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Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera
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..."
"Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures?"
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It already does . .
IIRC app'x 10 metres
Get the EULA T-shirt
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...
let's hope Sony has the good sense to release enough information for someone to be able to write a Linux driver for this one. i'm still hoping for a driver for my CMR-PC2.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
I wouldn't say incredibly small, as it is on the order of meters. Also, you could put up an access point, like Axis 9010 which has a quite reasonable range. Actually, I think this is a good idea.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Says in the article 10m. I thought the same thing, so I read the article thinking I'd see something about internal storage. But there is no mention of it.
Talks a lot about using the camera with a laptop. There are mentions of a cradle and USB. So it has to be able to store images, right?
Oh, Bluetooth is also slow. 47 seconds to transfer a full 4 megapixel image.
So i have to wait 47 seconds after i take the picture for it to be written? I don't see any mention of on-camera cache, which means you'd have to wait 47 seconds in-between shots. My Canon G1 has about a 1.5 second delay between shots, and i thought that was bad, but 47 seconds is insane! the article goes on further to state that you have to wait 6.5 seconds for a THUMBNAIL!? No prosumer photographer is going to take this seriously, and it'll be too much stuff carrying around for laptops...
This is another step in the direction of fragmented hardware. Instead of a mobile phone that can take pictures and browse the web, you'll have a camera, a screen, an earplug and microphone, and a screen, all connected via Bluetooth (or some other standard).
This will make it easier for upgrading parts of your system, and only buying what you need (you start with the mobile phone, then buy a camera of low quality, a year later you upgrade that camera, but you can keep using your mobile phone). Expect more of this to come.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
I guess there is still a possibility to store the pics on a Memory Stick... the bluetooth capability must be aimed at other specific uses, like photo-sharing with people who have neither USB nor a MS-reader (like the ones that are included in Vaios or Clies)...
Maybe Tom Cruise could also use this if he plans a remake of MI2 (especially the moment when they're at the races and they need to collect some memory-card data).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Actually, the article says:
This gives a transfer time of 0.15 seconds.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
Two things. Firstly, the article actually mentions that Bluetooth range is 10m (and it certainly works fine between my PDA and phone, when the PDA is downstairs, and my phone is upstairs). Secondly, if the pictures can be sent to your phone (or PDA) by bluetooth, then you can email them to people.
Ditto. I do buy Sony stuff if their product is clearly the best choice, and if it contains no proprietary media/etc. I won't consider them when buying a DV camcorder if it's a model that has a damn memory stick for stills, for instance. Don't even get me started about Digital8.
So that gives you a really small radius around your PC to take pictures, if you're transmitting to a desktop PC. Although with a Laptop it should be fairly easy, but still, that's a lot of hardware to carry around. Not practical at all. The bluetooth technology really gets on my nerves. The range is horrible, and should be replaced by something better. It's not a God's gift to consumers. It's vapor.
Ok, lets say I have a Ericsson mobile phone, and it can intercept and store blootooth signals. I doubt there is a phone out there which will store massive uncompressed image data on a tiny memory block. Totally useless. I can see no further applications within the next couple of years. The technology isn't widespread enough, and the storage on BT modules are either a) tiny b) non-existant c) inpractical
Vapor.
Is that even a feature? I can transfer 32 Megs of high quality image data from my DSC F505 under 30 seconds, give or take a few.
Good. Someone should tell Sony that 1999 called. They want the digital camera back.
The only thing that's worth raving about with this digicam is the 4.0 megapixel spec (which is not much by today's standards). I just feel sorry for the people who will be paying lots of money for this overpriced POS.
Some Vaios in Japan have had Bluetooth for a year now.
I think the poster, and subsequently everyone who has replied, has missed the point of this camera.
It is not bluetooth enable so you take a picture, send to BT device, take another one.
You use it like a normal camera, but you can ALSO transmit your pictures to other BT devices, like sync with your computer etc..
That's great. I look forward to having to lug around both. Unless you're bound to a wheelchair and have ample cargo capacity, this is truly dumb.
Plus, is it really that hard to plug a wire into your camera to download the pictures?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
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).
I read the internet for the articles.
My Nokia 7650 has Bluetooth and a camera and will happily send pictures to my PC or a Pocket PC or even a Palm Pilot. Mostly I use it to send pictures to my HP printer, which also has Bluetooth, it took no setting up or drivers, just unpacked the phone, took a photo, pressed "send" and out it comes.
Bluetooth is a truely wonderful thing.
Lots Of Love
Bill Ray
is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it. :)
I was in a high street store in London (UK) a couple of months back, and they had the latest Vaios which had bluetooth built-in (and 802.11), IIRC.
They were very new though.
Tim
Of course, I could be wrong on the image sizes/colour depth & number of images.
Sony released a Digital Camera 18 months ago that had a 3" CD-ROM built into it. It used the same rechargables as their video cameras.
People hated it "Only 2 Megapixels" they whined. "CD-ROM isn't as whizzy as CF" they said.
They missed the point. There are two problems with a digital camera when used on vacations (a) You won't have a PC with you for 2 weeks (b) The battery life either has to be measured in thousands of pictures or be easily rechargable.
Well the Sony solved these two problems. It had 150M of storage space on cheap ($1) media. You moved it to your PC by moving the CD-ROM. Plus, the sony had enough space that the JPG compression used was light. I love these cameras that advertise 6 megapixels, and then they compress the images so much that it might as well be 1.5 megapixels. Plus, the camera's battery would last 150 pictures and be rechargeable in under an hour.
It was and is a great idea.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
AFAIK, the name is derived from the term "wardialing" which refers to the old-school hacker trick of getting a compuer with a modem to dial up every number in your area code looking for other modems, which at the time were probably unsecured computer systems.
No idea where war figures into "wardialing" either, though, except that it probably sounded cool at the time.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I don't want the camera to send the picture to a nearby computer, but to my cell phone. The cell phone should then upload it to my computer at home. Then the 10 meter range would be plenty, and I would have a digital camera with essentially unlimited memory. As well as a reason to invest in an UTMS connection for my cell phone.
Only class 3 (I think) radios are limited to 10m. Class 1 devices (such as the access point sitting on my desk right now) have 100m range - and can therefore be contacted by class 3 devices.
(plus my 7650 can actually deal with ranges of about 25m).
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
It might be useful to develop a Bluetooth-capable device in a Compact Flash form factor that acts like a memory card, but really stores its data on a remote device (like a laptop). Such a card could be inserted into any existing CF camera and used in the same way as the Sony.
An on-card cache could help it get past transfer time issues for the purposes of compatibility with existing cameras.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
A friend of mine and I were /just/ talking about this sort of thing this past weekend. (Without any prior knowledge of Sony's work).
The way figured it is that cameras can get smaller if the storage was moved off the device. I didn't really think about lugging a laptop around (though that is a good idea) but more a portable device like the iPod. Have your camera transfer pictures to the same device that's storing and playing your mp3s. I mean, with 20 GB of space, you could leave 3 GB free for pics for an afternoon. The iPod-type device is already on your person so range isn't an issue.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
There's no "war", which usually involves military conflict, or at least two diametrically opposed agendas. It's just a geek or two running around with wireless stuff, delighting in the poor security of wireless networks.
/. ;)
I take it you are a non-geek who accidently stumbled onto
It's an extension of the term "war dialing" (dialing numbers and logging those where a modem answers) which comes from the 1983 movie WarGames where the geek protagonist uses the method to modem into NORAD.
The movie by the way is perhaps STILL one of the best hacker movie out there. All the hacking is realistic, the hacker has no magic powers over computers (as most hackers in movies do) - he wardials to find computers, he finds or makes educated guesses for passwords, etc.
The thing ships with a 16mb memory stick, and can take larger sticks. It also has USB and a cradle for faster transfers. 47 seconds is also for the largest format picture. It can also send video at several frames per second, or a VGA resolution snapshot in under two seconds.
Backing up, the point of Bluetooth isn't Raw Speed. The point of including Bluetooth in a device like this is automation: As soon as you come near the proper PC, this and the PC will detect each other and begin the exchange. You might not have taken the camera out of your pocket or done more than set it down on walking in the door before it finishes the transfer.
If you need the pictures more quickly, simply set it in the USB cradle, or pop out the memory stick and stick it in one of those PC drive bay memory stick adapters.
Later on, you'll be able to configure your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone as a conduit, so pictures can automatically ride a secure tunnel back to your machine wherever you are, giving you an effectively infinite amount of space for your pictures. That's what Bluetooth is for.
More details here for Japanese speakers.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
What I would like to see would be the ability for the camera to add metadata to the pictures via input from the Bluetooth connection. For example, getting the current Lon/Lat from a Bluetooth enabled GPS and embedding it in the picture's metadata ("Where the heck did we take THIS picture?"). I could then do some interesting GIS applications, such as a photoalbum on a map using Mapserver (a great Open Source GIS program)
1) Show add for camera to that neighbor with the gorgeous wife.
2) buy WarDriving equipment
science is a religion
And I feel like I've somehow ended up in a pseudo reality, thanks to this post.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews and bribes, junkets and payola -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?
The item above is identical to the DSC-FX77 digital camera press release from Sony Europe's site. Could the reason for posting a press release as news be more payola from Sony?
Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.
If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills for product manufacturers.
Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking.
Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.
Sony already has a digitial vidcam (can't remember the model offhand) that supports Bluetooth and records directly to MPEG-2 using the MicroDV tape format. The price (last I looked) was somewhere around $3500 CDN. They have a similar MicroDV vidcam without Bluetooth as well.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Let's say I'm out touring a city and I'm snapping shots for the requisite post-tour photo album. Of course, I'm nowhere near a desktop PC or even a laptop. But lets say I have a Bluetooth-enabled hard drive in my backpack. It's built like these 20GB MP3 players, but it's just a Bluetooth file server nothing more. Now I can wander around the city shooting forever, or until the batteries die, whichever comes first :). Camera tosses every photo into the drive in my backpack (or on my belt, or whereever). If the camera can cache at least a handful of pictures, I'll never notice that transfers take a minute.
[offtopic]
While we're inventing stuff, let's say I have Bluetooth-enabled headphones with an MP3/OV decoder built in. (Heh, and make em solar powered, since they're sitting on top of my head.) They're pulling MP3s off the same file server in my backpack. I guess I'll lose the music stream while my camera stores a picture. I won't mind very much if the player is at least a little bit graceful in it's handling of the bottleneck.
Fujitsu-Siemens' Lifebook E has had it as an option for a while. I think that one is pretty neat, and AFAIK it's certified by the manufacturer to work with Red Hat and SuSE. An off the record, they also say getting Debian on it is unproblematic.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
You're right, I've checked my camera now (I was at work earlier) and it does up to 2272x1704 pixels. At 24-bit colour, that's 11.5MB per picture. 32-bit colour gives 15MB per picture.
The good thing with bluetooth support in a digital camera is NOT being able to transfer images wirelessly. The pro's are:
:-P
* Ability to remotecontrol your camera
* Sending smaller pictures to your PDA, for say use in presentations
* Being able to send smaller pictures to the many new mobile phones (like the Sony Ericsson T68i))
* Bluetooth chips are getting cheap and massproduction gives Sony even cheaper chips for use in other devices
* Using an open standard that many operating systems and hardware will understand (at least sending images)
Bluetooth is the future. Apple has excellent support for it. Linux has good support with Bluez and Nokia's Linux bluetooth stack (Affix). Soon even Microsoft will support it.
Ciryon
From the resolution of your brother's camera, I'd guess it's a Canon G2...
Anyways, that guy was probably talking about maximum quality JPGs... It's still much larger than a 1600x1200 should be (2mb) but JPEG compression takes time and some cameras skimp on it. I could see 2mb if they were used to shooting complex scenes and had everything cranked.
My Canon G2 averages about 1.1MB per picture at large, and one step away from maximum compression.
But with the Canon's, you don't ever really need to go higher than that. If you're considering going to a higher compression you switch to shooting in RAW and get all the benefits. Other cameras with TIFFs don't compress the image, but they adjust the white-balance and everything, which is lossy. And TIFFs are huge.
Cameras are plenty small with onboard storage. Look at the ultra-thin cameras out there, they have fairly standard storage options, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MMC/SD, or memory sticks. Space for storage isn't that big a concern, really, when you can fit 1GB on a standard CompactFlash card (either a ibm microdrive, or 1GB of flash memory).
The issue is really batteries. Those ultra-thin cameras get about 30 pictures on a charge.
Driving the LCD display takes a lot of juice. Putting in batteries that can drive the display for a reasonable amount of time takes more space than you want it to.
My Canon S40 can take about 70 pictures with the LCD on (low brightness level) and a mix of flash and non-flash. About 80 pictures with the LCD on, and no flash use at all.
Turn the LCD off and that jumps to about 150 pictures on a battery charge.
My Olympus Stylus point-n-shoot 35mm camera gets about 20 rolls of film on a disposable lithium battery 1/3 the size of the rechargable lithium the S40 uses.
You want smaller digital cameras, don't worry about the storage medium... Make a battery with 10 times the energy density. Or get the OLEDs working, they are supposed to be very low energy usage, aren't they?
Though otherwise, I tend to agree... a wireless link to a bluetooth harddrive you stuck in your backpack would give you effectively unlimited storage. But with my 1GB microdrive... I switch batteries 8 times before I fill up my storage media, so that really doesn't help me all that much.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I have a 4MP camera and love it. Don't shoot anything other than 4MP highest-quality-jpeg.
However...
What pixel range you need is not a function of "equivalent to" but is instead a function of "used for".
If all you want are 4"x6" prints, 300dpi for prints is about the same as what you get from your standard cheap 35mm film developer/printer. Think Walmart photofinishing here. 300dpi at 4"x6" == 300 x 300 x 24 == 2.2MP. Most photographers and magazines (I believe) will talk about 240dpi, though. That's 240x240x4x6=1.4MP.
I've done 4"x6" prints from my 4MP camera. It looks *good*. I am more than satisfied, for that use. (It does nice 5"x7"s too.)
I wouldn't really want to use a 4MP camera for an 8"x10" print, though it would look okay. For that, I'll wait for a 20MP camera. 8"x10" x 300dpi = 7.2MP. Not enough of a change from what I have now. So instead... Doing an 11"x17" print is 11x17x300x300=16.8MP So assuming I don't break this one, my next digital camera will be in the 20MP range.
For showing on a screen? 1600x1200 is enough, and for a lot of people 1024x768 is actually what they run. Both of those are noticably under 2MP. Good reason to use less than the max resolution.
For showing on a web site? Unless it is a page background, you probably don't want anything bigger than 800x600, and maybe only half that size.
Yes, you'll probably get better results by taking the 4MP picture and downsampling in Photoshop or whatever, but that's an awful lot of effort for something where the camera can do almost as good a job itself, using less storage space, taking less time to transfer results, and less of your time in on-computer editing afterwards.
Figure out what your use is, and make selections based on that.
For my use? As I said up top, I never shoot at anything except the max resolution the camera supports.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I didn't want to know what my dad did with that digital camera in his bedroom. Now he's going to have to ask me to secure it. Eeeeuuugh.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Throughput was great too. PCMCIA does 8 Mbyte/second. Woops, who needs wireless when you have something simple like compact flash? I
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.