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Christina Brown photo
Japan, Tokyo
1 Level
477 Review
0 Karma

Review on Nikon 27046 WT 5A Wireless Transmitter by Christina Brown

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Handy but expensive

I bought one of these for my D4 which is sometimes used for aerial photography - the camera is mounted on the outside of the plane and the photographer (me!) is mounted in the cockpit. The WT-5A is very comfortable in this mode, and once you get all the issues sorted out, it's actually pretty reliable. Battery life is decent, and build quality is about what you'd expect from Nikon: bulletproof for the most part. The size doesn't matter as users of this equipment mostly use the camera on a tripod. However, I'm a bit surprised these days that Nikon didn't just ditch the 802.11 Wi-Fi (and GPS) chip. chip!) into the mighty D4 and that's it. GPS geotagging and WiFi will cost you a pretty decent sum. Another thing is that I also have one of the new D800E cameras and I was surprised that the WT-5A didn't work with it. I know I should have checked beforehand but I didn't. It turns out the D800 uses an older WT-4A setup - even bulkier and more expensive than the WT-5A. Looking for a better alternative, I came across Eye-Fi. In fact, these are memory cards with integrated WLAN. At least on the D800 they work well and you can get a serious memory card plus WiFi for a very low price. They even have a proper iPad app - the only thing you're really giving up is support for Nikon CameraControl Pro software if you're using Eye-Fi.

Pros
  • Excellent overall performance
Cons
  • Somewhat wrinkled