Technical Question: Your input is greatly appriciated

I work with a company that does aerial photography. We are trying to streamline our process from the capturing of the images to the availability to sell the images. Below are my thoughts in the ideal process, please let me know if you see anything that won't work as desired:

-Capture the RAW image with the Canon 5D Mark iii
-Images will be stored on a CF card for backup in case of any errors and simultaneously transmitted via wifi connection of Eye Fi SD card to an iPad Mini Tablet
- The iPad Mini will be setup to upload images to the cloud via mobile connection
- Production team will then edit and keyword images from the cloud on a ground based connection, then upload to our website for sale distribution.

I know that individually, all of these steps will work. The big question is if they will all work together. A major concern is if the iPad will be able to receive files via wifi AND transmit files to the cloud via mobile. Does anyone have any experience with this type of process or recommendations for an alternate method that would work better? Keep in mind we are shooting from the air and can't just land to hand off a card in the middle of a big shoot like a sailboat race. Thanks to any who have input.

A raw file on a 5DIII is pretty sizeable. WIll your mini and mobile connection work with that sort of throughput? I would think a laptop with a sizeable hard drive would be a better option as it would act as a buffer and it would likely have enough processing power to handle intake and upload simultaneously better than an ipad mini.

I am not sure if the mini would be able to accomodate that type of workload. I will run a test since we have the mini and a laptop available and determin if it is adaquate for the job. Thanks, a valuable question to consider.

The mini should be able to do that if it has it's own mobile data (3G/LTE).

I used to shoot with an EyeFi card in my 5D3, feeding to my iPhone, then would edit for social media or transfer to dropbox. I've yet to do this with my new Android device, but I don't see why it wouldn't work the same.

Only thing is I only work with MJPG in this workflow. I write RAW to the CF and work with those when I'm in front of a computer.

gonzogolf wrote in post #16303916
A raw file on a 5DIII is pretty sizeable. WIll your mini and mobile connection work with that sort of throughput? I would think a laptop with a sizeable hard drive would be a better option as it would act as a buffer and it would likely have enough processing power to handle intake and upload simultaneously better than an ipad mini.

This. RAW files are way bigger and require much more power to transfer compared to shooting jpegs. I would tether to a laptop and transfer/process them that way. I just dont think an eyefi card will be able to keep up with you shooting multiple RAWs.

You could shoot RAW + JPG and use like 10MP JPGs to the EYE-FI card while still keeping the RAWs in the CF card just in case. the Eye-fi could keep up with smaller JPEGs, but it's pretty slow for full size and especially RAW. And by slow I mean at least a minute per RAW file.


eye-fi is pretty easy to set up to transfer to both phone and computer, using phone as a relay. So that part shouldn't be a challenge. I'd just plan on having to use JPEGs for performance reasons.

will it all work? yes

But it will be slow... RAW files from that camera can be 25-35 megs each!
range between eye-fi in body to ipad will be short or slightly less than short if also using a router, but don't expect the files to begin transferring while the eyefi card is floating in the air!!!

^^^^ Exactly

That all sounds good typed out, but yea this would be painfully slow and probably not very stable or reliable.

Just thought of a problem. Most devices disconnect 3g/4g data if connected to wifi. SO I bet your ipad would drop 4G while connected to eye-fi card.

All valid points. Thank you so much for the feedback! So this leads me to the question, is there anything that would allow for faster transfer of the RAW files from camera to a device that could upload to the cloud at the same time? We are ready to spend money to make this work so the sky is the limit. It needs to be mobile, and it needs to be automated since the only people in the aircraft are the photographer and pilot and we are both busy with jobs at the time. RAW is a necessity because the lens profile correction only works with RAW images and the correction of JPEG takes WAY too long to do manually. Thank you all so much for your input and theory crafting here.

So just to clarify, you are actually in the plane shooting the photos? I thought it was an aerial robot of some sort.

If that is the case, you should be able to use the WFT or USB tethering to transfer to a laptop in the plane. The laptop could have an aircard in it for internet access and the production team on the ground could use any number of methods to access the files on the laptop from the ground. You are going to have loads more connectivity and software options on a small laptop running Windows or Mac OS than an ipad, so that would be my choice.

Alright, I appreciate the assistance. I'll get to work on developing the most effective method with our aircraft setup. Despite this being the most simplified answer, I still wanted to make it 10 times harder with my elaborate setup. Thanks for setting me straight.

quadcopter drone with gps and gopro hero 2. oops spent 300k for the plane... this rig is 1k.