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Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera

Posted by timothy on from the soon-webcams-will-be-mandatory dept.

JeroenH writes: "Sept. 2, 2002, Sony announced the DSC-FX77. It's a 4 megapixel, fixed lens digital camera with a special feature: Bluetooth. When the camera takes a picture, it will be sent directly through the Bluetooth link to a nearby computer, giving you nearly unlimited space for your photos (well, at least as much as fits on your hard disk). At this stage the camera can only send photos to a computer, but in the future it should be possible to control the camera remotely. Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell..."

3 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. 47 Second Transfer Time by fwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With a 47 second transfer time for a full resolution picture I'd say the device is practically useless. Time between pictures is, IMO, one of the most important aspects of a digital camera, as longer timeframes means many missed perfect shots...

    1. Re:47 Second Transfer Time by LordNimon · · Score: 3, Insightful
      First off, full resolution on a 4Mp camera is a big picture, so most people won't be shooting at that res all the time anyway. Second, if they can implement a local cache for the images, so that they are transferred in the background, then it really shouldn't be a problem.

      Come on, admit it - this is cool technology. So what if it has some kinks that need to be ironed out?

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  2. Re:Range and speed by jandrese · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In reality, Bluetooth is not designed for large data transfers like this. 1Mbps is the marketing speed. In reality, Bluetooth devices have a fairly hefty overhead that cuts into their transmit rate significantly.

    Bluetooth was designed around supporting low bandwidth cellular links between your phone and whatever device you have, trading business cards, doing voice (the protocol stack actually has a "bypass" for voice data built right into the spec), and synchronization type tasks. In reality, this camera should be using something like 802.11 if it wants to make that data link useful. (shoot 20 pictures and you're waiting more than 15 minutes for the pictures to transfer. For that kind of speed you could just hook up the USB link cable and have it done in a fraction of the time).

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