ANYway, after BlogHer, I heard a few people talking about Eye-Fi cards. Apparently, some people got some SD cards for their digital cameras that automatically uploaded your pictures to your computer. Or the Internet. Or something.

I take way more pictures than I share and am perfectly adept at getting them off my camera and on to my computer and up on the Internet if I want, so I thought nothing of it at the time.

And then Nikon invited me to join their “COOLPIX Circle” – which meant they were going to loan me a camera and I had to upload pictures to their COOLPIX circle Flickr group from time to time.  And I, um, forgot.  A lot.  Like, for weeks and weeks and weeks I would get a new email with the weekly “prompt” and think “crap!  I didn’t add anything to the group for last week’s prompt!”  I was kind of starting to feel bad, what with the $200+ camera I was getting to use for free and all.

And then (longest product review intro ever) I saw one of CityMama‘s pictures in the group, and saw that she’d tagged it as being “effortless uploaded by Eye-Fi.”

I decided I had to have one.

Their PR people told me that was great – and that I’d have to buy one myself.  Because #eyefihatesMissBritt.  Apparently.

I started to research all of the different types of Eye-Fi cards that were available and weighing the pros and cons between the expensive versions and the really, really expensive versions.

Let me first say that their web site kind of sucks and it took me hours and a lot of googling to find out exactly what was available, what card did what, and what card would be the best card for me.  Seriously.  Hours.

I ended up purchasing the Eye-Fi Share 2 GB Memory Card.  Here’s why:

• I wanted to be able to put them on my computer AND on the Internet.  You have to buy one of the “share” versions to do that.
• A lot of googling suggested that “hotspot access” that came with the Eye-Fi Explore Cards or Eye-Fi Pro Cards would be limited. Meaning that while in theory I could upload wherever there was internet available, that “available internet” wouldn’t exactly be global.
• I needed a version that would work with my Nikon D50.  My Nikon D50 will only work with 2G versions, because the technology on the 4G versions is different.
• I don’t give two craps about the geotagging feature that comes on the higher priced cards.

None of that will make sense unless you end up reading the comparison chart, but I tell you all that to say, I ended up with the 2G share – which means, my 2G Eye-Fi card can upload to the Internet and/or to my computer over my home wireless network.

I used the card for the first time on Halloween.  I used it first in my (borrowed) Nikon Coolpix S630 point and shoot camera and then in the D50.  I just took pictures the same way I normally would while we went trick or treating.  I came home and settled the kids into their candy sorting, and went to hang out with my husband and my girlfriend for a while.

I left my D50 on, but noticed that it didn’t appear that the pictures were automatically uploading the same way they had earlier when I had my point and shoot on.  I stuck the card into my laptop’s card reader and went on hanging out with my husband and friend.  About 20 minutes later, I had an email that my pictures had been uploaded.  I went to FlickR via their iPhone app and saw that I now had 99 new photos in my photostream, all marked private (because that’s how I set the card up initially).  I quickly changed the permissions on one or two photos using my iPhone – and voila!  Picture available on Flickr and safely stored on my computer.

About 15 minutes later my friend took a bathroom break so I quickly opened the laptop, went to Flickr, and did a batch edit to all the pictures I’d just uploaded via the eye-fi card, making them public.  I sent my mom and dad a text message letting them know the kids’ Halloween pictures were online.

Done.

My parents back in Iowa had pictures of their grandchildren by 11:00pm on Halloween night, and all it required was 2 minutes of work on my part.

I later took another 30 seconds to open the card on my computer and delete all the pictures that were already stored online and on my hard drive.  Super fast, super efficient.

I love this card.

It would have normally taken me days to get those pictures live online to share.  I would have had to transfer them to my computer, and then go through and batch upload them to FlickR.  While I still needed to go back in and edit a few pictures and delete some of them, the bulk of my pictures from that night were available for me to share with my family quickly and easily.

I highly recommend this card if you share your pictures frequently.  If you end up with hundreds of pictures on a memory card that only get transferred or uploaded once every few months, you’ll love that this does it automatically for you.

However, if you’re the type of person who carefully edits each and every picture you take before ever sharing it with anyone, this card might not make sense for you – except that you will automatically have your pictures on your hard drive and/or online as storage, at the very least.

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Post tags: Coolpix, digital camera, eye-fi card, Nikon, Nikon D50, point and shoot camera, SD card, wireless memory card