I finally got my hands on an Eye-Fi X2 Pro 8GB SD Card and was extremely excited to see the possibilities it would allow me to do. If you haven’t heard, Eye-Fi creates SD cards with Wi-Fi chips embedded inside them allowing you to take pictures with your SD card compatible camera (point-and-shoot or DSLR) and instantly have it uploaded to a social media or photo sharing website of your choice. In the beginning the only drawback was that your computer and camera both had to be on the same Wi-Fi network. Over time, Eye-Fi came out with different SD cards that allowed more flexibility. The recent release of its “X2 Pro” gives people the most options when trying to upload pictures on the go.

For about $150, you get an 8GB SDHC card that has 802.11n built-in. An “endless memory” mode, letting you take pictures continuously, and since your uploading the pictures as you take them once you have no more space the SD card immediately starts deleting the first pictures you started with to make room for new ones. (It will not delete any if it hasn’t safely delivered it online.)

You also get a year access to AT&T hotspots (Starbucks, McDonalds, Hotels, Restaurants, etc) for uploading pictures with your camera if your Internet-less, and free lifetime Geotagging of your photos. The X2 Pro supports RAW formats too! (.CRW, .CR2, .NEF, .NRW, .DNG, .PTX, .PEF, .RAW, .RW2, .MPO) You of course can always upload JPGs only if you wish have speedy uploads for your picture sharing websites.

So, what did I have in mind for the Eye-Fi card? With the X2 Pro, you now also have the ability to connect to Ad-Hoc networks. Perfect for those iPhone and iPads that have been jailbroken and have an app that creates a portable Wi-Fi spot. I use one called MiWi with WEP security so others don’t hop on and steal bandwidth if they happen to be in the area.

A few minutes of setting up the network and privacy settings in the Eye-Fi Control Panel and I’m good to go. Now with the 3G data connection as my Internet source, and the iPhone Wi-Fi network for my Eye-Fi card, I can start shooting! I can leave the netbook and laptop at home and completely bypass SD card adapters all together. No more stopping what Im doing, transferring pictures, reformatting the SD card and wasting precious shooting time. I turn my WiFi network on the iPhone and set my Canon DSLR to take both RAW pictures at high quality and JPGs at medium quality giving me the most flexibility later on. I set Eye-Fi up so that it only uploads JPGs that I choose and ignore RAW files when Im on my personal iPhone WiFi network. That way, I can share what Im shooting and if I want to edit the picture later in RAW I can do that when I get home.

There are plenty of picture sites you can choose to upload to.

Its not listed in the photo services above, but in the Control Panel you can set up your Twitter account for instant tweets once a photo is uploaded. (Although I’m not sure how this will work in the next few months once Twitter goes all in with OAuth forcing 3rd party services to use that as a means to connect to Twitter.) I love the fact that you can choose FTP as an option too, giving people true freedom to do what they want with their pictures once uploaded if other social media sites fail to do what the user wants.

After testing it, I found that a 3088 x 2056 JPG (shown above in a thumbnail) takes about 20-25 seconds on a 3G connection. Not – bad – at – all! Considering thats a “medium” setting on my Canon XSi, I can choose to even bump that down to a “Small” setting and uploading something on the scale of a 1024×682 for even faster uploads. (Probably around 5-10 seconds per picture!) Still perfectly viewable for sharing.

I can’t wait to put this thing to the test this weekend and take batches of pictures at a time, without lugging around a netbook/laptop I feel Eye-Fi has given me more freedom to do what I want creatively as a Photographer.

For even more creative ways to Eye-Fi on the go, check out ShutterSnitch app for both iPhone and iPad. It allows you to create rules for Eye-Fi pictures in case you wanted to upload only certain types of JPGs (like ISO specific shots, etc).

I predict this will be a big hit with iPads since the only way at the moment to currently import pictures is to have them already on your desktop and sync them, or to buy the iPad Camera Connection Kit for $30.

I hope this helps any photographers who want another option to wirelessly share pictures while on the go, if you have any questions tweet me or comment below. Thanks!

Luckily there is an alternative. No, Im not talking about “Paint.exe” either. If the computer has access to a fairly current browser version and internet, you could opt for a web based photo editing application. There are quite a few out there so I’ll give you a run down of what each can do and how they can help. 

First up, of course would be Adobe Photoshop Express. This online tool is based off a bit of a mix between lightroom and Photoshop. You do need a free Adobe account to use this however. Its very versatile in that you can import photos by uploading from your computer or linking to your flickr, facebook, photobucket, or picasa albums. To have all your photos in one portal to edit is a real time saver.  This tool will allow you to do some of the most basic things like crop, rotate, resize, change the exposure, red-eye removal and changing the saturation. It also has a good variety of Tuning and Effects for your photos as well as a bonus “Decorate” feature that adds a bit of fun to your pictures if you want like “sunglasses” or “hats”.

All in all, this is one of the leading online photo editors that if mastered can go a long way if your without the real Photoshop.

Next up on my list is one called Sumo Paint. This handy online photo editor really packs a punch and has a lot of similiar things with the real photoshop. It’s actually more of a art tool than a photo editor. You can create whole images and use the various brushes and patterns they have available for you. Sumo Paint also has filters covered too. IMO Sumo Paint takes the cake when it comes to being the winner for being an online Photoshop equal. (so far)

This photo editor is one of the easier to get a hang of, if your in need of a simple photoshop-like interface that still come with a good variety of tools to use. Splashup is very well rounded for a basic editor that I usually recommend  to my friends who want to play around with an image. Cropping, Layers, Adding Text, and painting are all covered here. It also boasts the ability to import an image from either your computer, splashup, facebook, flickr, photobucket, picasa, smugmug or any URL. I do experience from time to time a weird error when importing an image to Splashup, I believe it has to do with the size or resoultion of the JPG but I’m not quite sure of the limits when it comes to importing images FYI.

Going down the list, we have Picnik – a very basic online photo editor that pretty much has a very limited amount of tools to use. You got your crop, resize, and exposure stuff. You can also add onto your photos types of effects like B&W, Sepia, and others. The downside to Picnik, although one of the early ones, has become ever more fee-based. Some of the effects that you would like to use, you can’t because you need to pay to become a member. Not to mention the constant ads that are on your screen, as well as not being able to have the option to full-screen your window. (unless your a member)

The final editor Im going over would be Pixlr. A very fast, and competitive option for those wanting a Photoshop interface. Coming in 12 different languages, touting the ability to have multiple layers, and tools like magic wand, and dozens of brushes to choose from Pixlr defintely is one of my top picks. Completely free, no ads and being able to full screen the webpage, Pixlr will feel like a real photo editing application.

There are many other online photo editors that I did not cover and quite frankly, they’re popping up faster and faster now of days. Which is a good thing of course since the more we have the more competition there is to bring out the best in each one. If none of the above photo editors suited your style I complied a list of all the ones I could find below. Try each one out, see which one you like.