No Eye-Fi Geotag in PowerShot S100

[semitech]

I have a PowerShot S100 with built-in GPS. GPS works fine.

My SD card is an Eye-Fi 4EV Explore Video card with the Geotagging feature. The wireless transfer to my Mac (using the Eye-Fi Helper app) works OK. But the images never get geotagged. (Note: I turn the GPS function OFF indoors and rely on the Eye-Fi locating WiFi Access Points for the WPS geolocation.)

If I put the same Eye-Fi card in my Canon A570IS, the images get their geotag (assuming a WiFi AP nearby). I've used this card and got many good geotagged photos in the A570. But geotagging never works when the card is the PowerShot S100.

Any ideas what's wrong, and how to fix?

For how geotagging works with WPS see the Eye-Fi web page http://support.eye.fi/features/geo/what-is-geotagging/

[Mykolas]

Hi semitech!

Thank you for posting on our forum.

Eye-Fi tests and determines which of their cards work best or work at all in the various camera models available on the market.  They list these on their website for each model.  The card you have is listed under the PowerShot A570 IS, but not the PowerShot S100.  The link below will take you to the Eye-Fi web page that shows the list of recommended cards for your PowerShot S100:

http://support.eye.fi/cameras/canon/powershot_s100

You may also want to contact Eye-Fi directly for any more details about this issue that we may have missed or that does not appear on their website.

[semitech]

On the Eye-Fi support page for the Canon S100, Eye-Fi says:

Known Issues

When an Eye-Fi Card is used in the Canon PowerShot S100, the camera automatically disables the Eye-Fi cards wifi when the shutter is pressed. Once a photo has been taken, the camera then re-enables wifi on the Eye-Fi card.

Doesn't this logically imply that when the camera shutter is depressed (i.e., the picture is being taken) the Eye-Fi card cannot then acquire the MAC addresses of nearby WiFi Access Points? And since the ability to record the MAC addresses is essential to the operation of the WPS geotagging service, this means that the Eye-Fi card can never record MAC adddresses, and is therefore useless for the purpose of geotagging.

If I had known that the Canon S100 could not geotag due to the idiosyncracy of shutting off the Eye-Fi wifi capability at shutter press, I would not have bought the S100 camera.

I think this is a Canon problem that Canon should solve. This is not the behavior is other Canon PowerShot cameras, e.g. my A570, which have no issue with MAC/WPS geotagging. 

Can you please get Canon to make an S100 firmware fix that will allow the Eye-Fi wifi function to remain active during a shutter press?

Thank you.

PS: Battery life in the S100, when used with the Eye-Fi Eplore Video card, is very bad. I get betwen 4 and 12 photos before the replace battery indicator goes on. Perhaps this is due to another S100 behavior that Eye-Fi also reports on the Canon S100 support page:

When used with an Eye-Fi card, the Canon PowerShot S100 stays powered on until wireless media uploads are complete, has an onscreen icon, and offers the ability to enable/disable the Eye-Fi cards Wi-Fi via the camera menu.

This is another issue Canon should address with the S100. However, my main concern at the moment is the inability of the S100 to geotagg using captured MAC addresses.