Hands on: Beyond photography

Modern digital cameras can do a lot more than just capture images

Modern digital cameras are featuring more ways to connect to and work with PCs.

Software-based remote control of cameras is not uncommon and some models can also connect to a variety of devices.

You can even find Wifi on some compacts.

Arguably the most feature-packed camera in terms of PC and peripheral connectivity to date is Canon’s latest midrange digital SLR, the EOS 40D.

The camera supports PC-based remote control using supplied software, which includes the ability to see a live view of the camera’s composition on your monitor and even focus its lens with your mouse.

The PC software can also be used as a programmable Intervalometer for taking pictures at regular intervals.

Taking the EOS 40D even further is its optional WFT-E3 wireless transmitter.

This attaches to the bottom of the camera like a traditional portrait grip but equips the camera with Wifi facilities, allowing you to control it remotely and transfer images wirelessly, or upload photos directly to a website or FTP storage.

The WFT-E3 also features wired Ethernet connectivity along with a USB port to connect external storage for backup in the field or even a GPS to record positional data on your images.

The EOS 40D fitted with a WFT-E3 is one of the most interesting cameras we’ve seen from a PC perspective.

The relevant question for readers of this column is how well does the connectivity work in practice?

We expect to see more of these features on future cameras, so we’ve devoted this month’s column to looking specifically at this side of the equation, from an IT hardware perspective.

Wireless connectivity
The WFT-E3 is described as a wireless transmitter, so we’re concentrating on that functionality.

The WFT-E3 supports 802.11b and g wireless networks and can connect to infrastructure-based networks or establish a point-to-point ad-hoc connection.

The WFT-E3 supports shared key, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK authentication, along with WEP, TKIP and AES encryption.

Canon quotes a maximum range of 150m, as long as there are no obstructions and you’ve got a high-performance antenna on the access point.

The WFT-E3 has a small LCD display, which shows signal strength with up to three bars and a flashing light to indicate a connection.

With the WFT-E3 connected to the EOS 40D, two new options appear in the first page of the setup menus.

Selecting the ‘WFT Settings’ option allows you to configure the device and start the connection wizard.

The latter lets you choose whether the connection is FTP, HTTP or PTP, the latter being required for operation with the 40D’s EOS Utility software for remote control and direct file transfer.

Next you choose whether the network is wired or wireless, in which case you’re shown a list of available networks in range.

If the wireless network is using security, you can choose from the authentication and encryption options mentioned above before entering the key and a hidden SSID.

Characters are selected from a page using the 40D’s joystick or control wheels.

You can select a dynamic or manual IP address before the unit attempts to pair with your PC – you’ll need to run the WFT pairing utility supplied with the 40D to complete the process.

You can, of course, save your settings for future use, and the unit offers five sets.

Wireless tests
To test the EFT-E3’s wireless performance, we connected it to an existing network based on a Netgear DG834N wireless router.

The network implemented WPA2-PSK authentication with AES encryption, along with a hidden SSID and Mac address filtering.

Once we’d included the WFT-E3’s Mac address in the router’s filtering list and gone through the process described above, it connected to the network without a problem.

With the settings saved it took about seven seconds to establish a connection following a cold power-up or wake from power save.

We timed how long it took to wirelessly transfer a 1GB Compact Flash card of images to a computer on the network: 167 files measuring 925MB in total.

Note that when the camera is connected to a network, you don’t see it listed under My Computer; you’ll need to use the supplied EOS Utility to connect and download the images or initiate the transfer from the camera.

At a distance of about 1m from the router, the file transfer using the EOS Utility took 10 minutes and 54 seconds.

With the camera relocated to 16m away, outside the building in a garden and showing two bars of coverage, the same file transfer took almost 50 per cent longer: 15 minutes and 11 seconds.

The same process performed with the EOS Utility and a USB2 cable took two minutes and 28 seconds.

The USB cable allows you to drag files from My Computer, which took one minute and 53 seconds.

The disadvantage of the USB cable is its short length, but the WFT-E3 also supports a wired Ethernet connection, so we plugged in 10m of Cat-5 and timed four minutes and 28 seconds for the same file transfer using the EOS utility.

So the wireless connection was considerably slower in practice but it gives you convenience and flexibility on distance.

It’s also fair to say you probably wouldn’t be using wireless to transmit a card’s worth of images, so we performed more tests shooting one image at a time using the remote control software to record the files directly onto the computer’s hard disk.

We set the 40D to record a large JPEG plus RAW file, representing 14MB of data for the composition in question.

At a distance of 1m, the transfer took 8.3 seconds. At 16m it took 14.5 seconds.

The furthest we could establish a connection was about 35m from the router, which saw the process take about three minutes.

The same process took 2.5 seconds over USB and 3.7 seconds over Cat-5.

Conclusion
The WFT-E3 is an interesting peripheral, with many applications for a variety of photographers.

The external storage options are restrictive unless you don’t mind mains operation or have a battery-powered Fat-32 hard drive, but the GPS connectivity worked fine and the ability to remotely control the camera wirelessly was neat – plus there’s the option for Cat-5 cables if higher performance is preferred.

We like the idea of setting the camera on a tripod in your garden and remote controlling it from a PC in the house without a cable – perhaps for time-lapse photography, High Dynamic Range work or astro-photography without the chill.

It’s also great for hands-free studio work like macro-photography.

Third-party software such as DSLR Remote Pro (www.breezesys.com/DSLRRemotePro/) extends what you can do beyond the supplied EOS Utility and allows scripting – great when used in conjunction with image-stacking programs such as CombineZM (www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/combinezm.htm).

If you’re watching a remote live feed from the camera on your PC’s monitor, the frame rate will drop over distance, but at 16m over Wifi it was still operating at about 3fps (frames per second), which is fine for timing most shots or focusing the lens if required.

But if you’re after performance similar to USB over a longer distance, it’s best to use Cat-5 cabling – although in our tests this was still slower.

Ultimately, the WFT-E3 is a specialist item targeted mostly at sports or studio photographers who want to wirelessly transmit images live to a picture desk, but we had more fun testing it than almost any other piece of hardware in recent times – and that degree of gadgetry will appeal to PC enthusiasts who are into their photography.

GPS connectivity
The WFT-E3’s USB port can be used to connect compatible GPS units to record location details in the Exif headers of your images.

According to Canon’s manual, “the transmitter can be used with Garmin GPSmap or Etrex series, or Magellan Explorist GPS devices that produce data in the format NMEA 0183 Version 2.0.1, as well as some devices that produce Garmin protocol data”.

We tried it with a Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, which connected to the WFT-E3 using its USB cable without a hitch and recorded our co-ordinates on images. Other units may not be compatible, though, so we’d advise trying before buying if this feature is important to you.

External storage
The WFT-E3 features a full-size USB port for connecting to GPS units or external storage devices. Connecting the latter gives you a neat option of recording duplicate files simultaneously to internal and external storage or recording, say, a JPEG to your CF card and a RAW file to the external device.

You can also back up images directly onto the external storage.

In use this is a mixed bag though, as the device needs to be formatted with Fat-16 or 32, and hard disks need to be self-powered.

We successfully connected a Corsair Survivor 8GB USB key direct to the port and used it to back up existing images and store duplicates, but its inability to support NTFS and port-powered disks sadly rules out the most portable hard disks.

Perhaps a Fat-32 formatted iPod is the answer for decent-size battery-operated storage in the field.