Eye-Fi and Adobe Lightroom – Eye-Fi user tip

Eye-Fi user David Pritchard makes use of his Eye-Fi Explore Card and Adobe Lightroom to provide people “Portraits on the spot.” By taking advantage of Lightroom’s Auto Import feature to “watch” for new photos from his Eye-Fi Card, he is able to shoot, edit and present portraits in near real time.

David shoots “live portraits.” He sets up at local art galleries and other events shooting people and creating their portraits on the spot. He quickly edits and prints the portraits which he is able to sell to clients right away. With his Eye-Fi Card, the photos transfer to his laptop as he shoots. As soon as he is done shooting, he heads over to his laptop with the client and edits away. This way the client can offer input and he can ask questions about their decor to enhance sales. Because he targets their tastes, he often up-sells most of the people he deals with. Here are his steps and tips for integrating his Eye-Fi Card with Lightroom.

Set up Lightroom to auto import from an Eye-Fi Card

Open the Eye-Fi Manager and choose to save your photos in a local folder. You will also want to select the option to “add date to path.” (This prevents Lightroom from importing photos from previous sessions.)
Take a couple of pictures. This forces the Eye-Fi Manager to create a folder for photos of that day of shooting.
Browse to the folder where you specified to save your photos in step #1 and delete the pictures you took in step #2. Lightroom will only allow you to auto import from an empty folder. If you don’t delete the scrubs, Lightroom will prompt you to do so later but it is best to do this now.
Launch Lightroom and create a “Watched Folder” that will be used to automatically import from. Go to File > Auto Import > Auto Import Settings.
Select “choose” to the right of the “Watched Folder” file path and browse to the folder where you deleted photos from in step #3 and click the “OK” button. You may also select to have Lightroom copy the images to another folder. This makes exporting the whole catalog to another computer easy for final processing offsite.
Go to File > Auto Import > Enable Auto Import
Start Shooting. It can take about a minute for images to make their way to Lightroom. As you shoot, you will see the Eye-Fi Thumbnail preview appear as the photos transfer to the computer and then appear in Lightroom.
Select the last picture in the filmstrip of the Development Module; this will ensure that the the newest photo will replace the last one showing. If you select a photo in the middle of the film strip, new photos will add to the end of the film strip, but will the focus will stay on the selected photo.

Dave’s Tips and suggestions

Be patient. Think about how long it used to take to get negatives from the lab. You are getting an editable image in 1 or 2 minutes without lifting a finger. You can wait a second.
Make sure that you don’t cover the card door on the camera with your hand. This can slow the transfer.
I know that I am not going to sell huge prints of these images, so I usually shoot in Medium Size and the transfers go A LOT faster. I get great 8×10 prints at that setting, especially with a low ISO.
The preset generates a lot of wow factor. People are surprised at how well their photo came out, but really, you are just a master of the clarity slider. Be sure to place the laptop so that people walking by can see it. I can’t tell you how many people have put themselves in front of my camera because, “he made her look like that!?” At the same time, if you get a lousy or embarrassing photo, shot another one ASAP to cover up that bad one.
Keep your camera batteries fresh.
Turn off the internet options that the Eye-Fi card offers. People won’t buy it if they know that they can just download it for free.
That’s about it. It’s a pretty simple process, but very effective.

About David

Dave Pritchard of Pritchard Photography is a portrait artist in the Tampa Bay Area. He is also involved in the fine art community around Tampa. As a way to mix both worlds, he creates “live portraits.” He takes his portable studio with him to various art shows or events and creates meaningful portraits of the people he meets on the spot.

He also photographs events, and as mentioned above, fine art which he shows in galleries and shows across Florida. Check out his web site at http://www.pritchardphotography.com and look at some of live portraits that are the starts of a book, The Inked Project, at http://www.theinkedproject.com.

Related Information

Applies to these cards

Eye-Fi (All Cards)