How Eyefi Mobi Pro Will Cut Down Your Cord Usage

The ties that bind a photographer are many. From camera straps clinging to your neck to USB cables chaining you to laptops and hard drives, anything that helps cut a few cords is a welcome relief.

Eyefi’s Mobi Pro does just that. Slide one into your camera’s SD card slot and it can automate wireless image transfers to a PC and/or mobile device, automatically upload images to a secure Cloud archive or let you wirelessly import images in nearly real time into Adobe Lightroom.

Infrastructure in the House
The Mobi Pro wireless SD card has two modes: direct and infrastructure. Direct sends files point-to-point, from card to a mobile device that’s connected directly to it. In infrastructure mode, the Mobi Pro card is connected to a local Wi-Fi network in your home or studio. To enable the Mobi Pro to do the work of transferring images and backing them up, you’ll have to set up infrastructure mode. Simply connect the card to your computer and download Eyefi’s desktop app. Once installed, you can save your Wi-Fi password to the card. You’ll also need to select a local folder where Eyefi will save transferred images—which it will do automatically whenever it’s on the network and in a camera that’s turned on.

Wireless Lightroom
With a Mobi Pro card on your studio’s Wi-Fi, you can set up a wireless tether to Adobe Lightroom. The first step is to shoot a few random photos, which forces Eyefi to create a local folder on your computer. When that folder is created, you can enter into that folder and erase those images (weird, yes, but Lightroom won’t automatically import from folders with images already in there). Next, hit Lightroom’s Auto Import Settings (File > Auto Import) and select the folder from which you’ve just deleted your scrap images. Make sure Auto Import is enabled in Lightroom and at that point, the software will monitor your Eyefi folder and automatically import JPEG images you shoot.

Do note that this method isn’t as fast as tethered shooting. We found it could take about 15 seconds for images to populate into Lightroom. Unlike standard tethered capture in Lightroom, this method doesn’t give you the ability to view camera settings, key in metadata or apply develop presets. But hey, no wires!

Wireless Backup
Thanks to its integration with the Eyefi Cloud, all the images you save on your Mobi Pro card (JPEG and RAW files) can be automatically backed up to the Cloud in their full resolution. Eyefi’s Cloud archiving is cheap at $50 a year for unlimited RAW and JPEG images (Dropbox charges more than twice that a year for just 1TB). You’ll get a free year of Eyefi Cloud with your Mobi Pro purchase.

To take full advantage of the Mobi Pro’s backup capabilities, you’ll want to load the Eyefi Mobi app on all of your mobile devices and choose “allow imports” from the settings menu. This way, all the photos you happen to snap on your phone or tablet are backed up alongside images from your DSLR. On your desktop, open the Eyefi app’s preferences menu and select “Eyefi Cloud.” From here, you can designate local folders that will sync with the Cloud—this way, you can upload older photos from your pre Mobi Pro days, plus ensure that all new images transferred to your desktop using the card make their journey to the Cloud as well. The Eyefi Cloud is accessed via a web browser on your desktop or from the Eyefi Mobi app on your mobile device.

Keep In Mind…
All the cord-cutting features you’ll enjoy with still photos basically disappear when it comes to video. Videos saved to the Mobi Pro card will transfer to a local desktop drive if that option is selected, but they won’t travel to the Eyefi Cloud and aren’t viewable in any of the Eyefi mobile apps. Videos captured with a smartphone or tablet aren’t transferred anywhere. They just reside on your mobile device’s local memory.

Capacity: 32GB | Speed: SDHC class 10 | Price: $99
www.eyefi.com