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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.
What's the point? if you have to take it back to the shop U might as well use a normal camera and get the pics developed in 1hr??? just why???
"Profit-making relies on how many cameras we can collect and how many times we can recycle them, which can be recycled for several times," says Katsuhiko Miyata, an Asahi Optical spokesperson, noting that the manufacturing cost of the camera, even at this quality level, is still more than the service fee.
This is going to have the same problem those subscription-based internet appliances had. As soon as someone figures out how to hack these into a webcam, people are going to buy them and not return them.
As the company spokesperson admitted, the problem is the cost differential. They're depending on a certain percentage of customers actually returning the cameras X number of times. If they can hit that percentage and that X, they're good.
My guess is the first person to put out information on how to hack one of these is going to get slapped with a lawsuit.
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.
But I'd love to rent one when I have guests from out of town, fill it up with pictures of us doing the town, take it back and get the pictures.
Will they be offering those digital movie cameras too? This is something I'd also be willing to rent, take it on a short trip, maybe film a ski trip with friends, then turn it in.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
We got my dad his digital camera about 4 years ago. Cost like $400. I'm sure its resolution is a tiny fraction of what can be done now. But he's gotten 4 years out of it and is still going strong. He's still the hit of the family parties. Still the only one in the immediate fam that even has one. If we're at a point now where the disposal version can do even a piece of what his can, I'm sure they will be an instant best seller, not a novelty.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
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.
I have to disagree. One of the great selling points of a disposable camera is that you can bring it somewhere and you don't have to worry about losing or breaking it. If you do you've lost a few pictures and you're out $10-$15. I can't imagine the digital camera renter's being as forgiving, even if it is a low-end model.
KidA
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
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?
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
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..."
All the manufacturer has to do is "encrypt" the camera's internal memory by XOR'ing it with 0xFF and then getting the data out of it is a DMCA violation, at least in the U. S. of A.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
At JC Penny, Walmart, ToysRUs, etc...
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You're renting the camera and paying for someone to make prints. Both costs are bundled into one charge. Shit I could do this at Kinko's today. Even if I don't have a PC I can bring my camera to Kinko's download the images and manipulate them myself. If I want I can even burn a PhotoCD and hand that off to anyone to make an unlimited number of prints.
I don't see how this 'disposable' makes any sense.
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.
Yeah! I mean, for the low price of 50 of these, you could buy a high end camera!
Seriously, high definition isn't really as important as an accurate picture. even a decent 640x480 picture is fine, as long as the picture is accurate(no glitchy pixels). my USB webcam sucks in this regard except outdoors in summer (and even then it's not always a sure thing). Spending 16 bucks for a camera to go on vacation and take a few pictures sounds fine.
It's been a long time.
Excuse me, but I'm not paying 20 bucks to ent a digital camera so i can just print the pictures on some paper. If all you want is hardcopys then go buy a 35 mm camera for 20 bucks, and you're way ahead of the game. These guys need to get a clue and at least let you ave the images to a floppy.
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
Duane
(Note, on that "automatically opt in" thing. While I don't agree with it, it's the logic that a "bulk email provider" friend of mine used on me once: register with a company and you are implicitly opting in. Yeah, sure. Glad she's out of work now :))
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Let us not forget that these will be distributed in the land of conformity and social obligation. If people are told 'These are to be used only in this manner', it *will* siginificantly deter those interested in chewing up their guts. Even those who do manage to make their disposable camera into a real camera will never be seriously considered by the companies distributing the camera because they will not significantly impact profits in any way. No, this would not work in the U.S., but it just might in Nippon.
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Here I am, like a fool, with a digital camera I spent $250 on and requires me to own a computer with a "hard drive" and "monitor" and "serial port". Instead of that massive outlay I could instead pay $15/pop for the priviledge of driving back and forth to the store for my digital picture needs. The more I use it, the more I save!
324006
I guess I'm missing the point. The reason I have a digital camera so I don't have to bring anything anywhere to get my pictures. I don't see how this is any better than buying a disposable camera and then bringing it to a 1-hour photo lab. Am I missing something?
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.
License the camera (or lease it). You don't sell it. That's how you make money.
Wake up and pay attention.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
No they're not a substitute for one's personal primary camera. But they're excellent for two applications:
1) Taking pictures in places that put the camera at significant risk (hiking, rafting, Burning Man)
2) Handing out to lots of people -- i.e. weddings -- without spending a bunch of money.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Why use a disposable camera? Use the Wristwatch Camera. How will they know what is is, when it is up your sleeve.
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Think of it this way. With a 24 exposure disposable, you get 24 exposures. period. With an 8MB flash card and a digital camera, you get to take many more exposures (especially at 640x480), and choose your favourites (as mentioned in the article).
Now I'm not saying that this is definitely the way to go, or that it's all that revolutionary, just that there IS a point to this.
150lpi? This is an odd way of specifying what a person can see. I mean, at what distance? Many billboards have FAR less lines per inch. if you used 640 x 480 on a billboard most people probably wouldn't notice, and here is the experiment to prove it:
1) find a billboard. bring along something you can measure with, even very approximately, like a business card (the narrow end is 2 inches wide).
2) stand as far away from the billboard as you would normally be to find it comfortable to read.
3) raise your measuring device up to your eye about as far from your face as you would normally view a photo.
4) take that width and imagine filling it with 640 pixels. For me, to the billboard out my window, that's about 500 dpi which is far more pixels than needed for not just a smooth photo, but to be able to read it.
So 640 x 480 does have practical uses. And I haven't even touched on web sites, business cards or even Ebay auctions.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
All your original analysis does is presuppose that the user has *need* for more than, say, 10 usages. Which, by itself, admits that if you did NOT need this many usages, disposable cameras could well justify itself. All the arguments about why disposable digitals make no sense could be made verbatim to argue that disposable 35mm cameras make no sense, for these cost far more than the contained film. But disposable 35mms are hugely popular and appropriate for many situations. I keep thinking I should pack a disposable in my backpack/glove compartment/office just for those special occassions where I wouldn't otherwise have a camera handy.
Think of the homemade p0rn! You really can't take those kinky pictures of the misses if you have to take it into the shop to get the pictures. That would cut out a big chunk of the reason why people want digital cameras!
Someone tell me why *anyone* would want to use a disposable digital camera that costs twice as much as a conventional camera and where the resolution is so laughably bad as to be useless?
Take a look at this site. It has an interactive buyers' guide of sorts that lets you pick the features you find important and spits back the camera(s) that do what you want.
~Philly
You think THIS is waht makes japan wierd? Not cars with emotions or robotic cats with lifelike skin?
Alright, maybe your right, disposable digital cameras make japan wierd... those other things make it creepy. That and the old man I saw on the Hanzoomon line reading Rapeman comics.
I have chosen the Canon G1. It's really a gem among the hyped up market, with features that are actually useful and not gee whiz candy. Compared to professional cameras, it's only missing SLR and changeable lenses -- but then again it's the size of a 35mm point'n shoot. And the 3x zoom lens has macro and telephoto adapters available.
Linux compatilibity comes via USB (gphoto2), though I prefer a PC Card adapter to read the CF card directly. The camera can also use Microdrives of (currently) 1 GB.
The new G2 version has just come out, but the differences are not very stunning (4Mpix instead of 3.3).
I don't know about hackability (maybe via the binary-only firmware updates), but I'm more interested in 'photo geek' features which let you choose every possible setting when taking photos.
Unfortunately, one interesting feature requires the use of a windoze: creating panorama pictures from multiple shots. This is now the only reason I'm left with a windoze partition :-/
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I currently own a Kodak DC3200 - cheapest looking piece of shit camera that was ever made (ok, next to the Photorun DJ1000 - which I also own). The DC3200 cost me about $150.00 a few months ago (and just noticed on PriceWatch it is much cheaper now). It has all the features I want, and despite looking like shit, actually gives great pictures:
* "megapixel" quality (1280 x 960 or thereabouts, I believe, on highest setting)
* 2x digital zoom - which sucks because it only works on the 640 x 480 setting
* LCD preview display
* Serial interface and video out
* Flash
* Built in 2 meg memory
* Uses CompactFlash memory cards, as well
* Linux "compatible" via gPhoto
It really does have great quality, even in low light levels - I picked it specifically because it stored the images in jpeg format on the card, guaranteeing me that I could use an operating system of my choice. A serial interface that guarantees no proprietary lock in. Wow! All of that cheap! My complaints:
Lens cap and charger for the batteries not included - they are seperate items to buy. Plus, there is a small lag time when taking a picture, about a second (that, and the "speed" of the camera is very low - no capturing high speed shots - but I am not a professional photographer, so I don't care much).
All in all, not many complaints - and far more worth it than a disposable digital (which, I have to admit, have hack value attractiveness for me). I think maybe having one of these as a backup or standby for bad situations (where you wouldn't want to lose a good camera) is also an idea.
To be honest, I have wondered for a while when these kind of things would come out - I am now waiting for "disposable" video cameras...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The could use all of the hacked cue-cat scanners to read a bar code off of all those cameras they make and your credit card.
It just might work.
{SEG}
(offtopic-kinda-sorta-rant)
Has anyone else noticed that humorous posts have been getting modded down recently?
I try to metamoderate everyday and invariably have several comments that are funny as heck, but are "troll/flamebait/overrated/redundant".
Advice for metamoderators: look for the above labels, read the context (i've noticed that was recently added, I think) and decide with a "benefit of the doubt" attitude and rate as unfair. Obvious F/R/O/T's, fair...or don't metamod it...your decision.
(ok, this could be considered a "rant-lite", but maybe it is meant to get ppl to browse at -1 for a good chuckle...I dunno)
Moose.
Windows 95 had "Start Me Up" as a theme song. XP needs "Run Like Hell".
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I see so many times on /. all the geeks coming down hard on some new product. The manufacturer probably didn't even take geeks into consideration when they started marketing their item.
If you think about 35mm disposable cameras, and the people that use them, they don't own all the equipment that goes along with 35mm because they don't want the hastle and expense of dealing with it. They just want to take some pictures and get their prints made. The same is true for these things. People that don't own computers can still run around taking nice digital pictures that they use either to print out (at the photography shop) or have them put them on a CD to email from a cyber cafe.
We wouldn't use their service because we have our own equipment. Just like 'real photographers' don't use disposable cameras because they have $3,000 Nikon F5s and a spare room turned into a darkroom.
But yea, the quoted resolution is a joke, by anyone's standard. They need to get that up to par with the midrange cameras of today (:
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
film companies like kodak and fuji have been retreating from digital cameras by making disposable film cameras with special features (panaoramic, waterproof, etc.). this is the only market left to be conquered digitially before film becomes extreemly expensive and returns to being an esoteric medium.
Kodachrome used to be patented and had to be developed by Kodak. Might still be that way. I just used Ektachrome. Almost as good, and I could develop it at home.
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35 mm slides have much higher resolution, in terms of lines per inch, than any laser printer. Well, some of the >$10,000 lasers might have that level of resolution.
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I don't disagree that most pictures are only printed at 4x6, or even that most pictures not only don't deserve to be 8x10, but many don't even deserve to be printed :-)
However if you get a really nice shot, whether it is via luck, or skill, it is nice to be able to have a reasonable size print.
Oh, and if you own a film camera and never got anything you want bigger then 4x6, don't assume it will be so with digital. I had a few film cameras over the years. I tended to shoot a roll or two on vacations and family gatherings and the like, never get anything astoundingly good, and put the camera away for months. Sometimes long enough to lose it (thus the "few" in "few film cameras"). Then I got a digital camera (because the new economy was still working for me, and I had $600 for a toy-of-no-clear-value).
Digital cameras are cool for learning. I don't have to pay for my bad pictures snap snap snap, I can see almost right away if the shot was good snap snap snap, I can show them to people 3 seconds after I take them snap snap snap. I took about 30 to 50 pictures a day for the first few months after I got the thing. Really. That is in a single week I took more pictures then I use to in a year. And I got kinda good at it. In fact lots of people who take that many pictures tend to get good at it.
Now I have a new hobby, a new reason to spend money, and if computer jobs get scarce enough a new skill :-) (actually most photographers are quite poor, so I think I'll try to avoid that!)
Hmmm, where was I going with all this? Oh yeah, go out and buy a digital camera, but don't expect to stay pleased by 4x6 prints after you get good. I had to buy a film camera a scant six months after the digital! (no, you can't have my digital, it is still my pocket camera, the film one is too bulky to fit in my pocket!)
Er... no, that just looks like a well-buttered hamster... Wow... er, my neighbor must've borrowed the camera... no, I don't have any idea how that goat got in the shot.
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
As for memory, the Sony cameras take a (proprietary) "memory stick", which are available up to 128 MB capacity, which at 640x480 can store over 700 images. The max resolution is 2200 something by 1700 something. You get a 16 MB stick with the camera, but that's pretty small if you plan to take high res pictures.
It has some "special effects", like black and white, sepia tone, and solarized. It can record mpeg video in two sizes. If you want to get into it, you can manually set the shutter speed, aperture, and all that other stuff that I don't know anything about.
Battery life is about 3 hours on a full charge (taking pictures with the LCD on). It works well in low-light, even without the flash. I have some pictures online that I took with it. If you really want to see them, mail me and I'll give you the URL.
As for programability, well, if someone could figure out how to h4x0r it, there's obviously a lot of stuff you could mess around with.
Mind you, I imagine a lot of other cameras have these features, but I'm happy with the overall package. The bad news is, with the 128 MB stick, it cost me right around $1000. Give it a few months though and it'll probably be half that.
most people do not want to carry there laptop with them on vacation. They want to click, drop in box, get pictures online.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In Theme Parks (ala WallyWorld). Cheap enough that you don't wanna steal em. Rugged enough that you'd be able to play with them near food/water.
Big booth at the front gate, rent camera (place security deposit), wander around shooting stuff. when it's "full" go back, store the pics you want "in booth" and continue on.
End of day get back the security deposit (not refundable if it flys off the Whirlly-Gig and you lose it)
Two options for end of night retreval.
1)Burn to CD (10$ per disk)
2) Print the photo's right away ($1.50 per)
They'd make millions!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
640x480 is really just fine for typical web pages - pictures of your cat or your cousin's kids, and most really cheap cameras are that resolution. Sure, it's not what you'd get with your thousand-dollar SLR with really great lenses - this is the digital equivalent of an Instamatic.
The interesting quality thing they did here is that they're not compressing the image much - 8MB for 24 shots means they're storing pictures as ~310KB instead of the more typical ~75KB JPEGs that other digital cameras I've seen use for 640x480 images. I don't know if this means they're doing JPEG, or if they're doing some low-CPU compression algorithm and saving money on CPU, or doing 8-bit-per-pixel uncompressed images instead of more useful color depth (unlikely but possible, and that really *would* make color suffer.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't know that camera, but my keen digicam shopper's intuition tells me that the Fuji's resolution may be inflated. For example, many flatbed scanners come with ludicrously high resolutions, but those are interpolated values. The "pure" optical resolution is generally much lower, and that is the only figure you should be concerned with.
Digicams do the same stuff with "digital zoom," which is totally useless. And I have seen some digicams doing interpolation jive with their resolution numbers too. Caveat emptor.
...Compgeeks (http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=KG-JC 3S-WB) has one for $35, and you don't have to return it to get your pictures.
I'm the stranger...posting to
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.
Uhh...I dunno. I agree, it is sorta expensive...but then again, regular disposable cameras are quite expensive....9 bucks for a nice kodak flash one. However, people still buy them! Why? If they have a nice camera, maybe they don't want to take it camping where it might get broken; or maybe somone that doesn't plan on taking a lot of pictures in their future decided it was better to spend 15 bucks on a couple of cameras for a trip to get the pictures they want rather than spending like 70 or 80 bucks for a nice point and shoot. I see disposable digital cameras being in the same boat. The price isn't all that much different, and a lot of people wouldn't mind saving time/energy to get the pictures they want for on the web, no matter how low res they are (look at the casio watch camera which any geek would love to have).
The anti-salmon
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.
Timothy: I dont know what kind of dough your rolling in, but the rest of us mortals consider the difference between $16 (sixteen) dollars and 'less than a thousand' pretty significant.
uh... I don't see how somebody could subvert the costs.
I would assume:
1.) you put down a credit card when you borrow the camera so if you break it you pay for it.
2.) that you have to pay a flat rate for printing some minimum number of pictures, so even if you downloaded them yourself you would still be paying...
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, for people who like the idea of a digital camera but would never buy one... or only need one for a specific event...
Depends on the camera, and the film. I like the color off of my Canon PS100 better then the color off of Kodak Gold. I like Kodak Portra 160NC, and Fuji Realia 100 a lot more then the PS100.
The color off of the Canon EOS-D30 is very nice, as nice as most films. Of corse at $2500 one would hope it looks good on print. I have heard very nice things about the Fuji S1 Pro's color, but other then that it is a dog of a camera (and also about $2000).
If you look at luminous landscapes he favorably compares the D30 with ciba printed slides (and he is a cibachrome master printer!). Even if it isn't really that good, it is quite nice.
I am going to agree with that, almost. If you are spending over $2000 you can do very well with digital. Under $2000 film is giving you better quality (this year!). Digitals do still help you learn a lot in a very short time though.