An example of a photo posted in our CoverItLive feed. The audience can then click on the image to see the hi-res version and read the captions.
In addition to our somewhat low-res live video streaming, we wanted to treat our audience to some hi-res still images that captured the moments at the 9th Avenue Food Festival. In order to do this, I purchased an Eye-Fi wireless SD card, a $48 addition to my usual photographic arsenal. The Eye-Fi instantly and automatically uploads the image(s) you’ve just taken to Flickr and a variety of other photo hosting websites (via Eye-Fi’s own service).
Here’s a quick list of what you need in order for this to work:
Hardware
- DSLR, in this case: Canon Rebel XSi with a Canon EF-S 17-55 mm f/2.8. I brought a 70-200 mm and a 10-22 mm as well, but since I was also carrying an iPhone 3GS and a Shure SM58 for live video streaming, my hands were too full to switch lenses while we were live 🙂
- Eye-Fi Connect X2 wireless SD card
- A wireless 3G/4G hotspot
Software on your laptop/desktop computer
- A Flickr account
- Eye-Fi Center, the configuration software for the wireless SD card. You use this to type in passwords for the wireless networks you’ll be using, in my case the wireless hotspots. This is also where you tell the Eye-Fi service to automatically upload your images to Flickr. Note: You only need this to set up the Eye-Fi card, you won’t need it during your coverage.
- CoverItLive. The images were uploaded instantly, but Frans, our producer/editor, was in charge of posting the images (HTML embed code) on the live feed, so that they came up at the right time.
I moved all necessary apps to the first screen on my iPhone so they were easily accessible.
Smartphone software
- CoverItLive. We used this to keep ourselves updated on how the live coverage was going.
- Qik Plus – for the live video streaming. As Martin also mentioned, we initially had uploading issues.
- Flickr – to add titles and captions to the images, and to see if they had been uploaded properly. Sadly, the captions (and titles) were somewhat useless in CoverItLive, since the automatically generated embed code only included the image, not the caption.
- Ustream – in case Qik failed on us completely.
As Martin already mentioned in his blog post below, we had some uploading issues with Qik. Other than that, our technical issues were limited. The still images were a great supplement to both the live video interviews (especially since they took a while to upload!) Martin and I did and to Frans’ text-based reporting in CoverItLive.
Give us a scream if you have questions or comments.
Salaam
