Reviews of the 1DX's WFT-E6A and the 5D3's WFT-E7A

Crewd

I promised I would write this up a while back after I had some experience using these devices.

5D mk III's Wireless File Transfer attachment (WFT-E7A):

This device is a few steps outside of useless and has been one of the most frustrating pieces of Canon gear I have ever attempted to use.

• It looses connection constantly (WiFi).
• Its WiFi transfer speed leaves much to be desired.
• It's a separate pack with its own battery. So you either have to attach it to the bottom of your camera (making your camera even more heavy and unwieldy) or have a long USB cable running from the pack on your belt to the camera (which gets yanked or jiggled out more often than you would like). This is a major negative unless you are stationary in a studio.
• My camera actually locked up 3 times in the middle of a shoot using this thing. It doesnt like being disconnected or having to reconnect -- and every time it does there seems to be about a 10% chance that it will lock the camera up. Deal breaker for sure.
• Sometimes to get it to connect you have to turn everything off and then back on in a certain order.
• If you run bluetooth at the same time as the WiFi everything (wifi, bluetooth, and the camera itself) slows way down. Very frustrating.

Basically I would suggest that everyone stay away from this device at all costs; it's a failure.


1DX's Wireless File Transfer attachment (WFT-E6A):

There seems to be a fundamental difference with this device. I believe that the camera has all of the intelligence for networking built in and this attachment simply extends that to Wifi. This device performs exactly as you would expect and want one of these to.

• I have never lost a connection or had the camera lock up.
• The transfer speed performs a bit less than a laptop but still very fast. I can shoot in large JPG and have the shots appear on my laptop screen about 4-5 seconds after I take them. Raw is a bit longer; maybe 12 seconds.
• It's size and placement on the camera are absolutely ideal. I dont notice it's there. I actually leave it on the camera most of the time whether or not I'm actually using it.

Finally, I wanted to make a general recommendation -- at least for these two cameras. Dont buy the GPS only attachments unless you are sure you will never want the wifi capability.

Both wifi adapters include bluetooth capability which you can use to connect to a GPS receiver like the following one that only costs $50.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018YZ836/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

This is a dedicated GPS device. It locks on faster and more accurately than the Canon devices and has a 10 hour battery life. The only thing you loose going this route, and this only applies to the 1DX, is that your photos wont get tagged with the compass direction the camera is facing... So if you really want that then you'll have to pay Canon their money.

I hope some of this was helpful to someone. I would be happy to answer any questions that I can.

ziggy53

Thanks so much for your impressions. This really gives folks a sense of what to expect.

Do contact Canon and report your problems with the WFT-E7A.

kdog

Great info. Thanks for posting.

Wayupthere

Yes thanks for the detailed reply. So helpful to hear accounts like this
Gary

bcmusher

1DX - E6A - multi exposures
Thank you for the review - What I want to know and still waiting for Canon to give me a decision is I do a lot of multi exposures with the 1dx for team and individual sports. It would be nice for the parent to see the pictures on the notebook after they have processed. Unfortunately, when you tether to the 1dx and try to do this, it becomes disabled. Would the E6A transfer this file and not disable the multi exposure feature. Have you tried this?
Thank you
Bonnie

Crewd wrote: »

I promised I would write this up a while back after I had some experience using these devices.

5D mk III's Wireless File Transfer attachment (WFT-E7A):

This device is a few steps outside of useless and has been one of the most frustrating pieces of Canon gear I have ever attempted to use.

• It looses connection constantly (WiFi).
• Its WiFi transfer speed leaves much to be desired.
• It's a separate pack with its own battery. So you either have to attach it to the bottom of your camera (making your camera even more heavy and unwieldy) or have a long USB cable running from the pack on your belt to the camera (which gets yanked or jiggled out more often than you would like). This is a major negative unless you are stationary in a studio.
• My camera actually locked up 3 times in the middle of a shoot using this thing. It doesnt like being disconnected or having to reconnect -- and every time it does there seems to be about a 10% chance that it will lock the camera up. Deal breaker for sure.
• Sometimes to get it to connect you have to turn everything off and then back on in a certain order.
• If you run bluetooth at the same time as the WiFi everything (wifi, bluetooth, and the camera itself) slows way down. Very frustrating.

Basically I would suggest that everyone stay away from this device at all costs; it's a failure.


1DX's Wireless File Transfer attachment (WFT-E6A):

There seems to be a fundamental difference with this device. I believe that the camera has all of the intelligence for networking built in and this attachment simply extends that to Wifi. This device performs exactly as you would expect and want one of these to.

• I have never lost a connection or had the camera lock up.
• The transfer speed performs a bit less than a laptop but still very fast. I can shoot in large JPG and have the shots appear on my laptop screen about 4-5 seconds after I take them. Raw is a bit longer; maybe 12 seconds.
• It's size and placement on the camera are absolutely ideal. I dont notice it's there. I actually leave it on the camera most of the time whether or not I'm actually using it.

Finally, I wanted to make a general recommendation -- at least for these two cameras. Dont buy the GPS only attachments unless you are sure you will never want the wifi capability.

Both wifi adapters include bluetooth capability which you can use to connect to a GPS receiver like the following one that only costs $50.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018YZ836/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

This is a dedicated GPS device. It locks on faster and more accurately than the Canon devices and has a 10 hour battery life. The only thing you loose going this route, and this only applies to the 1DX, is that your photos wont get tagged with the compass direction the camera is facing... So if you really want that then you'll have to pay Canon their money.

I hope some of this was helpful to someone. I would be happy to answer any questions that I can.

Crewd

bcmusher wrote: »

Thank you for the review - What I want to know and still waiting for Canon to give me a decision is I do a lot of multi exposures with the 1dx for team and individual sports. It would be nice for the parent to see the pictures on the notebook after they have processed. Unfortunately, when you tether to the 1dx and try to do this, it becomes disabled. Would the E6A transfer this file and not disable the multi exposure feature. Have you tried this?
Thank you
Bonnie

A function I've never used on this camera before! Time to check it out...

First my set up: 1DX with the wifi attachment connected to a wifi network. My laptop is on this network as well running FileZilla FTP server. The camera FTPs the photos to a folder on the laptop and then lightroom grabs and imports them.

Initially I thought this wasnt going to work as I enabled multi exposure first and then whent to the communication menu to enable that and have it connect. The comm. menu was disabled however.

Next I tried disabling multi exp. and connecting to wifi first (which worked well as usual) and then enabling multi exp. which worked fine now as well. As I took the two exposures the images were transferred normally. The laptop received all three; the first image, the multi exp. image and the second image.

So it seems that for some reason you have to make sure you're already connected for this to work, but work it does.

Hope this helps.