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D850 and airnef? (Wi-Fi)


david_r._edan

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I've seen videos of airnef working with other cameras but this guy right here claims that it also works with the D850:

 

Airnef works with the D500/D850/SnapBridge

 

Before I get into the technicalities:

1. I do not have SnapBridge or own a smartphone (nor intend to get one any time in the next 10 years or so)

2. I would not use an external Wi-Fi transmitter/adapter if I was given one for free. *In the video the fella isn't using one either, nor is there any mention of one with regards to D850.

 

Now,

 

On my D850 there isn't a Wi-Fi ON/OFF setting. There are a couple of dashes next to "Wi-Fi" in the menu and when I tap on it, I get inside all the settings. There is nothing there that says ON or OFF.

 

I'm on Windows 7 and I don't use a wireless router (the Wi-Fi is simply disabled since I don't need to share my Internet connection). Instead I have a pretty good USB Wi-Fi adapter that I've used extensively with my Eye-Fi card on the D800. So, when I turn it on, I immediately get to see all the devices around me that use Wi-Fi. However, no matter what I did, not once did I see my Nikon D850 on that list. Not sure if that even says anything. And BTW, "Network" is greyed out in my camera. But I think it become available only if you connect one of them external transmitters.

 

My D850 is invisible, so, airnef can't see it. Then, how in the hell did the people get it to work?

 

I thought I'd try the Bluetooth route and maybe get this thing to work with qdslrdashboard. I've setup Bluetooth on my system, and again, my computer can't see my camera. But then, in the menu "Bluetooth" is greyed out and is set to OFF. I've tried "Connect to smart device". Not a blip on the radar... Shouldn't I see something in the Bluetooth devices while the camera is attempting to connect to SnapBridge?

 

So, the camera stays invisible and unavailable for Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Something tells me that SnapBridge has to be brought into the picture to "jump start" this functionality. I really hope that I'm wrong though.

 

*Airplane mode was always OFF throughout my endeavor.

 

So, what do you make of this?

If you own a D850 and can do wireless downloads to a Windows PC via airnef or qdslrdashboard, I would LOVE to know your secret.

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Did you read this part about "Airnef"?

 

airnef - testcams.com

 

You will notice , if you do, that in order to use "Airnef", you will still have to activate "Snapbridge"by either using an Android Phone, or using an iOS Phone , each time you want to connect this way ...

 

The "airnef" guy also says " SnapBridge is an "always-on" connectivity feature that allows the camera t....etc."

This is not entirely true, if you activate ( or have activated) "Airplane Mode" in the camera, all bluietooth and wifi communication is switched off. The latter is often reven ecomendable if no communication is required, because it makes the camera's much more "bettery friendly"

 

The only other method ( as far as i know) to wireless communicate with snapbridge enabled camera's , if you do not care for snapbridge, is utilizing an additional WiFi- enabled device like "Camranger" or "Camfi" , or Nikons own WT-xxx module ….

 

QDSLRDASBOARD works in wired mode without snapbridge, but if you want it to work wireless , then you will still need the "snapbridge workaround"through a smartphone ..

Read thie topic : https://dslrdashboard.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=2321

 

Remains, ifit is only for getting your pictures on your PC : Either connect a cardreader to the PC, or connect the camera to the PC through an USB cable ….

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Well, then the Wi-Fi on D850 is officially stupid... Yeah, like that hasn't been said before.., only about a million times.

 

Hopefully, in time, Nikon will eventually "snap" out of it and let us use the wifi like normal people. Maybe via a firmware upgrade? I know I should wake up.

 

For me it's settled then. Going back to the middle ages, I guess, which is actually not as bad as having to pull out the card out of the camera.

 

I'm talking about the Toshiba Flashair and I would like other people to chime in on this.

 

The only time I need the wireless photo transfer is when I'm working in the studio, especially doing some tabletop stuff on a tripod. I need to see full-res previews on my 2.5K panel as I go along. The way I was doing it with my D800 is I would shoot NEF+JPEG. The RAW would go to the CF card and the full-res JPEGs to the Eye-Fi card, which would transmit the photos to my desktop in real time. I would be a happy camper with this kind of setup even today, with my new D850, except we all got screwed over by the guys at Eye-Fi, so, that's a no go.

 

But.....I should be able to achieve something very similar with the latest generation Flashair card. I know that at one point there was even some sort of joint action going on between Toshiba and Eye-Fi. In the specs it even says that inside Eye-Fi enabled cameras (like the D850) a W-04 Flashair card will function in many ways like an Eye-Fi card. I would really like to just have all the JPEGs on my desktop by the time I get there, instead of having to pick out which ones I want to view and only then pull them off the camera wirelessly, which will always take some time because the transfer rate should be around only 2 megaBYTES a sec. I dunno, maybe now there's a way to just keep streaming ALL the photos in realtime. At any rate, this solution should work for me. Like I said, though, I am interested in hearing other people's opinions before I pull the trigger on a 64GB W-04 Flashair.

Edited by david_r._edan
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Another thing, since we're talking Wi-Fi.

 

I do understand the need for "Airplane mode". It is the ultimate on/off switch for any wireless communication. But do I need it? When I (probably) get the Flashair card I'll just be using the "Eye-Fi ON/OFF" option, which will reside in "My Menu". Isn't that enough for me? I mean, I was trying really hard to make the camera transmit something, anything, without any success. Should I be concerned at all about battery drain if I set the Airplane mode to "off" and leave it like that forever?

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Nikon didn't do a good job of wireless anything as far as I am concerned. If you leave the Airplane mode "off", the camera will likely look for wifi and bluetooth signals. At least when it is turned on initially. If you really want to turn bluetooth off, you have to turn wifi on, airplane mode off, then go to the bluetooth settings and disable it and THEN turn off the wifi. I was able to make an ez Share wifi SD card work with the D850. The EyeFi is worthless. But the ez Share is not fast enough in terms of write speed. So I dropped all of those avenues and am now not even bothering with Snap or wifi.
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have a lok at the "Cam-fi" Device

 

CamFi 卡菲单反无线取景控制器 | 多相机控制系统

 

at Ali Express or similar, it is cheaper than most Eye-Fi cards, an will o the job , i think ...

 

Something like that just isn't for me. I'll keep it in the back of my back head though, so, thanks!

I already put an order for a 64GB Flashair card. Back in 2013 a 16GB Eye-Fi cost me around $80, promotional price. I just paid about 50 bucks for this one. Hope it don't turn to be a POS.

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You can run Android apps on a virtual machine in Windows.

 

A program called Bluestacks, among others, lets you do that. So you ought to be able to run Snapbridge on a PC.

 

Thanks, I am aware of the existence of various emulators but I did not investigate further simply because that would land me right at the place I've been trying to avoid - SnapBridge. I just need a simple and reliable photo transfer (and just some JPEGs, not hours of video or anything like that).

Taking the FlashAir route I should be able to make it work for me. If not, it's only 50 bucks down the drain and then I could try doing it your way. It is a whole lotta hoops to jump though, so, I don't know....

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The only time I need the wireless photo transfer is when I'm working in the studio, especially doing some tabletop stuff on a tripod. I need to see full-res previews on my 2.5K panel as I go along. The way I was doing it with my D800 is I would shoot NEF+JPEG. The RAW would go to the CF card and the full-res JPEGs to the Eye-Fi card, which would transmit the photos to my desktop in real time. I would be a happy camper with this kind of setup even today, with my new D850, except we all got screwed over by the guys at Eye-Fi, so, that's a no go.

 

Please let us know how the results are using the FlashAir Card ?

 

Meanwhile, if it is in the studio, and on tripod - tabletop stuff , then what i do is use a simple HDMI cable to connecte with a HDMI monitor / TV screen whith my D500 for tabletop Macro , PB6 Bellows photography ...

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  • 3 weeks later...
Please let us know how the results are using the FlashAir Card ?

 

Meanwhile, if it is in the studio, and on tripod - tabletop stuff , then what i do is use a simple HDMI cable to connecte with a HDMI monitor / TV screen whith my D500 for tabletop Macro , PB6 Bellows photography ...

 

I have loved my Eyefi Mobi card, to easily get images to my phone as I shoot, giving me the ability to do some prelim editing and posting on the fly. Sadly, Keenai has closed its doors and no longer supporting their app (which for other reasons I needed to delete and reinstall, only couldn’t install again).

 

So i turned to a 64GB FlashAir to replace it.

I spent about and hour trying to get my phone and card talking. Discovered that when my D610 goes to power saving mode after a few seconds, connection is dropped. And you see nothing in the app (nothing cached). I changed my timer settings so the camera was on longer, just to interact with the app. As far as I can tell there’s no way to delete photos. That’s a bit of a pain, but could get used to it since my main purpose is to review images and save any to my phone or share directly.

 

I’m not impressed by the App. And the connectivity dropping is a deal breaker.

 

I’ll do some more testing, but i’ll Likely be sending the back.

 

Anyone know of any other alternatives for Nikon. Man did they miss the boat on connectivity.

 

/brad

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Thx for sharing your experiences with the FlashAIr device, i appreciate this.

 

Just today i stumbled on an other device on the web, but i am not sure yet how usefull it might be .., it is called "FileGear" , a box wwhich creates a personal cloud and to which you can connect 1or more "drives" //

 

The website where it is shown is : Filegear Personal Cloud and File Manager

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  • 1 month later...
Please let us know how the results are using the FlashAir Card ?

 

Meanwhile, if it is in the studio, and on tripod - tabletop stuff , then what i do is use a simple HDMI cable to connecte with a HDMI monitor / TV screen whith my D500 for tabletop Macro , PB6 Bellows photography ...

 

Because it's been awhile, I'm not sure if anyone is still interested. If yes, let me know and I will share my (mostly positive) experience with the FlashAir 64GB.

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Toshiba FlashAir W-04 64GB (Make sure it's a "W-04" when buying one):

 

Tests in my Nikon D850:

In-camera write speed: ~62 MB/s

Wireless transfer: ~9 MB/s (megaBYTES)

 

The card isn't Eye-Fi-ready out of the box. You have to activate the Eye-Fi mode via the software (which you D/L from their site).

Once you go through the procedure, the FlashAir card begins to behave like an Eye-Fi card (sort of).

There are several settings that can be changed via the software and you can use just a regular SD-card reader.

Whatever you do, the instructions must be followed very carefully. You will be required to (safely) remove and reinsert the card several times and if you make one mistake the card will become corrupted and will have to be reinitialized.

 

 

Photo transfer:

 

Connecting to the card via a web browser is simple and is useful for casually browsing through small JPEG files in a tablet or a smartphone (I assume, I don't have any of those). I was able to view all the photos in Firefox on my Windows PC but accessing them that way means that you have to load them one-by-one and right-click to save. It's a nightmare and it's not what I had in mind.

 

Luckily, Toshiba provides FlashAirDrive software which allows you to access the contents of the card in Windows Explorer. I was able to map a Network drive and have FlashAirDrive auto-load on Windows startup. *FlashAirDrive NEEDS to see an active Wi-Fi adapter, otherwise it just crashes. No error message with a code or an explanation of any sort, just a hard crash.

Also, apparently, in Windows 7 at least, there is a cap of 50MB on network file sizes. You will get an error if you try to transfer anything larger. RAW files from my D850 are often larger than 50MB, so, it was an issue for me. A simple registry modification was able to address this problem.

With FlashAirDrive I have no problem accessing JPEG or RAW photos as if they were sitting on a regular network drive. I can create folders, delete files, open them in photo software right from the card, copy them to my computer and so on. The speed, however, is unbearable. With 9MB/s you're not gonna get far trying to do any kind of work. All the photos are kept on the card until you request them from the computer. Who can work like that? Obviously, one should first copy all the files to a local drive but with a hundred photos or so it can take a while. That's not what I had in mind when I was purchasing this product.

 

There's a solution for that too.

Apparently there are all sorts of 3rd-party, free software, in varying stages of development. Best I found is Snowy.

Snowy

 

It's a work in progress and the software itself is somewhat quirky and a little buggy but it gets the job done for me.

You can set it to check for any new photos on the FlashAir card and d/l them on the go. I set the interval to 2 seconds, which means that after clicking the shutter and by the time I get from my studio to my desktop, a full-res JPEG is already there, waiting for me (along with everything else I've shot up to that point).

The most sensible method and the way that I do it is to shoot RAW+JPEG. I save my NEFs to an XQD card while the JPEGs are saved to the FlashAir, in the SD slot.

Snowy can't really handle my NEFs. It just crashes after a few photos. You can still shoot RAW+JPEG even if you have just the FlashAir or even just one SD card slot in the camera. There's a setting in Snowy that will tell it to only D/L JPEGs and leave anything else alone. You'll be shooting RAW while viewing the results (JPEGs) on your computer.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this setup, especially considering the stupid problems I was having with my firewall constantly blocking the original 16GB Eye-Fi card.

This one works fairly well with my D850 and my old D800 (which is now converted to Infrared and is not used indoors but I tested it anyway). 2 or 3 times my camera just froze. It wouldn't turn off, so, I had to remove and reinsert the battery. The card access indicator was on, so, I know it was the FlashAir. I'm not sure but I think it happens because of some time-out.

 

A couple of annoying quirks in Snowy:

You can set Snowy to save all the photos to a location of your choice and organize them "neatly" in separate folders, by-date. However, it will not maintain the original folder structure. It is somewhat of a problem for me because I create new (numbered) folders all the time, as I go. Snowy will have all the photos just bunched up together in the same folder.

Another annoyance is that if you delete a photo in the computer, Snowy will immediately re-download it from the card Apparently, it doesn't keep a record of what's been transferred and the photos on the card itself are not flagged in any way. Deleting some photos on the card and then trying to delete the same ones on the computer can turn into a serious mess very quickly, so I just don't delete any of them. I mostly just use this wireless transfer for viewing full-res JPEGs to "get a better sense" of what I'm shooting, which is what I wanted out of FlashAir all along.

 

With a couple of cards slots and, especially, an Eye-Fi enabled camera the Toshiba FlashAir is a very powerful and versatile tool. The applications are endless.

Just one example of what I'm talking about (and I've tried it myself):

You can take a regular memory card with photos even from a different camera and do an in-camera file copy to the FlashAir card. You then will be able to transmit those photos wirelessly to a location of your choice. This could be very helpful if you or your (WiFi) device does not have the appropriate card reader and you can't get a hold of a matching USB cable for your camera, OR if you just need to display a few photos on a huge-screen smartTV in some conference room.

 

Given the ~2MB/s transfer rates of the original Eye-Fi, I am fairly impressed with the performance I'm getting out of FlashAir. With its 9 MB/s it certainly beats even most cameras that have built-in, dedicated (and functioning) WiFi, while not limiting the photos to JPEGs only. And with the Eye-Fi turned off (in-camera) FlashAir becomes a nice little SD card that can be used as a backup. With its 62 MB/s write speed it can keep up with almost everything that I shoot. I couldn't measure the in-camera read speed but I can say that it's FAST in my D850. Browsing through the photos (even NEFs) is a breeze.

Did I say it's made in Japan?

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Since I had a D850, the thing that drove me nuts was the battery drain, even when the camera was not used. I discovered that even with airplane mode "On", Bluetooth would leak power. To turn it off for good, you need to turn the airplane mode off, engage the wifi, engage the Bluetooth. Then turn off Bluetooth, then turn off wifi, then turn airplane mode it "On". If you follow that sequence, things will be off. Wifi is stupid on the D850, embarrassingly so. It doesn't answer your issues but shows how poorly this is implemented.
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I've had an issue with battery drain in one of my F5's (eons ago). Had to physically remove the battery pack whenever the camera was not in use. Nothing of this sort with my (new) D850 though. I've had it "gripped" and have used old battery packs to power it from the get-go. Never (really) used any of its wireless stuff but it does not surprise me that it chomps away at the battery.

 

Toshiba's FlashAir does take a toll on the power (what did you expect?) but it's nothing crazy. You can always disable Eye-Fi in the menu or take the card out.

 

I actually came here to post about something else. The thing is that FlashAir is not just some poor substitute for the (crippled) built-in WiFi capabilities of the Nikon D850. IMO it's a BETTER alternative in many respects. The same is true for many cameras of different brands. From what I've seen, all WiFi-capable cameras are lacking in some way with regards to the actual photo transfer. With FlashAir you can transfer JPEG photos of any size, incl. full-res, highest quality, RAW photos and VIDEOS! All that at a very respectable transfer rate of 9 MB/s. I don't think that many (if any) WiFi-enabled cameras come even close to those speeds. (I am not an expert, btw, so I could be somewhat wrong or VERY wrong). Almost every compact and bridge camera that came out in the last decade has an SD card slot. A FlashAir card may be exactly what you need to give your camera wireless photo transfer capabilities / boost the existing performance or overcome some of the imposed limitations.

 

Anyway, I'm almost very happy with the features and performance I get out of the product and I wish there was a post like mine (which is pretty much a product review) somewhere online when I was looking for a wireless solution for my D850.

 

I don't see many people benefiting from my "review" the way that it sits buried at the bottom of a long, old thread in a "Nikon" forum, bearing a title that has almost nothing to do with where we landed.

 

I'm proposing to post a copy of my "review" of the product in the Accessories forum under an appropriate title. I could do it myself, obviously, but I don't know all the rules. Do we need a moderator's approval for something like that?

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