I've ranted in the past about the appalling quality of network support for my Olympus OM-D E-M1. But to be fair to the designers, it appears that they didn't originate this nonsense: they appear to have copied others. I've seen reviews of other cameras with the same fettered (or is that tethered?) view of networks .
Yvonne's new camera has remarkably similar specifications to mine, but it doesn't have any networking capability. For that Olympus suggests the PENPAL PP1. This is a really professional unit:
When OLYMPUS PENPAL is connected to the Accessory Port 2*1 on back of the OLYMPUS PEN E-PL2 camera, resized JPEG images (sizes: 640 x 480 (default), 1280 x 960 or 1920 x 1440 pixels) can be transferred easily to a Bluetooth device such as a smart phone, or to another camera with OLYMPUS PENPAL installed. No downloading, uploading, or computer required.
OK, so indirectly they've said that it's Bluetooth, and not a more conventional network. But what use are downsized JPEG images? Why can't it transfer full-size raw images? Speed, I suppose, but this solution makes it a toy.
Elsewhere in the manual, the refer to FlashAir, something that Wikipedia hasn't found out about yet. I've heard of Eye-Fi, and this looks similar. Took a look on eBay and discovered that they're made by Toshiba, and yes, they're a card like Eye-Fi, but significantly cheaper. I found 16 GB cards for as little as $32, only slightly more than double what I paid for a normal card a couple of months ago. And they're documented. The FAQ explain the operation:
As soon as the FlashAir" SD Card is powered up, it starts offering a Wireless LAN Access Point. This can be easily identified by the receiving host by searching for new wireless networks. The SSID named "flashair_xxxxxx" will appear as a connectable network and the receiving host can establish a direct connection to the FlashAir" SD Card.
Again, the nonsense of wanting to be the network instead of connecting to one. Why do they do this? Is there a manual? Yes, indeed, there are 8 of them in 8 different languages, and you have to download all of them. And there they show that they're not Olympus. Olympus' manual for the PENPAL is 4 pages long and written in 32 languages. Apart from legalese, the total instructions are:
Before using OLYMPUS PENPAL, please read the manual carefully and retain it.
OLYMPUS PENPAL PP-1 is a communication unit. Designed specifically for digital cameras compatible with OYMPUS PENPAL PP-1.
To review operation details, refer to the instruction manual of your camera.
Savour particularly the designed for the cameras for which it was designed .
By contrast, the English version of the Toshiba manual is 21 pages long and seems to contain enough information to use itif you don't understand networks. If you do, you may end up as confused as I:
Open the browser of the device. It automatically goes to http://flashair/. If it does not go there automatically, click the refresh button of the browser. The screen may not refresh even if you click the refresh button. If this happens, type the above address into the address bar to go there. When the START screen (Fig. 4) appears, move to step 7.
The device is the client. So does this thing not only want to be the access point, but also supply DNS? On the other hand, they say that the thing can be used in a real network. Somehow this doesn't make sense.
What I do see, however, is that the thing doesn't place restrictions like downsizing or renaming images, the way OI.Share does. So maybe it's worth getting one to play around with.
ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.