Nikon Releases WiFi Digital Camera 144
LegendOfLink writes "Nikon just revealed the world's first WiFi-enabled camera! It runs 802.11b/g and allows users to send files over a network. From the blurb: "Wireless shooting automatically transfers each picture to a selected computer as soon as it is shot. Pictures can then be viewed with Nikon's powerful yet fun-to-use and easy PictureProject software. And wireless printing delivers the convenience of cable-free direct printing to PictBridge-compatible printers. All these functions are easy to implement, too. Just set them up with the Wizard utility to enjoy easy wireless capabilities that add outstanding flexibility to the digital photography experience. "
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
uhm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoopti Do. (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to translate (Score:5, Insightful)
This...
...actually means:
I can see it now...
Honestly, I could write a book.
Re:Battery life? (Score:3, Insightful)
802.11g has speed of 20 - 54 Mbits/second, or around 2.5 - 7 Mbytes/second.
Since a compressed JPEG image is around 400Kbytes, you could easy take and send a picture within a second. Even an uncompressed image might only take a second. Compare that speed to a flashcard which takes several seconds to save a compressed JPEG image.
Re:Allow me to translate (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonderful Idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I had another thought: with the advent of protable digtal cams being used to feed a modern culture of voyeurs, it's just a matter of time before there are voyeurs with protable wi-fi cam sniffers, lingering nearby to leech onto an unsuspecting data transfer. I read a few months ago about how some guys had built a bluetooth sniper rifle; unnoticed, they would stand atop tall downtown buildings and digitally eavesdrop on nearby blackberries and other pdas.
It seems the more freedom we embrace, the more we surrender.
pretty useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
it sits there as a wifi share either set it to join any network it finds when turned on or make it default to adhoc mode.
that would rock. " Hey I need those files, just a second, I'll download them from my backpack."
there are gobs of really cool stuff that could be done with wifi or bluetooth, yet we get useless crap like wifi enabled digital cameras.
Re:Battery life? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that you still need to locate a wireless access point, associate with that wireless accespoint, and then encapulsate the data for transmission over a network. Oh, and provide some 20-30mW of transmission power to achieve the normal range seen by 802.11b/g products...
Yes, yes I do think that this will use more power than a 1.7~2.0v flash card.
Not to mention that that several seconds you're quoting is probably saving a LOT more than 400kb of image, which a camera high-end enough to include wifi is bound to also do. Few of the JPEG images on my camera are under 1MB, and mine is hardly pro-sumer.
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'68 Democrat Convention reports in people's hands (Score:4, Insightful)
He did this by ordering his police to smash the newsies' cameras.
This had always worked before.
He also has his pet union bosses block the stringing of much of the TV cabling into the convention center, hotels, and surrounds that would have carried the pictures. That was expected to work, too.
But the newsies were trying out a new technology: The "minicam". This was enormous. A "miniatureized" TV camera about as big as your torso, shoulder mounted. Hooked to a backpack full of electronics and batteries, with a big antenna sticking out. About all a strong man could carry. But just barely enough to get the signal to the next stage: A semitruck full of electronics, located within a block, terminating in a microwave dish to pipe the signal to a nearby studio.
And this was Chicago. Where all three major networks had a studio there, along with the major facilities for their cross-country video landline.
What was brand new about it the "mini"cam: It was real-time. By the time the billyclub smashed the lens the image of the billyclub had come zooming at the faces of a country full of TV watchers.
Oops!
For the next three days the crowd chants "The Whole World Is Watching" as the process repeats. The country is treated to video of the National Guard and the 101st Airborne shoving crowds around with assault rifles, jeeps mounting machine guns and others mounting barbed-wire barriers, and enough teargas to fog the center of a city, plus enough repeats of police people bashing that instant replay is redundant.
And a once-well-liked Democratic party functionary's nomination is totally discredited. And the Republican wins the race.
Fast forward to near the end of the century. Video cameras that record on tape are now a consumer item. And a citizen tapes the interaction between the LA Police and Rodney King. Regardless of whether the cops were acting rightly or out of control, the scene makes for riots once it hits the news - and again when the cops are acquitted.
So is the reaction of the California governments to clean up the LA cops? Of course not! (Their gang task forces are left to run wild until their pattern of evidence-faking and perjury leads to legal challenges of their previous cases and the release nearly everybody they ever busted.) Instead they pass a law to BAN recording government functionaries (such as police) performing their functions. And the police use this to sieze any videotape made of their actions.
Videocams are in the same position that film cameras were BEFORE the Democratic Convention of '68.
Until now.
Cellphone cameras were a start. But this looks like a system that will put publication-quality radio-linked realtime news photography in the hands of the general population.
Granted it's just stills so far. But it looks to me like John Q Public just got his hands on the class of technological tool that only the network newsies have had for the last 35 years.
Just in time for the next step in the replacement of the the news establishment with the Internet-based open media. B-)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pictures can then be viewed with Nikon's powerful yet fun-to-use and easy PictureProject software
can? or must? I'm sure Nikon thinks their software is "powerful" and "fun-to-use" but I've never ever liked the software included with any peripheral I've ever bought - scanners, cameras, printers, etc.