Camera that can print straight to wifi printer?

[Mrmichaelhill]

I have had a little google and cannot seem to find much,

 

The school are looking to put some wifi printers in class and buy about 4 or 5 good cameras. They have asked if they could get a camera that has wifi so that they can just print straight from the camera.

 

Does anybody have any recommendations?

 

Thanks!

[sted]

well i believe my canon eos70d does it but i suspect you dont want a grands worth of camera?

[dhicks]

They have asked if they could get a camera that has wifi so that they can just print straight from the camera.

 

We use EyeFi cards - available for around £30, you use them as a standard SD card in a camera except that they have built-in wireless capability and will send photos to a folder on the network or make the photos available from an iPad. The software that comes with them is annoyingly clunky, requiring a running, logged-in PC (or, in our case, virtual machine) to run their software, but once you've got them set u they work well. Probably best used with a decent site-wide managed wireless system (wander anywhere, take photos, they appear on the network a few moments later), but I think they can be used as their own mini wireless hotspot, too.

[plexer]

Canon Wireless Compact Cameras - PowerShot and IXUS digital compact cameras - Canon Europe

 

Need to have a compatible printer as well though.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Transcend also do a wireless enabled SD card.

 

Wireless & Multimedia Products - Wi-Fi SD Card,StoreJet Cloud,Extra Slim Portable DVD Writer,Portable DVD Writer, - Transcend Info

 

Ben

[Mrmichaelhill]

Wow, quick replies! Quiet day for a lot today?

 

Thanks, I'll pass all this on and see which is best, We have also looked at instant print cameras (polaroid type)

 

Anybody got any experience with them?

[sted]

Wow, quick replies! Quiet day for a lot today?

 

Thanks, I'll pass all this on and see which is best, We have also looked at instant print cameras (polaroid type)

 

Anybody got any experience with them?

run away they are pants the docks are flimsy if they are the ones im thinking of (was a few years back though)

[dhicks]

Transcend also do a wireless enabled SD card.

 

Ooh - any experience with these? Do they need software running server-side?

[plexer]

Ooh - any experience with these? Do they need software running server-side?

 

Sorry know was looking at the current eye-fi models on Amazon and came across them as my experience of the eye-fi s/w is like yours.

 

Ben

[dhicks]

Sorry know was looking at the current eye-fi models on Amazon and came across them as my experience of the eye-fi s/w is like yours.

 

Right, an update: we've just bought one of the Transcend 16GB wireless SD cards, along with a TTS video / stills camera intended for use in our Year 1 classrooms - we want something that is dead easy to just point-and-shoot a picture and have it go straight on the network. I can't get the Transcend card to work in the TTS camera - fair enough, the TTS camera isn't on Transcend's compatability list, but the idea is that it's a free-standing wireless device, it shouldn't really need any interaction with the camera to work.

 

I tried the Transcend card in our Nikon D5100 DSLR (which is on Transcend's compatability list):

 

Compatibility

 

Initially, no luck either, but it turns out that's because the SD card is powered off by the metering setting:

 

Review: Transcend 32GB Wi-Fi SD Card

 

If you set the metering auto-off to half an hour...

 

Nikon D5100: From Snapshots to Great Shots > The D5100 Top Ten List > Adjust Your Auto Off Timer Setting - Pg. : Safari Books Online

 

...the SD card will stay up long enough to be accesed over the wireless network. I imagine the problem with the TTS camera is that it's also powering the SD card down after metering a photo, and there's no option on there to adjust that power-off setting.

 

Interestingly, the Transcend SD card is basically a small Linux-based web server, and you can tinker with the features:

 

Hax it!: Hacking Transcend WiFi SD Cards

 

I'm going to try a different camera for the Year 1 classrooms - I see the Fujifilm FinePix AX650 is available for £40, and looks like a pretty decent camera for the money. I'm not all that impressed with hhe TTS camera just by itself, either:

 

TTS HD Video and Digital Camera

 

£75 for a 5 megapixel camera, and low-light / ISO performance isn't great - small children tend to move around a lot, and pictures with this camera come our rather blurry.