Using the WFT-E2 under OS X Leopard (Mac)…

OK - So having bought Canons WFT-E2 some months ago, I have only ever, until recently had the damn thing working once. Having found no rhyme or reason as why it wouldn’t work for me I was pretty close to just slapping the thing on eBay and having done with it. That was after sense kicked in and I put the hammer back in the toolbox.

And then the answer came to me… And now I love the little wireless gift from god! And no longer do the letters WFT appear to be in the wrong order…

Recently by the way, equals last week (so not worked for about 5 months).

I’m gonna share this information as I could not find anything out there explaining why I may be having a problem. So if you too are about to simply stamp very hard on one very expensive piece of hardware - read on and hopefully you too can enter the world of smug and halt that tearing sound as your hair is pulled from the roots in your skull.

The clue to the problem lies in the title of this piece, namely the Leopard bit. The one time I had it working was under Tiger just before I upgraded. You won’t find the technical reasoning as to why it doesn’t work under Leopard properly in this article as I have no idea, but if you can get it to work as you would want it to, who cares!?

The answer to entering the world of smug lies in using FTP to connect and transfer your files. Whatever that PTP (PC) is supposed to do, trust me when I say there isn’t a hope in hell that it will under Leopard. So forget about wanting to remote control wirelessly (just use a USB cable for that). FTP is the future for happiness with this little puppy.

So how?!

First of all you will need to allow sharing via FTP on the machine(s) you want to hook up to. This is done via the System Preferences panel and then Sharing. Select File Sharing and tick if not already. Make sure that your account has Read & Write access (usually default). Click the Options button at the bottom right and a sub-panel drops down.

Make sure that both Share file and folders using AFP (usually activated by default and needed if you want to browse the files from other machines on the network), plus Share files and folders using FTP. Click Done and your… well, done. Ignore the FTP access instructions it gives you. Use afp:// instead of ftp://

For the sake of example, create a folder in ‘your accounts’ Pictures folder and call it Wireless.

Now, what I have done is saved ‘Set 1’ named ‘Studio’ on the camera for shooting on the Studio network and ‘Set 2’ named ‘Laptop’ for shooting out in the field with the MacBook Pro - i.e. no network available.

To make your life easier on your LAN, set the DHCP settings on your machine to DHCP (with manual address) and choose an IP address to suit your set up. This just means that you can guarantee that your IP will remain the same and not get taken by another machine. If you Create a Network, then I’m afraid you’ll have to check each time you do a shoot and adjust accordingly (If that changes I’ll update this - If you know otherwise, please share).

On your machine connected to your LAN or created network, select About this Mac, More Info… and then the Network tab to see what your IP is for your machine (you may have to check this each time you create a new network as it does change). Make a note of this IP.

As far as your machine is done, that is it.

Now to the WFT-E2…

In the MkIII menu, go to the tab with the WFT-E2 settings (third yellow tab) and when your in the first thing you need to do is to change Communication Mode to FTP and just forget that the PTP (PC) option has ever existed - I only wish I could!

Now go to the Set up option and choose LAN Settings. Select a Set (We’ll use Set 1 because it’s there). First off I’d recommend you change the Settings name so it’s friendly and recognisable. In this case I’ll use Studio. Then Choose Change… Set the LAN type to Wireless, then go to TCP/IP and change IP address set. to Manual Setting. Put your IP address to the same as the one you noted on your machine except increase the last value by 1. So 169.243.20.57 for machine becomes 169.243.20.58 for your camera. Leave the rest of their settings at their default values and return to the previous menu.

Choose FTP Server and select the Address. This does need to be the same as your machine. So in our case 169.243.20.57 and then just leave the port number at the default 21 unless you have set something else up on your machine previously. Return to the previous menu.

Select Log in password and then Log in name… This needs to be the same as your user account log in on your machine as does the password when you go to enter that. Then return to the previous menu.

Choose Target Folder and enter /Pictures/Wireless (at least for this example). Return to previous menu. Leave the remainder of these at their defaults for now - you can tweak and mess things up after you have got it all working ;-) And return to the previous menu.

Now select Wireless LAN, then SSID. Here you need to enter the SSID of your network or the SSID of the network you created form your machine. Return.

Next select Advanced settings… Under 1 choose Infrastructure if you are on a LAN and Ad hoc 11b/g if you are on a network that you created from your machine. If you are reading this then I am guessing it’s pretty safe to assume you have invested in the architecture to support the 11g - If you have I probably don’t need to recommend you choose this because it’s a hell of a lot faster. So I won’t…

Setting 2 is the wireless channel - I have mine on 11, but that’s because of our and surrounding wireless networks. Generally I’d advise to leave it on Auto.

Setting 3 is the encryption - I leave mine off as my machines and networks are encrypted and I’m not sufficiently paranoid enough to worry about it for my pictures. If you are sufficiently paranoid, feel free to add this after you have got it working without it - Trust me WEP is another way of saying ‘a potential whole lotta pain’. But the choice is yours.

So, that’s almost it… If you return to the LAN settings and first save your settings and then turn Protect settings On. It’ll save you having to repeat the whole process next time you attach the WFT.

Now return to the main menu and if you are like me and want the files streaming to be processed as you shoot, set Automatic transfer to Enable.

Something else you can do, under the Transfer type/size is if you have multiple captures set i.e. RAW and small jpeg, you can send only the small jpeg to your machine for instant viewing as the file size is so small. Excellent for previewing during a studio shoot. Also, if you are using Lightroom or Aperture, you can have the folders watch, auto import and apply effects and settings in real time. So if you have already set up your post processing before hand as we do, you can see how they are going to come out on the small files as you shoot in pretty much real time - cool huh!?

OK - We are done! All you need to do now is to go to the Pictures/Wireless folder, fire off a shot and wait for the images to come in. Just so you don’t flip out the first time you try this. A new folder called ‘A’ will appear and inside that will be a folder called ‘DCIM’ and inside that will be a folder called (probably) ‘100EOS1D’ and inside that will be the pictures! I can only guess a windows guy wrote all this stuff - Including that bloody PTP (PC)!

If you want to watch a folder - the last folder (100EOS1D) is the one you will need to have the software watching. We have our software move rather than copy it as that way it is always clean after a shoot ready for the next.

One last thing to repeat is that if you are working outside of a LAN, be it yours or one you are using on location and want to use this technique by creating your own network on you Mac laptop (which you can do in the middle of a desert if you really want to), you not only need to create a new network (use the airport drop down menu at the top of your screen), but you need to make sure that the SSID, the laptops IP, the FTP IP (the laptops IP) and the cameras IP are correct. To date this seems to change each time I do it. I’m positive that there is a way to keep it standard - but as yet I don’t know what it is.

[UPDATE - 5th March 2009] - It's actually really easy and sorry I haven't already added the info. I know a lot of people read this article. In your System Preferences > Network and create a 'Location' - In that 'Location, pre-set the IP etc. and whenever you create your own network for the WFT to hook up to, simply choose the pre-set that you have created with all the correct IP information. As simple as that. [/UPDATE - 5th March 2009]

OK - That’s it… That should work, if it doesn’t and you want to ask a question/share settings, comments etc. If you post it as a reply here I’ll respond and hopefully it may answer others questions too.

Hopefully this was of use to you…

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