Giovanni Savino reports: (This is a corrected version of his earlier post)

In thirty years of image making I’ve always considered photographic devices a means to an end. In other words, I’ve never lusted after a particular camera or lens for its beautiful construction or desirable rarity but only acquired and used these devices for the specific image quality they could help me pursue.

At the Photo Expo I explored many interesting potential additions to my photographic arsenal but, honestly, having also closely followed the recent Photokina event in Germany, through the specialized press, I discovered no new technology that would catch me by surprise sending my imagination galloping towards never-seen-before visual achievements.

However, I came across something that I wished I had in the past, as it would have made my assignment much easier to accomplish. It is a wireless system that I think we’ll increasingly use in the future, both in the studio and on location, in our quest to get rid of any connecting cables from our working environments while establishing an almost instantaneous connectivity with portable monitoring devices and the Web itself.

The product, developed by Cameramator and distributed by Tether Tools, is called TetherFly, and enables you to connect a DSLR camera wirelessly, to an iPhone, iPad, Mac computer or Android device. On all these devices you can view, store and broadcast the images received from your camera via TetherFly and, if needed, you can also remotely control the DSLR via the same wireless connection.

While there are several other companies offering similar devices, as well as major camera manufacturers starting to offer, as an accessory to their latest models, wireless connectivity, I was impress by the simplicity, reliability and speed of TetherFly.

Some time ago, I was asked to upload, in real time, to a client’s Instagram stream, the images I was shooting using a DSLR with a portable Ring Flash at an outdoor fashion event. The task to download the images to the iPhone in order to broadcast them was truly difficult and time consuming. We experimented with an early model of a SDHC Wi-Fi enabled memory card to establish a wireless network between the camera and the iPhone. The connection was extremely unstable, falling all the time, transmitting corrupted photo files and, in the end, causing me a remarkably stubborn headache!

Next time I think I will give TetherFly a try!!