Snake Oil or Wonder Accessory

[smoke665]

Finally bit on the Pentax Flucard, managed to buy a "gently" used one for less than half the new. For those not familiar with this basically it gives limited wireless tethering to the Pentax K3II as well as other Pentax models. Product page of Flucard For Pentax 16GB O-FC1 - RICOH IMAGING EUROPE S.A.S

Just got the card in and installed so still learning but here's what I've found so far:

1. Setup went quickly and easily in camera. Put the card in the Number 2 slot, go to the menu and turn it on, and wait a few seconds for it to boot up.
2. Connection by my tablet to the card via wireless was quick and easy. Search wireless connections, find the Pentax card, and connect.
3. Bringing up the browser window hit a snag. Typical Pentax instructions - "once connected to card open browser window and go to menu screen"??????????? WTH???? Scratched my head on that one as my open browser window waited patiently for an address (something they failed to mention in the instructions). Few mins on google found the address was the IP address of the card. Slap head move on.
4. Menu screen is fairly straightforward, and operation was simple. You can change the shutter, aperture, and ISO from the tablet - nice. You can magnify the live view from the camera up to 10x - nice. You touch the screen at the point you want the AF to focus on and snap the shutter - also nice. I've got to admit it's cool to be standing away from the camera touch the screen and hear it focus and snap the shutter. Change your settings, and do it again, all without touching the camera.
5. It can also connect multiple devices "at the same time", so one can operate the camera and another can be transfering images.

So far I'd be pushing it toward miracle (since only K1 and 645 support tethering), except for one little annoyance. You can only view or transfer remotely JPEG files, no support for Raw. You can save a raw file to card, but you have to transfer the files via wired connection or pull the card. The Pentax workaround is save as a Raw+ (two files, one Raw one JPEG).

So the jury is still out on if is worth it, or I got conned into buying the snake oil.

 

[tirediron]

Not cheap; hope the jury finds in favour!

 

[Derrel]

Looks like a nice device, based on the feature set shown on the manufacturer's page. Let's hope it works well for you.

 

[pez]

Aw man, I would have sent you mine for free...

 

[smoke665]

Aw man, I would have sent you mine for free...

Always a day late or a dollar short, fortunately I didn't pay much for it. I really need to just use it some to find out where and how it can be of use. The inability to view or transfer RAW files, and no histogram are some serious flaws.

So why aren't you using yours? Apparently at some point you also thought it was a great idea.

 

[pez]

Yeah, I was thinking maybe for astro photos and macros, but it turned out not to be worth the setup time for me. I guess it was simply not an interesting enough toy

 

[rickxx]

got mine as part of a k3 bundle. gotta say, really haven't used it much.

 

[lynxear]

Finally bit on the Pentax Flucard, managed to buy a "gently" used one for less than half the new. For those not familiar with this basically it gives limited wireless tethering to the Pentax K3II as well as other Pentax models.
...
So far I'd be pushing it toward miracle (since only K1 and 645 support tethering), except for one little annoyance. You can only view or transfer remotely JPEG files, no support for Raw. You can save a raw file to card, but you have to transfer the files via wired connection or pull the card. The Pentax workaround is save as a Raw+ (two files, one Raw one JPEG).

So the jury is still out on if is worth it, or I got conned into buying the snake oil.

I can see a use for nature photography.

When I first bought my ist DL I was ticked off because the remote infrared shutter release was located on the front of the camera. I suppose the bright lights that designed this believed it would only be used when the photographer wanted to be included in the picture. There is a remote shutter release built into the camera and I saw that they wanted something like $50 for nothing more than a contact closure!!! and you had to stand beside the camera... good for long exposures but again useless for a nature photographer if you wanted to set up your camera near a bird nest and let the bird get used to the camera before taking the picture.

Then I found a hack for a shutter release. It uses ear phones buds for a cell phone which has the same jack as on the Pentax (at least 15 years ago and available from a $1 store for $1), you took off the ear buds and attached 2 switches... One was a simple contact closure and actually you could depress half way to focus like normal with this switch. The second was an on/off switch for long exposure times.

It actually worked fine. I mounted a smaller wire length in a TUMS plastic bottle..switches on the bottom and the wire stuff through the opening of the bottle and the two separated by some tissue.

This FlueCard looks to be ideal for nature photography. But I doubt it would work in my dinosaur.