Digital Cameras Go Disposable

iforgotmyfirstlogon writes: "Three Japanese companies are trying to make money off "disposable" digital cameras. You pay for using the camera, take it back to the store to get your pictures, and they recycle the camera so someone else can use it CNN story here. I think it's just a matter of (little) time before hordes of enterprising geeks figure out how to get the pics out and reuse it without paying the fee, or simply gut the camera for parts. Can't see how they'll make money..." And at $16 for .3 megapixels, this sounds like more of a novelty than a bargain, considering that 4-megapixel cameras are available now for less than a thousand dollars.

Comments

Very Cool Device

[Brontosaurus Jim]

A buddy of mine is interning in Japan, and has told me stories about these things.

Aparently in his city (Kyoto, iirc) these things are around in a few places. He had the oppurtunity to play around with one, and the pictures were pretty good. He sent a few to me, and I could definatly tell they were low quality, but they were definatly useable for anything you'd use a disposable

I personally can't wait until these get to America. Should be fun to hack. Aparently he opened one up and it looks like there is a removable chip in it, that he thinks is the memory. He's working on figuring out how to access it. He has a website about it that I'll post when I get back home to my bookmarks.

Oh, cmon!

[lumpenprole]

Normal digital cameras are down to like a hundred bucks for the cheap ones! I know that's not free, but the attraction of disposable film cameras has always been that they're not that much more expensive than the film. This way, you take 15 pictures, you've just paid for a camera with unlimited "film". Who's really going to use this?

Re:I would pay $10 to $20 for this

[stripes]

Seriously, I'd love to rent a high-end digital camera, cause I can't justify wasting more than $300 on buying something I don't use that often

These are not high end, 0.3Mpixels is not enough to make a good 4x6 print (2.1Mpixels is more then enough).

Places like Penn camera do rent high end digital cameras (Nikon D1, D1h, D1x, Canon EOS-D30, and I would assume the EOS-1D in a few months), but they run more like $100 to $300 a day (oddly enough a weekend is one "day").

I think you are going to be better off "renting" one of the disposable film cameras. The quality from them is pretty bad (far worse then a good $100 film P&S like the Stylus, or T4), but a lot better then 0.3Mpixels!

why digital?

[pcardoso]

what's the use for this? just to have disposable cameras? we already have that, for about the same price, if not cheaper. I don't know about the price factor, as I just use my regular 35mm rechargeable.

why would I use one of these digital models? to say "cool, it's a digital camera", and then realise that for the same price you could have bought an disposable analog one, with much better pictures?

it seems that everything that is digital is the way to go these days... in a way this is true. it's much more hackeable :)

Re:Why worry?

[dillon_rinker]

The manuyfacturer is not the copyright holder. The photographer is. Those disposable cameras from Kodak "encrypt" photographs by storing them in an unusable state, substituting for each color the complementary one. (They call these "negatives"). Kodak develops (or could, anyway) the pictures for you but does not hold the copyright.

I suppose it would be possible to award the copyright to the manufacturer in the rental agreement, rendering my point moot.

Quality will suffer severely-

[purduephotog]

I work for an imaging company...

At 0.3 megapixel, or 640x480, you are BARELY able to make a full resolution screen image. Yes it will probably look OK on that screen, but the typical person can see to 150 lpi (lines per inch)- benchmarking on that your print will be roughtly 3x4 inches.

Now, without even going into the sensor... the size that the image could be safely res'd up is probably 1.5, which gets you to the magic 4x6 print that consumers have come to expect.

Don't think about it going to 8x10 without some serious degradation. JPG artifacts alone will prohibit that sort of enlargment- blocking artifacts, clipping...

I think for parts the camera might be on the right track, but this has got to be the wrong approach.

I'd go into the other issues like noise, light sensitivity (speed), robustness... alignment... but i think that would rather bore most people.

two examples at $25 from pricewatch

[Anonymous Coward]

I think both of these are made by Mattel and are the same camera. It stores something like 6 low resolution images when detached from the computer.

I have seen the Barbie one for $10 somewhere.

Barbie Photo Design Digital Camera complete with Photo Design software $19 + $6 shipping

Nick Click! Digital Camera Complete Retail Package with Nickelodeon Software $19 + $6 shipping

Re:same problems as the iOpener?

[ichimunki]

From linked article which you did not read: Customers are under no obligation to return the camera to the store or collect their prints, once the service fee is paid.

It's not a camera rental, it's a camera purchase. But once you have used up the frames, you have no further use for the camera body since you cannot reset it yourself (just like with disposable 35mm cameras, which you cannot reload easily by yourself), so you may as well let the store re-use the camera body because in theory they are the only ones who can reset it.

Personally, I'd rather see camera stores rent out high-end digital cameras and offer to burn the images to CD-ROM for me (replaces negatives) and make some high-quality prints on glossy paper... the cost of maintaining all that (camera, burner, printer) at home is not cheap, and printing the images is a pain. But I *would* be willing to pay around $1 an image for processing and probably an up-front fee of about $10/day for use of the camera.

But as I ponder this business model, I don't see a good way to recoup the cost of the capital required to purchased the high end computers the shop would need and the cameras themselves without trying to provide additional services to people who have their own cameras. And people with their own digital cameras tend to have their own computers right now, otherwise I think most consumers are fine with analog film. I suppose the massive advantages of digital would have to appeal (i.e. no dust, no negative to degrade, PhotoShop filters-- have all your beach shots look like Monets!-- that sort of thing) for people to want a digital camera that they wouldn't use on their home computer (if they even had one).

Sounds like an eventual money maker

[Mr T]

I think it's a pretty cool and good idea. It's in the same vein as the disposable conventional cameras, I thought those were stupid and they are huge money makers for the film companies. I can get an APS camera that will take decent, not great or really even good pictures but decent ones (the smaller negative makes them more grainy) do the zooming and stuff, take 3 sizes of picture and be drop in loadable for somewhere between ~$70 and ~$400 depending on features and quality. Or I can buy a $5 disposable and for a lot of uses the disposable is much nicer even though it doesn't take great pictures. The way I see it, if I'm climbing a mountain and something goes wrong and I have to start dropping balast, I'd rather lose a $5 or even $10 disposable than my $200 (3 years ago) Nikon APS camera. If I'm on the bike and take a digger, I'd rather break the little kodak throw away then anything I've spent real money on and plan on keeping, which is ironic because when I bought the $200 Nikon instead of the $300 tiny Cannon elf my thinking was that I didn't want to spend that much money because I wanted something I wouldn't mind replacing as much. I wanted to take it every where, or so the intention was.

Now I've got a wicked sweet digital camera and I love it. It's a blast because you get nearly instant gratification and you can email the pictures to the relatives the same day rather than waiting to develop them and then scan them or pay for copies. Unless you're some kind of photgraphy buff, a 2-4Mpixel camera is going to be more than good enough for most of your uses, you snap the pics, download them to the computer, put them on the web or email them to the fam and then you take some more. It's highly cool. The only problems I see, a) still complex to get pictures in to the computer, your average grandmother is going to have some issues. b) Still a bit costly. c) this one is only a partial problem but my 3MPixel camera takes pictures that are too big for most uses, I've written a bunch of scripts to down sample them before I put them on the web or mail them and I usually use the compressed mode on the camera, the typical fun snaps user doesn't need 2048 x 1024 x 32bpp TIFF

I think this is an awsome idea. The pictures are going to be of lesser quality, no question about that. But if my grandmother can get them transfered to a CD (presumably, she could go to the drug story, drop off the camera, shop for 10 minutes and then pick up the disc) at minimal cost and the initial outlay is minimal then it starts getting interesting. Assuming there isn't a deposit or something, that would be the camera I'd take scuba diving and on the bike, or just leave in the glove box of the car in case there is a kodak moment. It's not going to be the geek's camera, those of us who pay attention and are technologically minded are still going to fork out the dough and get a nicer digital camera just like we have with conventional cameras but for people who just want to take pictures and share them with their families I bet this is the wave of the future.

If they make vending machines that put the pictures on to CDs right then and there then forget about it, they will essentially replace cameras. There maybe some screwing around with the prices but the economics are just too good. You have any idea how much a photo developing machine costs? You could build a digital camera vending machine out of off the shelf parts, from that fact alone there is economic insentive to make this happen. Also if you look at the digicam market over the last few years, they've steadily got better but the costs haven't really dropped that much, I think you can build the lower res cameras for dirt cheap these days. This idea as incarnated may not work but I think the bigger idea of disposable digicams is a winner.

Consumers dont really care that much for quality

[grahamsz]

Realistically i dont see that the quality will be THAT big a deal. My mother's main complaint with her digital camera is that the pictures are too big when she downloads them from it!??

If you care about quality then why would you be using digital anyway. I appreciate that there are some very high MP cameras, kodak's digital back should be 16MP if they've realeased it yet and some other company produce large format cameras that were touching 100MP (last i looked) for reprographics use.

My scanner will pull 8MP from a 35mm frame and that doesn't look close to maxing out the definition that the negative has. Yet how many home users ever blow photos up beyond 5x7". In fact the recent APS situation made it shockingly clear how happy the average guy on the street was to sacrafice quality in place of gimicks and convenience.

I suspect that the worst part about these is that the images will suffer from low light noise, poor colour balance and lens distortion. The MP count (imho) is a lesser factor.

Oh and if i'm out clubbing with my friends then 640x480 is a fine resolution, but if i'm capturing shots of wildlife or panoramic landscapes then I sometimes find my 2700dpi optical scanner limiting.

Once I get a bit of cash saved up i'm going to buy a small digital camera for casual photography, and a 5x4" large format system with a black cloth over my head for when quality is the overriding factor.

Re:HERE'S THE POINT

[chinton]

Its not really clear in the article that you can take more than 24 pictures... At the beginning it says:

At the store, they can view all the photo images on a display screen and choose any 24 images to be printed.

But later:

The camera is equipped with a flash and 8MB of flash memory, which allows users to record 24 images.

They also don't state whether or not you can delete pictures from the camera before you bring it back. Being able to do that would let you get 24 (relativly) perfect pictures for your $16.