Does anyone own the wft-e5a?

[JoeC]

I have some questions about it.

1) Do you need a battery in both the camera and the wft-e5a?
If so, do you have to remove the wft-e5a to access the battery compartment on the camera?

2) Approximately how may frames per second does the live preview display when using it wirelessly?

3) Do you have to run the eos utility to see live preview or does it work through a browser?

4) Do the focus controls work remotely?

5) Does it work with a Mac - and is it stable?

The one review I found of the device said they were having drop out issues with the connection when using it with the eos utility. Wondering if this is common...

Thanks
Joe

 

[JoeC]

bump

 

[JoeC]

I ended up purchasing one after the canon rep answered my questions. To spare anyone the trouble, here are the results:

1) yes you need a battery in the wft-e5a and yes you have to remove it to get to the battery in the 7D.

2) This was the let-down for me - I wanted to see live view on my laptop wirelessly from the 7D. It works, but the frame rate was painfully slow. Wireless, I got one image every 3 to 5 seconds. Could work for stills, but not useful for video monitoring. I tried it with an ethernet cable, and that was much faster, with about 5 frames a second - but still slower than the usb that you can use from the camera itself.

3) its supposed to work through a browser for stills, not video. I was using the eos utility in my tests.

4) yes, in theory - but with only one image every 3 to 5 seconds - the real answer is no.

5) I wasted half a day and was on the phone with a canon rep for over an hour as we both tried to get it to work with snow leopard. I ended up using an older computer with leopard when the rep called me back and said there seems to be issues with the software and snow leopard... That was pretty obvious after an hour of it not working properly.

With leopard, I still had occassional drop outs and problems connecting - but that could have been due to the firewall settings at my workplace.

End result:
I shipped it back to B&H for a refund. The potential of it all intrigued me - wireless live view and wireless focus... but I think we may be a few camera generations away from that working fast enough.

I do think though, that Canon could develop a device that connects into the bottom port of the 7D that would allow for remote focusing. The WFT-e5a communicates through that port and did allow focusing, but it is sending so much data that it isnt responsive enough. How about it Canon? A dedicated remote follow focus attachment?

-Joe