I told my wife about this great little gadget, and she decided to get it for me as a Christmas present, totally cool, but reality being reality, the unit did not show up until 3 weeks after Christmas (why does it take so long to get stuff shipped from Canada), and as luck would have it, it got here while I was on a business trip…

I get the unit mounted to my D90, and I am not really impressed with how the BlueSLR unit hangs off the camera, not a real deal killer, but not the greatest looking set up. With the device mounted I’m ready to go, fire up the camera, go to pair the BlueSLR device with the iPhone, it rejects the pairing a couple of times but eventually it pairs all is happy, and on to the BlueSLR app. Yes it technically does what  it says it does, it fires the shutter and I think autofocus worked once or twice, but not consistently, the intervalometer worked as far as I could tell. As I was playing with the app, trying the different features, I noticed that the time stamp is not changing, its static, I hit the GPS button, and the time started updating, but the GPS data stopped updating and then the app says the  GPS disconnected  I go to the bluetooth section of the iPhone settings and it says it is disconnected, then it connects as I’m looking at it, I go back to the BlueSLR app says its connected, I fire off a picture and then it says it’s disconnected again. This is the point where I l0ok again at how far the unit hangs off the camera and I think maybe its not all the way in, so I go to remove the device in an effort to reseat it and maybe resolve the bluetooth dropping issue, but as I pull the device out of the socket the unit comes out but the metal shield around the connector stays in the camera. This is the point where I am no longer a happy camper, and after spending a bunch of time pulling the metal shield out of my camera, making sure I didn’t do any damage to my camera. This is the point where the BlueSLR device went back in the box, and will be on its way back to canada early next week.

I really wanted the BlueSLR to work, and I was really planning on getting one for the D7000 when they worked out their issues with the inverted connector, but I think I’ll wait a lot longer and read a few more reviews before pulling the trigger on another.

The idea is really good, but the implementation is where things go wrong…

I guess for the time being I’ll continue to carry my GPS, and tag my pictures with PhotoLinker from Early Innovations…

My 4G video share card stops working for no apparent reason…

I am not just talking about transmitting data, it also stops recording data as well, sometimes turning off and on the camera resolves the issue, other times I have to remove the card and reinsert it… This is not on just one camera, the issue occurs on all three cameras (Nikon D90 D5000 and P6000) non of the cameras have a problem with real SD cards, I can shoot all day without issue on any other card except the EyeFi…

I have also noticed that the card gets extremely hot, to the point it is uncomfortable to hold.

I think it is fairly clear and to the point that my Eye-Fi card is not functioning properly, and its not just a wireless problem but its also the ability to take picture as well…

In response to my request I get this from Nick at Eye-Fi customer support:

Thank you for contacting Eye-Fi. I apologize that you are experiencing troubles with your Eye-Fi Card. Please reply with the answers to the following questions so that I may better assist you.

What operating system and version are you using?
What internet browser and version are you using?
What version of the Eye-Fi Card do you own? (Home, Share or Explore)
What size of the Eye-Fi Card are you using? (2GB or 4GB)
Where did you purchase your Eye-Fi Card?
What is your router’s make and model?
What security encryption are you using?
What photo sharing web site are you uploading your photos to?
What version of the Eye-Fi Manager software are you running?
Are you using your Eye-Fi Card in a home or office environment?
What antivirus software are you using?
What firewall are you using?
Were you able to register your Eye-Fi Card?
I look forward to your reply.

Thank you,
Nick
Eye-Fi Support Team

Which makes it very clear to me that Nick didn’t read a word I wrote, and was only making sure that their next business day response time was honored… I am mainly addressing that the problem is on the card side in the camera, and not really network issue, and I could understand the questions if I was having a problem getting into the manager app or uploading pictures….

I responded to the questions, 2 days ago and now I am waiting on a reply…

This is a series shot at 10 second intervals, and played back at 20 frames per second, its is a thousand frames over  almost 3 hours…

The lens flares are because I did not have the right filter with me, actually my 72mm Circular Polarizer has  big crack in it…

The battery life on this when using the GPS and an Eye-Fi card is abysmal, and that would not be an issue if the battery didn’t take forever to charge. Of course Nikon doesn’t provide a real charger, the battery has to be charged in the camera, unless you have the optional $30 MH-61 charger, which I understand only takes about an hour or so to fully charge the battery, then to make things easy I’ll probably end up getting another battery as well. There are a couple things that add to this problem, internally the camera get get hot with the Eye-Fi card, and since it is right next to the battery it makes the battery too hot to charge for about 20 minutes.

The other thing that annoys me is that there is no easy way to close the lens and keep the camera on, something like a standby mode. There are a couple of reasons this would be nice, keeping the GPS happy, because it makes me unhappy when I have to wait a minute or 2 for the GPS to sync because the camera has shut off and lost sync, it doesn’t happen all the time only when it is inconvenient. A stand by mode would also be nice to deal with things like the Eye-Fi card, the D90 and D5000 have a setting to tell the camera to not go to sleep until the Eye-Fi card is done doing its uploads.

Other then those 2 issues, the P6000 is a great little camera, and it fits the bill when an SLR is too much.