Loading directly to a computer...

Evening everyone,

 

My wife and I recently shot a wedding together. She's got a very good eye and does things differently than I and this makes for a nice selection for event photography. We spent just under 12 hours covering this one and as you might guess, we nearly ran out of memory cards using full frame bodies and writing NEF and jpegs of everything. Downloading all of this took a bit of time since I normally download to at least three different storage devices kept in different locations. We shot with a D800, 810 and a D4. Is it possible to write straight from the camera to a laptop as well as memory cards without going to a lot of trouble? I'm looking for a device if such exists that will let me place the laptop in one location and shoot indoors and out to distances up to maybe 200 feet. I'd prefer something built directly into the camera but since that feature doesn't exist in these bodies I assume I will need something attached to the body and plugged in. My concern is the working distance as I know there are a few that will do this type of thing at closer distances. Am I after something that doesn't exist?

 

Rick H.

I think you're after the Nikon UT-1...or maybe the WT-7

 

UT-1 Communications Unit

 

Hopefully someone here knows more!

Edited November 29, 2018 by mike_halliwell

A fast card reader would be a lot faster than anything directly to the camera especially if it's wireless.

Apparently the UT-1 can do 100Mbps, although how that actually translates to Real-World NEFs per minute (second?) is hard to say!

Nikon has lots of info on this - if you search using nikon wifi direct to laptop you'll likely find what you need. Was just over there & skimmed a bit. :)

A fast card reader would be a lot faster than anything directly to the camera especially if it's wireless.

 

That's certainly my experience, too.

 

If you're really cheap, there are some card readers on eBay for practically nothing. If you buy the really cheap ones, buy a couple since many of them fail nearly immediately. Two or three are still cheaper than the premium card readers. Those that do work seem to stay working. Even the expensive ones sometimes develop loose wires, etc., so I don't know what the best strategy iso_O

 

In any case, they are still faster than hooking the camera directly to the computer.

Edited November 29, 2018 by JDMvW

That's certainly my experience, too.

 

If you're really cheap, there are some card readers on eBay for practically nothing. If you buy the really cheap ones, buy a couple since many of them fail nearly immediately. Two or three are still cheaper than the premium card readers. Those that do work seem to stay working. Even the expensive ones sometimes develop loose wires, etc., so I don't know what the best strategy iso_O

 

In any case, they are still faster than hooking the camera directly to the computer.

 

I have the Lexar USB 3.0 combo SD and CF reader. It's pretty well regarded, and also can offload files fairly fast from a reasonably fast card.

Rick wants to do this wirelessly and I suspect already has fast card-readers........;)

Each one of Rick's camera body has dual memory card slots. I would just stick some 128G cards in there and use the backup mode, and there shouldn't be any need to change cards during the entire day. In case even that is not sufficient, there are 256G cards also. At the end of the day, you just need to upload from three cards to get all the images. I tend to upload from my backup cards as well. It may take the computer a while, but there is limited manual intervention.

 

Unless there is someone to monitor it, there is always the concern about the reliability of wireless transfer. Another major concern for wedding photographers is the theft of equipment. If you have a laptop sitting somewhere, will it disappear during the reception? Plenty of cameras and lenses have disappeared during the wedding too.

The cheap option is something like an Eye-Fi, although I'm not sure the range is very good and, in my experience, they're very slow when just used as SD cards. So the good news is that, connection permitting, backups should have happened before you get to the laptop; the bad news is that the laptop will have to be on all the time and it'll slow down the camera.

 

There are portable hard drive backup devices that have integrated readers (and those with USB sockets for readers) - effectively they're usually small Linux computers with enough drivers to handle USB storage. You could potentially have one of those sitting in your pocket and swap cards into it if you're running out of cards.

 

I second the support for the Lexar readers. I went through a number of generic card readers, some of which claimed to be USB 3 and were recommended, before finding that the Lexar ones were substantially faster and had full compatibility with all my SD and CF variants. That's not to say that others won't work as well, but these do. I've got the CF/SD combo reader, and a larger multi-reader that handles more formats; if you're doing a lot of backups, there's also a modular reader option I believe. I have the Sony UHS-II SD/XQD combo reader on my D810, which is also pretty fast. (Well, blazingly fast, but the media are too.) Not that the UHS-II slot will give you anything much over the Lexar reader with your current cameras, but you might want to be D850/D500-proof!

So, what does 100Mbps get you in real terms, both theoretically and real-world?

 

.....are they the same units as the Sandisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s high-speed cards?

So, what does 100Mbps get you in real terms, both theoretically and real-world?

 

.....are they the same units as the Sandisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s high-speed cards?

 

No. Sandisk says 1MB=1,000,000 bytes, or very roughly eight times faster than that ancient ethernet gear on the UT-1. I bet 1000BASE-T/TX use too much power for a little camera dongle so we're probably not going to see faster wired dongles from Nikon anytime soon. The built-in WiFi on the D750 is laughable at best, be careful what you wish for. While the WT-5A lists 5 GHz 802.11n support, it's not clear what speeds it will operate at. You'll have a much better time skipping that nonsense and just copying the files over to your computer with a dedicated card reader.

I bet 1000BASE-T/TX use too much power for a little camera dongle

Well, it's got it's own EnEl15

 

So all the paid guys at sports grounds with the little dongle thingy on the hot shoe are wasting their time or are they just sending JPEG proofs to the press room 100yds away?

Well, it's got it's own EnEl15

 

So all the paid guys at sports grounds with the little dongle thingy on the hot shoe are wasting their time or are they just sending JPEG proofs to the press room 100yds away?

The press room can use their images as soon as they shot. In the case of Rich and his wife they can only save the pics but not use them right away.

Rick wants to do this wirelessly and I suspect already has fast card-readers.

There's an old pilot's slogan

 

If you've got time to spare, go by air!