Wolverine ESP

I have decided to return this device to Costco. I’ll repeat some of my earlier entry so all info will be on one post.

The Wolverine ESP (hereafter called the ESP) is a digital device that functions something like an iPod but is meant primarily for photographic purposes. It has various slots for all of the different memory cards that are now in use; upon insertion of a particular card the photographic files contained therein can be transferred to the ESP’s hard drive (up to 100 gigabytes!) Then you either set aside the memory card using the ESP to function as a backup, or you reformat the card and use it again.

To make it a real-life test I decided to take a bunch of pix, transfer them to the ESP and then reformat the card, relying solely on the ESP for photo storage.

So, off to Buena Vista Winery in the early AM, ambling around the various vineyards scattered just off the road. An overcast day, for a (welcome) change, helping to keep the contrast down. After a goodly amount of exposures I settled down in the back seat of the Infiniti, fired up the ESP, inserted the CF card, and . . . nothing. Nothing happened: no menu items, no pop-up window, no nothing.

Luckily I had brought the instructions, which had an alternate way of navigating and opening the CF card. Whoa!
But it worked. The remaining (important) issue is that when the pix are displayed on the screen the resolution is pretty poor: you really can’t use the device display to review your photos. When you think of it, this particular functionality is pretty important! At the very least you’d want to be able to review your photos that you’ve taken during the day in order to plan your next day’s shooting schedule.

(Next morning.) Hm. I’ve been shooting RAW . . . Olympus ORF files. Of course, I should have tried shooting some JPEGs, just to see. So I just went out to the front yard and . . . shot a bunch of JPEGs. Downloaded to the ESP, and voila, the display worked perfectly! Nice, crisp picture. Then, got out the Canon G9, out to the front yard and shot a combination of RAW and JPG. As expected, the RAW looked extremely blurry, the JPEGs looked fine.

An email exchange with Wolverine support confirmed my experience. Their explanation was that since RAW formats are proprietary—each manufacturer has a different way of storing data—the ESP can’t read RAW files the same way that it can read JPG files. Could be, although my friend Dan says that his Epson P-device displays his Canon RAW files with acceptable resolution and only a slight loss in functionality (can’t zoom in, etc.) But the Epson device costs considerably more, reaching into laptop price territory.

Found this on a dpreview forum: "I recently bought the wolverine esp 5000 and I have a Canon 5D. I am returning it. I wanted it to be able to view my RAW files when I am on a shoot. The RAW files were blurred. They looked fine on the computer, but not on the Wolverine. Their support was no help, although they did try. I am still searching for something although I may just use a laptop."

So the problem is not unique to me.