Having worked in the retail camera business for as long as I have you begin to realize that very few people know anything about digital cameras, even those people out there who like to think they know it all know very little useful information. It only takes one time for someone to walk up to you and ask if you can print their pictures off of their battery for you to realize how grave the digital camera knowledge base is in the general public.
You see, people were always price shopping our memory cards because they could "get that same thing for half the price" down the street. Ok, fine, you go out and buy a steak from Waffle House and I'll go get one at TruLuck's. Often times when I would address this issue of memory cards with the classes I teach I start off by asking if the students used Kodak or Fuji film way back in the long-ago time of film days. Rarely, if ever, would I have someone state that they just used the cheapest film available. Why? Because the Film had a direct impact on the quality of picture that was produced. Now in the digital world this isn't quite the case. The camera manufacturer is the one who determines what quality picture is produced from the camera (often times dragging your wallet into the conversation too). However, today your memory card plays just as vital of a role as that old roll of film did, it stores your images.
How many times did you open up the back of your camera after taking some pictures only to realize that there wasn't film in the camera? If you're anything like me it happened more than you cared to admit, but it wasn't anything too earth shatteringly horrible if you forgot to load film, just load up a roll and go back and take the 12/24/36 images you missed out on. Today with the ever increasing capacity of memory cards though, the day that memory card becomes corrupt (not if it does but when it does) will be a day you won't forget any time soon. We now have the capability to not just lose 24 or 36 pictures, but hundreds or even thousands of pictures, gone, poof, vamoosh.
Now sure some of those out there who have had this happen are probably saying "yeah, but you can recover them with software" and while some of the time that is possible a memory card is not always recoverable, and ultimately you're missing the point. We shouldn't have to go recover hundreds of lost images, instead we should be better and more consistent in transferring images off of our memory card and onto our computer in a timely fashion.
So, back to the most useful piece of equipment I've ever owned, it is my 2GB Eye-Fi SD card. This tiny little card has a wireless networking adapter in it and it uses this to transfer the images from your memory card to your computer all while running off the battery power of your camera. You can even get ones that will upload to a photo sharing/storage/networking site like Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, etc and some of their models even use some sort of fancy future technology to triangulate your location and attach GPS coordinates to your image so that you'll know where you were when you took it. This little card that, at the time, cost almost 3 times as much as a standard 2GB SD card, has saved me time, money, effort and some hair. Once you have it setup all you have to do is make sure your camera is on and it automatically shoots the image to your computer where it then saves the images in a folder of your choosing and if you have the model of card that allows it, will upload them straight to the web.
Here's an example of my picture transferring process. Yesterday evening I was in my back yard enjoying a cold beer and playing around with my camera (a very common occurance), where I took this photo:
After capturing the image the Eye-Fi card sent it to Picasa and my computer and I kept shooting and enjoying my beer. Later I viewed the image in my Picasa album on my phone, linked to the image via my twitter account and didn't once have to leave the backyard or drag my laptop outside. Living in the future is awesome!
Now, if that doesn't convince you maybe a story from one of my former customers from my retail camera store days will. This person purchased a Nikon D60 and an Eye-Fi card (much to her husband's behest, who swore it was a waste of money). The D60 was one of the first digital SLRs that was Eye-Fi compatible, in that it actually supplied power to the card even when the camera was turned off so that the card could work it's magic without you having to drain as much battery power. This couple went on a vacation to (a tropical location that I can't remember, lets just say it was Miami ok? ok.) Miami and went out for a lovely early afternoon dinner at a restaurant. This couple were enjoying their meal so much that at one point the husband, who was in charge of the camera, left the table to use the restroom and before they knew it they were finishing up their lovely meal and starting to leave when they realized the camera was gone. They just couldn't believe that the bright red backpack that said "Tamrac" on it was just picked up from right underneath their eyes. So they informed the restaurant's manager and called the local authorities but much like any theft of personal electronics it is not likely that you'll see it again. Jump ahead 1 week when they return and the wife logs into her flickr account to see that there were lots of photos from Miami waiting to be approved before they were to be posted to the web. However, she only took about half of them, the other half were from inside their waiter's apartment, in the kitchen of the restaurant and of some of his friends going out for a fun night on the town. The authorities and restaurant manager were both contacted, the photos forwarded and the criminal apprehended. Neat huh?
This is where you would normally see some sort of disclosure statement about how this is a sponsored post or
how the author will disclose their employment by Eye-fi in the interest of fair reporting.
However, I have no affiliation with Eye-Fi and just really enjoy using their product. So there.
