My experience live-posting DSLR photos on social media with an Eye-Fi card + an iPhone

So, as some of you may know, I work for eco fashion week in Vancouver. Part of my job is getting great photos- either of backstage, guests, sponsors, or a couple from the runway- onto our social media stream before anyone else.

This requires a bit of finessing- it is important that they get online quickly, but the system has to be robust and able to work in areas that are heavily congested with network traffic.

I shoot with a D600, and this season brought along two social media interns to handle the copy-writing and posting aspect. I came up with a pretty simple and effective system that you guys may at some point find useful:

My camera settings:

• First off, I use two memory cards. Slot 1 is a 32GB card, Slot 2 is the 16GB Eye-Fi
  
• I have my camera set to 1:RAW + 2:JPEG so it saves a raw to the 32GB and a JPEG to the Eye-Fi; I put my JPEG settings to Basic because, as this is for SM, I only need the lowest quality and it'll look stellar
  
• I have my Eye-Fi card set to broadcast its own network, and to upload photos to the connected device as soon as they are locked
  
• I pair the iPhone with the Eye-Fi card by downloading the app, logging in, and selecting to be the receiver of photos. If you have two phones (as I sometimes used my own device), you have to switch which device will receive the photos back and forth.
  
• Once the Eye-Fi has be initialized on the phone, it will install a profile and should automatically connect. When connected to the Eye-Fi, the iPhone should still be able to send and receive data on the Mobile network (necessary for uploading the photographs to SM)
  
• For runway shows, I fire at CH, for around/venue stuff, i fire at CL. I also use 3D autofocus tracking for the runway shows which works quite well for me, YMMV
  
• In case you care, I shoot the runways with a 105mm DC. It's not the best runway lens in the world, but it does the trick, and is sharp as a tack. I fire at F4;1/1600th;800. I bump ISO in exchange for shutter speed to freeze any movement in the pieces.

Procedure for Runway (backstage and other stuff is this but less time-sensitive, obviously):

• It is important to have your uploading device close-by. The files aren't huge, but you don't want to deal with any lag in time-sensitive uploads.
  
• After I fire off a burst and have a moment, i flip forward (as the camera will display the latest RAW) and select the BASIC i want to upload. I lock it. The Eye-Fi network should start up, and the iPhone should connect. I always keep the eye-fi app open, so i can flip over to it to make sure the transfer happens (for this part it's great to have someone else so you can have your eye on the runway).
  
• Once the file is uploaded, or even if it's not quite yet, but the photo has been chosen, I delete everything else off the Eye-Fi card. This is very important, as it makes flipping to the END of the SECOND card a LOT faster. Your RAWs stay untouched on the main card, but the second card needs to be free to access the end of. If someone knows how to "jump to the end" of a card on a Nikon, please enlighten me!
  
• Rinse and repeat.

I was truly surprised at how well this system worked. A big part of it is having a) a main card that lets you fire away and capture the stuff you need. B) having a second person to handle the actual posting. C) the 'Lock to upload' system that ensures you are not constantly uploading every shot, only the ones you want to.

That's about it- a few steps of prep make the end result that much faster. FWIW i saved this setup to my U2 user preset and for daily/nightlife shooting (2nd card acts as overflow and shoot RAW only) I can flip back to M/U1 and not worry about fiddling with settings.

Cheers, enjoy, and take from this what you will!

Happy shooting!

submitted by b1jan to photography
[link] [11 comments]