it automatically opened the network and transmitted the file to my laptop.  At that point I could check the current setting in the camera and it now showed a connected network.

Out of interest I changed the configuration on the eye-fi card to record RAW images.  As soon as I did that the card stopped transmitting, but started again when I went back to jpeg.  This is not an issue because I generally only want to use it in this mode.  In the studio I like to show people their images on the laptop so that they can review and choose their favourites.  I only need a small image for this, and a small file size is transmitted very quickly.  Choices can be made on the laptop and I can then offload the high resolution images directly from the CF card for later processing.

There is a connection mode called Direct Mode on wi-fi.  It seems that the wi-fi software on the camera will through your list of networks to find the best connection, and if it cannot find one (if you have ticked the Direct Mode box) an ad-hoc network will open.  I have yet to get this working because my default network is always present.  It should be useful if you are away from home with just your camera and laptop.  This is the mode I use for the WFT.

The next step is to add the geotagging feature to the eye-fi card.  Look out for further updates.

Archiving and indexing photos

After a very short time spent taking digital photos and movies you will realise that it is a major exercise trying to keep track of everything.  Let's say that a customer comes back after three years and wants a print of an image that was taken at a portrait sitting or a wedding.  In three years I might have produced 30,000 images of various sorts.  That might sound a lot, but a typical wedding produces 1,500 images - the originals in RAW, then various versions in jpeg or PSD.  Even if you just take family photos you might have hundreds.  How do you find a particular photo of a child, say on a 2nd birthday when the child is now 15?  So how do you store and locate old images?

The conventional wisdom seems to be to buy more and more hard drives.  External 1TB drives are releatively cheap, and can hold thousands of images that can be reloaded quickly.  The argument goes that you cannot rely on CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray for long term storage.  But what of hard drives?  They certainly do break down.  That means that you need to have a backup hard drive or a RAID3 drive.  But that then becomes expensive and unmanageable.  You either keep them spinning for instant access (more power consumption), or you turn them off and on (more wear).

My alternative is:

  • Keep a working copy on your main hard drive while you continue to need it.
  • Keep a backup on a standalone hard drive while you continue to work on the main version.  You can occasionally overwrite the old with the latest version.
  • Once you have finished editing, have supplied the finished product and are unlikely to need the image for a while, backup onto DVD or Blu-ray.  I backup two versions: the original RAW file and a separate disc with high resolution jpg copies.  These are all stored in large DVD wallets and labelled with something appropriate, making it easy to retrieve.  Anything critical can have another copy and go off site or into a fire safe.
  • The final step is to index the discs using a specialist digital asset management (DAM) package.

Using this process means that I have about 100,000 images stored in a very small amount of shelf space.  I can keep hard drives to a reasonable level and don't have to worry about them breaking down.  So far I have been able to retrieve any image required going back several years.

DAM software

This is still a real issue for photographers.  In order to locate an image or a movie you must first record its metadata in a DAM.  There are many around, but few that seem to do everything that professional photographers and videographers need.  I tried Adobe Lightroom, but the early versions did not properly support off-line storage.  I moved to Microsoft Expression Media (and later Media 2).  This worked very well, but Microsoft sold the application to Phase One.  I bought the Phase One version, but found it unstable, slow and unable to provide consistent support for DNG files.  So I have moved back to Expression until I re-evaluate Lightroom.

A DAM allows you to point it at your digital files (whether they are on a hard drive, a network drive or off-line storage such as DVD) and to create a database of the information along with a thumbnail image.  This is the key point - the database should be a fast, relational database that stores any information you want to record about an image.  Someinformation is built into the files at shooting time.  But you can add other information to help you identify images easily.  So, having built my database I should be able to find, say, an image of Fairport Convention playing a live set in 2003, taken on a 70-200 mm lens; or a bride getting ready for a wedding in 2005 at Ufton Court.  I'll be able to see a small copy of the image and the description will include the DVD number.  It takes seconds to pull the DVD from the wallet and insert it.  The DAM can then automatically open that image in Photoshop.

Of course, the DAM files (relatively small) must be backed up every day.

Connect 5D to WFT-E4 IIB

Update
Since writing the piece below I have experimented with more standard IP addresses. I have set the ad hoc network address to 192.168.1.6 and the camera address to 192.168.1.7 – this works just the same as the other IP addresses shown below. I did have one IP address conflict, so will have to search for a unique IP address, but it works in principle.

It took me a long time to make a basic connection between my Canon EOS 5D mark II and my Canon WFT-E4 IIB. Not satisfied with having to wait a long time for an automatic connection and not being able to use FTP I decided to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks to Canon technical support for talking me through the various steps. What really helped was getting through to a network expert in level 2 support. Here is what I have done, with some notes about why I am working that way. I have not included any screenshots at this stage because I wanted to get this down quickly while it was fresh in my mind.

1. My preferred method of working is to have my camera connected to my laptop via an ad hoc network. To do this in Windows 7 go to Control Panel / Network and Internet / Network and Sharing Centre. Click on set up a new network and choose an ad hoc network. There are just a few simple steps. Give it a simple name. For simplicity I opted to go with a non secure network to start with. I may change this later, but I shall only be using this for short periods. My network is called ‘eos 5d’ and I’ll use this name for reference throughout – just substitute your own name.
2. To get started I’ll go through what I did first, as this seemed to work well enough. Click on your wireless network list (usually bottom right on the screen) and disconnect any other wireless networks. Click on ‘eos 5d’ and click connect. It will say ‘waiting for users’.
3. Turn on the camera with the WFT attached. The green light blinks. Go to the first tools menu item then select ‘WFT settings’. Click connection wizard then EOSUtility. Next select wireless and automatic. The camera will search for networks and ‘eos 5d’ will appear. Select that and the laptop will show ‘connected’ for that network. Go through the rest of the settings choosing all the automatic and default options. After the first few settings the camera will request an IP address from the laptop’s DHCP server. In this case the laptop is dishing out a dynamic IP address to be used for this session only. This part may take up to 5 minutes, while the camera waits for its address.
4. For the final selections you can choose all the automatic or default options. After you have made your choices it will ask you to start the pairing software on the computer. When you installed the WFT utilities from the Canon disc there was an option to start the pairing software automatically at start-up. If you look in your system tray (bottom right of the screen) you may see a small camera symbol. This means that the pairing software is running. If not, locate it from the program menu and start it. Click OK on the camera and the pairing software should find that your camera is connected to the laptop and link to it. The Canon utility software should start and you can click on remote shooting to start work.
5. You will be asked at the end of the connection process if you want to save your settings. It is a good idea to do so under set 1, 2 etc. so that you do not have to remember them each time. When you want to start work again, just go to the WFT settings / set-up / LAN settings menu and choose set 1, or the one where you saved your settings. After doing this a few times you will get impatient for it to start faster, so continue reading for the next step. Also, I found that the pairing software occasionally does not detect the camera. I am told that this is probably a networking issue within Windows (where the process is tied up with something else). If the pairing software does not detect the camera within a few minutes I have found that re-booting (sometimes more than once) normally fixes the issue.
6. My next step was to improve the initial connection speed. First, you need a fixed IP address. I got stuck on this one for a while. The 5D proposes an IP address in the range 192.168…. However, I could never get this to work. What worked for me is the following. I am not a network expert so do not know if this is ideal. I just know that it worked. I’ll break it into small steps.
7. With you camera still connected as in the previous steps, click Start then enter ‘cmd’ in the box. A new window will open. Type ‘ipconfig’ and enter. Scroll through the list and you will see an entry for wireless networking. An IP address will be listed. Mine was 169.254.253.173, but write down whatever you find there. Also not the Subnet mask (possibly 255.255.0.0). Close the window.
8. Go to the Windows network and internet / network and sharing centre screen in the control panel. Click ‘change adapter settings’ from the left menu. You will now see your wireless network interface shown, probably as ‘wireless network connection’ (unless you have renamed it). Click on that and from the top menu click ‘change settings of this network’. Select ‘internet protocol version 4? then click properties. You will probably see that the radar button ‘obtain an IP address automatically’ has been selected. Click the button ‘use the following IP address’. Enter into the first box the number you found in step 8. You can leave the gateway fields blank. Save. If you have to get back to where you were it is very simple just to select the ‘automatic’ button and save. You may have to re-boot for these settings to be accepted.
9. On your camera start to go through the WFT settings again (starting with EOSUtility as the first selection), but this time select manual wherever it crops up instead of automatic. After ‘wireless’ the next step is ‘connect with wizard’. This just selects the network. Next, select manual setting and under IP address set also choose manual. Enter the address from step 8 with the last number incremented by 1. In my case I chose 169.254.253.174. On the next step disable the gateway and continue until you get to the pairing devices screen. You should make a connect quickly. Save it as a new set and you should be able to repeat it.
10. Using EOS Utility worked fine for me in a studio mode where I wanted to let the client preview on the screen what I had just shot. Because the 5D mk II shoots files of over 21 MB it does take quite a few seconds to download. For this reason I selected SRAW1 for a portrait shoot. This considerably speeded up the download and by the time we walked to the laptop all the images were there. The connection was stable and the camera did not back up with images or lock up. Ideally I’d use this mode for a music festival, where I need to capture large images on my laptop while working remotely, label them between sets, then continue processing on the same images back home. In the studio, where I just need a preview, I’d now opt for FTP as in the next steps. With FTP transfer you can opt just to send a small jpg, which is very fast and ideal for preview.
11. My first problem with FTP was getting the Windows 7 FTP server to work sensibly. It was so full of ridiculous screen options that I eventually gave up and down loaded Filezilla FTP (http://filezilla-project.org/). This is a free, open source product. It download and installs in seconds and can be turned on or off without having to search through the innards of Windows.
12. Filezilla installed quickly and started working with its own client. This proved that the ftp server was running and that an external client could log on to it. It said that its IP address was 127.127.0.1. If you don’t know anything about ftp, just think of it as a fast way of transferring files quickly from one IP address to another. Your camera has files stored at one IP address. The laptop is now the server and has files stored at that end. One thing that threw me for a while: when you tell your camera that you want to connect to an IP server (ie your laptop) the IP address you point it to is your laptop’s IP address (169.254.253.173 in my case), NOT the ftp server’s address (127.127.0.1 by default with Filezilla). If you are an ftp expert don’t laugh at this – it’s not obvious to mere mortals. Before you leave Filezilla use the file interface to create a new user. There is a small face icon at the top. Choose a simple name and simple password. You will need to select a default directory where this user’s files are stored. Finally, don’t forget to give the user read and write access to the files by clicking the appropriate buttons. Leave the file interface window running.
13. Go back to the camera and do roughly what you did to connect to EOS Utility. This time select FTP Server and continue to select the manual options. Your camera IP address will be as before (169.254.253.173) and the FTP server will be 169.254.253.174. When you get to the window that asks for ftp login, choose the name and password you set up in step 12. You should be able to connect successfully. Take a few photos and watch the images appear in the directory you selected.
14. After doing all this I was able to switch between ftp mode and EOS Utility mode successfully and quickly. At one point my network connection disappeared and I could not re-connect, even after re-booting. When I checked my wireless connection in Windows I found that the IP address was no longer there for some reason. I re-entered it and all was well again.

I am sorry if this seems like a lot of steps, but it has taken me weeks to get it right and I thought I should add my own description of why I have done certain things. Good luck if you are reading this. I am happy to answer questions if I can, but I am not a network expert. If what I describe does not work you may wish to try Canon technical support – they certainly helped me once I was heading in the right direction.

Stuart Barry
10 Jan 2011

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