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Nikon D2H: Digital Camera + 802.11b Option
k_stamour writes "Wow, the Holy Grail of Digital Cameras! -- the Nikon D2H. Considering the ever-dropping cost of 802.11b gear, it may not be too long before WiFi is found in lower-end Digi-Cameras. The remaining cost would be to get decent performance out of a small embedded Wifi antenna.
This Nikon is Geared for Sport/Action/News Shots. Think about it: a photographer can be on a scene of a newsworthy event, and over the hours of attending, the publisher could already be printing/posting the photographer's pics before he removes the camera strap from his neck! With this cam, a WiFi access point, and Internet access, they could post their pics in real time on the web from anywhere in the world. Of course, the above conditions would need to be meet every time for real time uploads." The 802.11 access is through an optional external transceiver module, model WT-1.
802.11b takes up a lot of power (for a small device, anyway). The camera would either have to have some monster batteries or not be able to take very many pictures at all. Also, are CompactFlash cards able to read/write to different files at once? It seems like writing pictures would be hard if someone was trying to read one at the same time.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
This would be awesome to use as an unlimited source of storage space. No more expensive 1 GB cards to buy.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
And how does this Holy Grail of digital cameras interact with the Second Holy Grail of digital cameras -- battery life?
May we never see th
Live crowd shots from Mardi Gras, up the skirt shots, etc. etc. etc... :D~~~~~~
I think another soon-to-be application is when you are on road trips, and as you take pictures during the trip you can just hit the download key, and it immediatley upload the pics to your car PC, which also just got released from Xenarc Technologies.
Planet P
www.enthea.org
Considering the ever-dropping cost of 802.11b gear, it may not be too long before WiFi is found in lower-end Digi-Cameras
Forget 802.11b gear and all that. The prices of regular digital cameras are themselves not dropping as much as I would like. The other day, I assembled a great PC for $150 and I'm sure two years down the road, I can build even greater one for that money. But, digicams are still priced at $150-$200 for a decent piece and I don't feel like spending that money knowing that $150 is powerful enough to get you a good computer.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Bluetooth would make much more sense. Mobile networks are already everywhere and BT power consumption is much smaller that WLAN. But that wouldn't make /. headlines, would it?
Not sure about this one...
I find myself imagining coming home from my holidays to discover my camera's been hacked and I've got someone else's holiday photos...spooky.
If said newsreporter was taking pictures where there happened to be a WAP, who's to say that he couldn't use connect his camera to a laptop and transfer the pictures from a 802.11b card on the laptop? I would think it wouldn't stress the camera batteries as much.
;)
I must admit though, it seems like a nifty idea, nonethe less
Join the TWIT army now!
Back when "Internet Appliances" were the buzz, you'd get naysayers posting on here ridiculing the idea. And in the media. They'd sneer, "Great, now I can surf the internet from my stove, or find out what is in my fridge over the web."
But this camera is an example of what most people with some foresight were thinking of when they talked about internet appliances... normally unconnected devices that get net access and gain cool features.
Now bring on the powered WiFi speakers that play streamed digital music in any room from a personal media device (TiVo-like entertainment center combined with WiFi) or home computer.
And yes, I still want a good, cheap touch-screen webpad with wifi for net access from my couch, bathroom, kitchen table, hammock outside, etc...
Considering the size of an image from this camera (got to be over 3MB each, depending of JPG compression, or much large if RAW images), I wonder about the speed of transmission. If you've got a full 1GB microdrive to send, you're going to be waiting a while. Also, the module seems huge, and a sizeable increase to an already hefty camera. I would like to try one out though... -James.
So if someone intercepts the signal and cracks the encryption to extract people's private images, do we call those people WarDriving Cyber-Papparazi?
Sony has been making cameras with bluetooth for a while, the FX77 is quite a high spec camera which offers the ability to send pictures to other bluetooth devices. Such as a GPRS mobile phone so you can upload them to the internet. A bluetooth laptop so you can save directly to its hard drive, eliminating the need for expensive Memory sticks.
Some of Sony's digital cameras which don't have BT built in have the ability to support the CLIE Memory Stick Bluetooh adaptor.
This is not news.
There is no god
The camera's 802.11b thing plugs into the camera in two places, one to the USB port and the other to the power source. It then has the ability to transmit the photos to an ftp server.
No mention of WEP or any other type of net xfer.
Seems to me you'd want to set up an upload only account on the ftp server. Just in case someone gets some bright idea to start grabbing ftp accounts.
Don't know why it requires two plugs (later hack more than likely), but this thing looks like it takes up quite a bit space and it doesn't look like you can keep the camera on the trripod when it's plugged in.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
When will they start putting GPS receivers in digital cameras?
I want to know the exact location of where I've been taking pictures!
-- four
Think about it- 802.11b doesn't have that kind of range; even in the open, it's 300 feet tops, unless you get antennas to focus the signal, and that's not practical unless you know where the photographer is going to be.
This sounds much more like a toy for studio photography, cutting the downtime by transferring pictures in the background. The only other option is Firewire(which most true pro cameras have; prosumer digital SLRs for the most part don't). Even the microdrives, which are some of the fastest compactflash devices around, are pretty sluggish, compared to the camera directly sending the file over firewire(without even storing it, save in temporary high speed memory).
I can see this being a potential hit with the 'event' photography market- ie, like guys who set up at a kids sports games and offer portrait services. They like anything that reduces their clutter/setup time or gets the photo to their servers(for printing) faster. I didn't see the specs on the camera, but if it's cheap enough, they might bite(the event photography people don't usually invest in the several-thousand-dollar cameras, because it's not necessary).
Please help metamoderate.
wouldn't bluetooth be more useful?
A cheap touch-screen wifi webpad would be great.
... alarms are programmable from anywhere ... plays your digital music that's stored wherever for wake up, or gathers news reports from around the world ... tells/shows you the latest weather conditions for your area.
I'm waiting on the internet-enabled clock radio. Never needs to have the time changed (thanks to NTP)
Anyone seen something like this?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I mean, what's the point of having the WiFi access? I know that when I'm on vacation, I spend 99% of my time in areas where an AP isn't available.
If you can find a use for something like this, congratulations. By all means, buy one. I just want camera that takes reasonably good shots, has excellent battery life, and works as a USB mass storage device in Linux. The rest is just fluff.
hang brain.
at the next G8 meeting or protest rally. How long 'til protestors -- or police -- are using this to keep everyone up-to-date on what's happening? And how much longer after that 'til police -- or protestors -- are using something like Driftnet to see what's being photographed?
Carousel is a lie!
The WiFi is interesting, but the lack of firewire is a disappointment, and in terms of shooting features (resolution, frame rate, etc) it is pretty much the same as the Canon 1D, a camera which Canon is expected to replace this fall. The low resolution and high frame rate show that it's intended for photojournalists rather than the general consumer market. The D2H will probably slow or stop the flow of photojournalists switching from Nikon to Canon, and maybe put a little more pressure on Canon to improve their own cameras, but I'm not sure it will have much other effect.
... what this is going to do to family photos taken on holiday. "Honey, could you and the kids move forward a few steps? I'm still not in the hotspot yet."
Wardriving for family snapshots
While it is quite cool (in the gadget-gee-whiz-sense) to have wireless connection to a digital camera, it is not in my view even close to the Holy Grail of digital photography. The main reasons to use this feature are a) convinience (which is eaten away by the fact that you need an external unit) or b) people who really need to send pictures to somewhere else ASAP.
In the case b) the photographer loses his/her chances to edit the pictures later or even to choose the best pictures. Good for first impresssions, not much for anything else.
Holy grail for professional digital photography are for example cameras that use a full-sized sensor; then you wouldn't need different lenses for digital and film photography.
On the hobbyist front I'd like to see more standards. The Four Thirds -standard sounds promising, and I'm hoping Canon or Nikon would embrace it.
[ Antti Rasinen ]
Bluetooth is more suitable for applications like this. It is cheaper and consumes less power. Also with standartized Basic Imaging profile you can make your camera talk to various bluetooth-enable devices
without special software.
wisely.
We named the dog Indiana!
Although I can see where this would be useful - the example of a photojournalist is a good one - I'd prefer to have a digital camera with Bluetooth. I'd like to separate the camera itself from its storage - be able to have a small hard drive on a belt loop and the camera itself just has a small cache which gets flushed over Bluetooth to the hard drive.
That way I can take as much or as little storage as I need - I just hook on the appropriate drive pod. The drive pod has separate power supply so I don't have to bulk up the camera with large batteries to power the mass storage.
This would be a better solution for me.
Sailing over the event horizon
I'm sure the WiFi module has one...even though I didn't see a pic showing the bottom. The article states that they only had images provided by Nikon...
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Cig:
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Far too slow. Even as a jpeg decent digital camera pictures are well over a megabtye. A 10sec plus transfer time per shot, or over a minute in raw mode, is useless. Bluetooth is intended for exchanging small amounts of data, not truckloads
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Hmm ... isn't it a litte bit too expensive to put a Nikon D2H with WiFi connectivity into a fridge just to monitor it's state and content over the internet?
I wonder is the photographers will be mad if I try to write a )( on their camera?
You know what?
As an ex-journalist who started out as a newspaper reporter/photographer, I laugh when I see what some people are envisioning for this camera. Here's a news flash. Most of the time when you're shooting news events, there's not a WiFi access spot or the time (or NEED) to set one up. While I can certainly come up with theorectical uses for it, I can come up with even more potential problems in handling things that way. A laptop and a cable is still a much better (and cheaper) solution where Internet access is available, IMO.
It seems to me that this is an example of geeks liking a new technical solution and not realizing that existing technology is better for the people who really use the equipment to get actual work done.
Near real-time upskirt websites.
:-)
(for those who just can't wait
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
...but just because it's digital and wireless, doesn't automatically make it a good *camera*. Granted, I've been following the D2H and it's definitely a sweet piece of Nikon, but this is more than a toy -- it's a high-end piece of professional equipment.
The problem I'm facing right now (being on the market for a camera) is the fact that I can get a used F4 (or even an N100, maybe) for a quarter of the price of this digital camera, and still have excellent picture quality. Add in another four or five hundred dollars for a negative scanner, and I can do pretty much everything the D2H can do with less than half the cash.
Besides, any event that would require near-instantaneous transmission (sports, a riot, stuff like that) would be using VIDEO, not still shots.
It's a nice (and niche) toy, but nothing more than that.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
you could easily pull this off with a laptop that can process the 802.11x signal and a verizon 3g RX1TT 144Kbps or EVDO 2Mbit+ connection. All major sporting events are sure to have extra coverage at the stadium. Verizon afaik rolls COW's Cell on Wheels to many sporting events and concerts to provide the extra capacity if needed.
This is a toy.
Also makes wireless camera devices, D-link is one of them along with others and they have been on the market for quite some time...
All right, I won't mention the L-word.
What kind of CPU is used in digital cameras like this? Perhaps an ARM or i960 or other embedded processor? How much memory does the camera have for storing pictures?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
overheated ,bulky computers . In fact I see a trend where more people dont want WINDOWS to run everything. A small OS for small gadgets with a connective network. A small TV OS would be good also. Maybe with wireless too.
Unless you're going to download something every 3 shots, you'd still need a large card.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
So now, instead of searching Kazaa for MVC, I can steal digital pictures I was never intended to have by carting around a WAP. Sweet!
The only benefit I can see for constant streaming of photos for the media is the ability of a photographer's editor to be able to provide immediate input as to what the page or paper needs in a given situation. The second benefit is that a reporter does not have to go back to the office to download the picture so they can then go on to the next assignment right away (or just go right home to bed).
My issue with this is more for internet news/whatever sources. If you are getting a constant stream of pictures you can do one of two things, the first is to hold onto them and put them up later (which sort of eliminates the point of getting a constant stream of photos), the second is to get someone to move the pictures to a page and try to put them into some form of context.
Say that you're a sports web-site and your reporter is covering a tiddlewinks competition on main street. Normally, you'd wait until the end of the event to post scores and a summary of some kind. With streaming photos, you have to have someone telling you about what's going on or people are just going to look at the photos and go "What the heck?". Then again, no one really cares about the tiddlywinks game anyhow.
All those people complaining about the fact that there's not Wi-Fi access where they use their camera - maybe there isn't now, but give it two years and there will be.
And I suspect that all the places that throw conferences sure as hell are building in Wi-Fi access...
My Journal
a) A wi-fi camera
...heh, why asking, mares rule.
-or-
I want closeups!
The Nikon D2H is a camera specifically targeted to sport photographers. You don't need 8 frames per second if you're in the studio or even out covering events. Instead, this camera shines when used to capture fast action like sports.
Here's where wireless is a GOOD thing: one wireless access point can be placed on the mid-field sideline and allow the newspapers and magazines to grab images while the photographer shoots. This is a major advantage on nightly deadlines. Even when shooting just regular digital and using a laptop with wireless, newspapers are limited to getting the photographs at the end of each half because photographers can't risk missing a critical piece of action.
Battery life doesn't matter as much in sporting events. The game is pretty much a set length and an appropriate number of batteries can be brought and traded out at the end of each half/quarter/etc.
As someone who has worked at a daily newspaper that has used both film and digital and where football is a front page event, this is a great announcement. We used to have to send someone to night games to pickup and develop the film at halftime. Now pictures can be downloaded, selected and corrected for newspaper use in realtime. Newspaper staff never complain about finishing earlier rather than later!
That said, I think wireless makes sense in THIS camera. I'm not sure I'd want it in the field or even in a consumer camera to take pictures on vacation and on holidays. In those situations, I would take the longer battery life any day.
It seems to me that a lot of people are missing the point on this one.
I think it's less targeted at "immediately beaming your pictures from the field" than it is targeted at studio photography.
The high-end Nikon digitals may be good enough for journalism, but most of the people I know who use them are doing studio work, like product shots, fashion, etc.
If this is well designed, it could improve the pipeline speed of a product shoot, as it's often different people doing the different processes: shooting, color correction, comping. layout, etc. Now, the initial stage of this process can be made (closer to) parallel.
It certainly is not a revolutionary change (like the introduction of digital photography was), but it could represent an evolutionary change, where the photographer doesn't have to interrupt work to carry the microdrive over to the server for image uploading.
Now, some people will say "but many pros already have their cameras hooked up full-time via firewire, so this won't change the process at all!" I almost agree -- this removes the annoying tether, so you can move the camera around without cable snarl.
Then, with Sony and others set to WiFi enable the entire known universe, maybe this *will* eventually be a take anywhere, shoot, and upload kind of thing.
We shall see...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Unfortunatly, this isn't the holy grail of digital camera. I'm not even sure what the holy grail would be, to be honest.
It's a very specific camera aimed at sports/news/action photographers. The Wifi addition is also a niche product, mainly for photographers in large agencies like the AP
It probably wouldn't suit anybody else, especially since most people complain about the 4mp resolution.
Anyway, here are some links to other previews:
Handson Preview:k on/slr/D2H_UK1.html
http://www.letsgodigital.be/webpages/firstlook/ni
Preview:
http://www.digitalreview.ca/cams/NikonD2H.shtml
Nikon expert spec analysis:
http://www.bythom.com/d2h.htm
Personally, I'm excited because this is the first Nikon DSLR to do 8fps, plus they have a new TTL flash system, and the 2.5inch LCD on the back is the biggest yet (great for "chimping", a term for gaping at your images instead of watching the action)
Someone up there ^^^^ mentioned costs of digital cameras. I'm not sure how many here have followed these DSLRs but they're not cheap by a long shot.
This Nikon will probably arrive at a street price of around $3000 USD for the body alone. Add to that the fact that your lenses will have to be adjusted (if you own Nikon equipment already) as there is a multiplying factor that has to be taken into account for the size of the sensor; I believe with Nikon cameras it's 1.5x. This is due to the fact that the sensor is not a full 24x36mm (i.e. full frame film).
Unless your a professional photographer or an advanced amateur that's spending his/her weekends shooting weddings in 35mm or you're independently wealthy; you're probably going to have to wait a few years before the price of these puppies comes down to the "consumer" level.
Cheers
Zip
"The answers are always inside the problem, not outside"- Marshall McLuhan
J
I have thousands of dollars invested in Nikon lenses and film SLRs. I have been waiting eagerly for their flagship successor to the D1, D1X and D1H, the D2.
Well, now it is here. The WiFi attachment is neat, but it is really for very niche market (sports photojournalists), and not something I would ever use in my photography. And knowing Nikon, it will cost another $300 to a $1000 to buy, in addition to a very expensive camera.
The other specs mentioned don't seem all that impressive, compared to the D1H or the latest digital Canon SLRs. I am saddened. I suspect this will be another $5000 dollar camera, like the previous D1s were. A bigger CMOS sensor, to eliminate the 'crop factor' with standard 35mm lenses would have been much more useful to me. Or a Sub $2000 price point.
Sigh. Looks like my digital change-over will have to wait even longer.
-- Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings
Its lame that a new product would still use 11b, especially one that generates so much data. Why they didn't go for 11g is beyond my comprehension.
I've used a D1H for a while as a photographer for a daily, and I've got to say, it's one hell of a camera. If the D2H is half as good as it is, we'll be getting two or three of them soon.
However, 802.11b, for what I do (running around getting shots of different events and happenings, every day), is a waste.
I can think of maybe two occasions I've taken shots where I had access to 802.11b. It may be different in a larger city, but I think the wireless functionality is a toy.
Wireless is GREAT for home use, or setting up a laptop in a coffee shop, but for a photographer-on-the-go, it's just not useful.
At least until the entire nation is covered, that is.
I've got a laptop, I've got a compact flash reader, and I've got a modem, wireless card and ethernet port on it---suits my needs just fine, and it's a rare assignment that takes me more than 30 minutes from the office.
As far as battery power goes, I think the D1H (and, most likely D2H) could handle it. They come with VERY hefty battery packs that last me, on average, a couple of days (usually 150 shots or so). Also, you DON'T leave the office without a spare battery, fully charged.
I've always loved how Nikon has separate models for different professions. A 12-megapixel camera wouldn't do me much good, since we print at 200dpi tops, but being able to take eight pics a second is VERY nice when covering sports.
That being said, I've been looking lovingly at the new Canon EOS 10d... six megapixels, and three shots a second, for up to three seconds. Wouldn't be perfect, but it'd work for my personal use.
As someone who's used both digital SLRs and the "point-and-shoot" digitals, there is NO comparison. The versatility and picture quality you get with a good digital SLR leaves everything else in the dust.
It's nice to be able to switch out lenses, too. However, as always, quality comes with a price.
Just my thoughts... sorry about the AC post, can't log in with my regular account for some reason.
I love the idea of having 802.11b (g would be even better) in a proffesional level Digital SLR. The examples cited here for photographers to automatically send their shots to clients, to their own computers for instant editing, are great.
But I would like to see a consumer digital camera with Bluetooth, not for file transfers though. It would be nice if it had that ability, but the practical applications that i'm thinking of is controling the digital camera with my computer and/or bluetooth capable cell phone. I'd want to be able to tell it to take a picture, zoom in, and generally control the comera's complete operating system via bluetooth.
Sony will probably do it first, because they seem to like bluetooth the most out of the various camera companies.
Not internet enabled clocks, but there are radio controlled, taking time signals from the atomic clocks.
This is kind of funny, the thought of a wireless enabled memory card/camera crossed my mind last night. I had no idea Nikon was going to do this. Very nice though. I wish I had the cash to buy one of their digital SLRs. I currently own an F80, great camera, but I kind of wish it was digital for the convenience.
..is 64kbit/s. Thats the same speed as satellite phones used for war coverage in Iraq. Its certainly fast enough for high quality stills.
It's not a specific multiplication factor for a brand of bodies. Nikon DOES make DSLRs with a full frame sensor, so no 1.5x lens factor. Even if that were the case, most action is shot with tele lenses, not wide angle lenses, so that multiplication would actually help your lens collection.
While 802.11b built into a camera is a good first step in the direction, I've always wanted a digital camera that integrated with a cell phone easily, either by bluetooth or even a direct connection. While prices of memory cards are dropping, it'd be nice to be able to upload the pictures while on a longer vacation, and not have to carry around tons of extra expensive cards around.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Even with so many unsecured hotspots in most major cities, I would much rather have a GPRS or 1X high-speed cellular hookup. Much better coverage.
Come to think of it, a small laptop with firewire and a cellular hookup is probably the best choice - something like the 12" powerbook. The laptop allows them to review quickly on a better screen and only upload the better shots back to the company.
And about the weight, well, this is a professional SLR camera. It's HEAVY, not including all the additional lenses, flashes and other accessories most pros will carry around with them.
The single most important improvement in digital cameras in the last year is that they have finally made good progress fixing the digital noise issues at high ASA settings, followed closely by shutter lag and auto-focus improvements. Canon has done a slam bang job in all regards and their in-camera processing software is also the best of the lot insofar as I can tell.
Don't let highly touted statistics like FPS or mega-pixels fool you, it's all for naught if your camera can't take a good picture and runs out of power after an hour or two of use.
-Matt
I think another Holy Grail of digital photography would be backs for all those old (now cheap) SLRs out there. Say a 4 megapixel back for an Olympus OM-2n. How cool would that be? You can get nice lenses and bodies for a lot cheaper than a modern canon or nikon and if you could make it digital it would be great!
Just an idea:)
Until I can buy a camera body that can accept commercially-available lenses (prefereably Ultrasonic Canon ones), at a reasonable price I'm not buying. The camera makers are slowly releasing stuff in the hope that peopoe will keep buying SLRs, but the pace of digital camera development makes everyone wait.
Olympus used to have a great 10x (not digital) zoom digital cam, but it's been discontinued.
This is meant to be a camera for serious PJs (Photojournalists). It will list for over $3000 and is meant to compete with the Canon 1D which also lists for over $3000. This camera shoots 9 fps at 4MP. Speed is the word with PJs.
Below is more on digital cameras in general...slightly off topic but I saw a lot of confusion and opinions on here by people that don't know what they're talking about when it comes to digital cameras...especially those beyond P&S digicams.
I have a Canon 10D which is 3fps at 6MP and it costs about $1300 (sans lens). Why is it so much less than the 1D or the D2H? Simple, it doesn't focus as fast as the 1D, it doesn't do 9fps and it is completely weatherproofed (all of the seals on the 1D are completely weather proofed against sand, water, etc.). In addition, the 1D has a built in vertical handle and is built like the proverbial tank.
I just don't need the features of the Canon 1D to justify its price.
Why go with a DSLR over a P&S digicam? Simple..available choices in lenses. There is NO way you can get control of your depth of field in a digicam with the puny lenses and sensors they ship with. Period. Add in chromatic aberrations and vignetting you'll see the shortcomings. That being said, if all you take pictures of is family, friends, and other subjects like that then a digicam is probably right for you. I have one of those too since my camera body and lens setup weighs in at about 10 lbs. + bag and extra batteries. I don't want to take it everywhere.
Nikon is behind the times in most cases and the WiFi is an add-on module that sucks power out of the camera's main body. I really don't see it converting Canon using PJ's over to Nikon because Canon has the lenses that PJ's lust over and the body is only a very small investment in their professional setup. A 600mm f4 lens costs $6000. That's right. 1 lens!
Olympus has gone in the 4/3 direction which I think most of you will like until you see the cost of their first 4/3 DSLR camera and their lenses. Ouch!!
"All I ask is for a chance to prove that money can't make me happy."
If you have a digital camera, you don't need a touch screen webpad. You could point the camera at a piece of paper and draw on the paper. This could obviously be used for making drawings, but also, provided the camera can see where the tip of the pencil is (or perhaps just the tip of your finger) it can take that as the mouse pointer position. You could move your thumb in a particular direction to 'click'.
Or, point the camera at a wall and use a laser pointer to make a dot it can follow.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
How long would it take you to send ONE photo across GPRS, let alone an entire event's worth. If you were that dis-connected, I'd much rather have the camera talking to a laptop/AP which can then start the upload across GPRS/CDMA/whatever is available.
sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
1) Use a 12" powerbook as your server. Set the PB to run while closed, switch the Airport card into access point mode, and enable FTP server. You now have a 60GB storage point nearby. The photog can either carry the PB himself, or an assistant can carry it. Several photographers can be supported by a single PowerBook.
2) Bluetooth should be next. As GPRS data rates fall, I should be able to connect my camera to my T68i and upload data to my servers back at the office rather than carry a bulky powerbook.
3) Police State Beware! Around the world there has been a proliferation of surveylence cameras spying on the civilian population. Now an individual can take this camera to Area 51 or the Aswan High Dam and start taking pictures. When the police show up to confiscate the film, they find nothing because the images are already gone. Most useful application is keeping protests peaceful.
4) WTF is up with the digital SLRs? I want nothing to do with the weight and bulk of an SLR's mirror and prism, nor the minimum distance between the back of the lens and the film plane. Voigtlander needs to bring their Leica clones into the digital world, enabling compact interchangable lens cameras with ultra-wide lenses.
(Been looking for a while).
D2S have 4.1M pixel. The D1X 5.4. OK it's only necessary if you want to print on poster paper and commercial quality. But for any camera over 3000$ I want this option.
The DX2 also have a lower shutter speed 1/8000 against the 1/16000 of the DX1, but 1/4000 was enough for 350 KM/h cars so not a big issue for me. The wildlife picture I saw, hummingbirds at 1/4000 or lower was enough to see the birds "still".
The D1X is 1500$ lower.
The only good point I see is 8FPS instead of 5 on the D1X, useful when the cars starts pilling up in the curve, or that bird starts flying away.
And the WiFi is "optional", my wireless remote control have a suggested price of 450$ (Nikon ML2; 1500$ for the radio wave remote). So I expect the "WiFi option" module to cost between 500 and 1500$. So a total SRP of 5000 to 6500 + good lens.
For that price I could get the D1X (4000)+a few 1M datadisk. Or something like the BusLink 20Gig HD to copy smaller flash cards in a few seconds. You just keep swapping 2x256M cards all day. [http://www.gus.com/buphbadicapo.html] (gus.com, that's just the first I found on a search)
The Wifi Module also means a laptop or other means of download within a few hundred feet.
I think this is for studio work (but spec for sport), where you can show in "real time" to the client (model/hugh hefner) what the shot looks like. In a stadium or remote war, setting up the equipment can be more trouble/price than placing the memory card in a laptop and using the Internet/phone or other usual methods.
See!! See!!! I predicted this revolution. Now go and buy my book, you fucking sheep.
Love and kisses,
Howard Rheingold
It's a nice gimmic and for sports it's pretty nice. But Nikon can't play with Canon and the D1S and it's full frame 11 MPixel CMOS chip. Until Nikon can make a camera that's even close to the D1S life will be difficult and there's no indication that Nikon will be able to compete any time soon.
Now you can blog/upload your p0rn as you shoot it!
is a digital camera, that I can remotely control from a Linux app. I Have the Nikon Coolpix 4500 and apart from mounting the Flashcard in the camera as a filesystem I have no idea how to do anything like that - how to set exposure time, how to trigger taking a photograph, transmit the picture, then remove it. It seems that Nikon does not have software for this (not even under Windows), nor do they give out enought documentation for doing it yorself. I also do not know of any other digital camera that lets you do this. - am I the only one who wants that?
Not ready for prime time.
My D1, SPCS phone and laptop have me transmitting photos from 95 percent of everywhere I'm shooting "breaking news." When it doesn't work, I drive a few miles and send what I have.
WiFi in stadiums, okay. Beyond that, forget about it.
Granted, much of that would already be possible with camera cell phones, but the image quality of a high end Nikon would be far better than the cheap plastic lens on a Nokia.
On the other hand, getting a high end Nikon confiscated would be much more painful than that Nokia -- that's a risk to be evaluated.
Possible downside: wireless security is awful, and sniffing beamed images out of the air might be trivial if you know what you're doing. You could end up at the security checkpoint at Exxon/Ashcroft-corp/etc and be confronted with someone saying "we know you sent a picture of these documents, what are you up to?"
NOTE: I am not advocating that anyone do anything illegal. I'm just entertaining the idea that a camera with these capabilities -- whether Nikon or Nokia -- could be an interesting tool for people in certain lines of work (journalists, activists, etc).
Another random thought, unrelated to the above: the filesize on images for cameras with resolution this high must be pretty significant. Is 802.11b going to be slow? Would 802.11g have made sense, or does it draw even more power? How does the bandwidth of Bluetooth compare to 802.11b's ~11mbit? I've never actually seen a bandwidth rating for Bluetooth -- I've just read that it's "fast", and that it consumes "minimal power" -- whatever that means, quantitatively, I don't know.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
For me the holy grail would be for someone to do for cameras what Apple did for MP3 players...
Stick a tiny (but capacious) hard drive in it. Then give it a Firewire port for fast transfers and recharging (I like the idea of having only one wire; and if I'm taking my laptop along anyway, I'd only need one power brick since the the camera could charge off the laptop's Firewire port).
Heck, you could stick a headphone jack on there too and you wouldn't even need an iPod.
Are you listening Apple?
As great as this sounds, would this also mean that when your net connection goes down, you lose time due to NTP sync issues? Or I guess you could make the clock intelligent enough to only sync when a connection is available? I suppose it could call out daily like tivo over even dialup... this is definitely a cool idea!
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
My D1 has a buffer for about of about 32 MB before it has to write to the CF card.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I've been shooting with DSLR gear for 3 years now, and I've tried a bunch of high-end cameras including the Nikon D1X and Canon 1DS.
My analysis of this new Nikon based only on the dpreview article, is that it seems fine for sports and news photography where framerates matter, but outside of that market it is difficult to see the how the improved features addresses the things that have been missing on the Nikon family of DSLR's.
The big thing that's been missing is a full-frame sensor. Why is this important? Well, all Nikon DSLRs to date, including this one, have used an imager that is 1.5 times smaller than a normal 35mm film frame. This means the sensor only sees the middle part of what would have been exposed on a normal film frame, which in turn means the camera suffers from slight myopia. All attached lenses have a virtual magnification factor of 1.5x over stated spec. As such, a nice 20mm wideangle lens becomes a dull 30mm lens, which produces a constricted view. Landscape and indoor photography generally suffers from this lack of wideangle support.
Canon addressed this problem with their (very expensive) 1DS camera which has a full-sized imager chip, but this doesn't help photographers with a gear bag full of Nikon lenses - they don't fit on a Canon. I think many photographers would have liked to see Nikon come up with a full-sized imager on their D2 series.
There are far cheaper DSLR's with high-rez sensors. Take the very affordable Fujifilm Finepix S2, for example - a handsome 6 megapixel sensor and fully Nikon lens compatible. Same magnification factor as the D2H, at 1/4 the price. Some photographers would probably find the flimsy Fujifilm body and awkward ergonomics unsuitable for pro work, but I know many photographers who'd rather save their money and buy one of those, or an old battered D1X, and then wait for Nikon to come out with the full-frame unit they have been waiting for.
It's also disappointing to see that Nikon apparently have dropped IEEE1394 and GPS support. USB2 is cheaper, dumber, slower and less reliable than firewire, and the GPS thing was a neat 'gimmick' that could have had many useful applications. The beautiful photos on the California Coastal Records Project were all shot on a D1X with a GPS attached - this permitted the photographers an exact shooting record of where the pictures were taken.
The rest of the improved features just don't justify the cost unless those 8fps are crucial to your line of business. The wi-fi stuff looks like a gimmick - consider the limited range of 802.11b - but it is conceivable to imagine an assistant photoshopping the pics you shoot from a nearby laptop. Nothing I'd pay extra for, though.
A sequel for 'Total Recall' right there. You call up Total Recall, tell them what kinda holiday you want to have, and they upload the holiday photos to your camera as you stroll past their office on the way to work.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
We have some large warehouses and keeping track of inventory is a real pain. We alleviated this by wiring the entire place with 802.11b and we have some laptops on carts so we can scan barcodes anywhere.
Sometimes inventory is damaged and we need to take photographs of this and file them into a database. We're currently scanning in Polaroids and then uploading them through a web interface, but this sucks. I've been looking into getting digital cameras that hook up to the laptops so that when you take a picture, it's automatically uploaded onto the PC and some program runs on the PC that lets you file away a photo into the database as soon as it's taken.
The problem is that cameras that do this sort of thing seem to use proprietary APIs that I don't have the time to reverse-engineer and we cannot use any provided software - we need to allow people to choose which record to associate with an image immediately, preferably using the barcode scanner.
Now this camera might work for us - it just uploads the images onto an ftp server running on the laptop and I can write software that grabs the latest image from the upload directory, associates it with the last barcode scanned and uploads it to our database. No need to use any proprietary software on the PC - we can write all our own stuff and vastly streamline the process, which saves lots of time and money.
I imagine there are plenty of other uses for cameras like these in places where you would normally not see a digital camera - you just have to be creative.
Ricoh has had cameras with PCMCIA slots that can take WiFi or cell phone cards for years, and Sony has digital cameras and camcorders with Bluetooth.
The Bluetooth option is probably the best of the bunch because it can be used to transmit images via regular cell phones or to a laptop. Range is comparable to WiFi, setup is easier, and power consumption is generally much less.
Although it is cool to have WiFi in something, I just can't see a good use for this exact technology in a camera.
Let's take the most obvious case, just snapping away and having stuff go up into an FTP server. If you're in a studio chances are you'd be near a computer anyway, so why wouldn't you be using some kind of direct link instead? Of if that was a little binding, why not just pop a card out into a reader? On almost any computer you could probably script something to dump everything off of a card as soon as it was connected, and it would dump a LOT faster.
Now out in the field. You have to transmit and store the image (since there's no way you can trust the connection will always hold, thogugh the Nikon appears to have good reconnect logic), so you still need the storage space. And of course you have the problem of being within good range of a network to use... I guess you could leave a Powerbook in the middle of a field and wander around. But again with any kind of computing nearby you'd almost be better off using a card reader locally for speed. And battery life will suck if you are leaving the camera always transmitting images.
Really I see only four good uses of wireless technology. The first one is a bullet-time style camera setup where you have multiple cameras set up and user wireless connectivity to set them off all at once or on controlled delay. That could yield some cool shots. But I don't think they are thinking of wireless control on this camera.
The second is wirelss transmission so you need less on-camera storage. But if you use WiFi for this you eat up two sets of batteries very quickly - your cameras and the storage device (which both have to have 802.11b). So that's not very practical. I think of printers as a subset of storage devices in this context, though of course the printer is probably (but not nessicarily) plugged in.
The third is a remote display device that shows the picture you just took for a higher resolution version than you can get from the camera preview.
The last is getting pictures to other cameras. You take a snapshot of someone on top of a mountain, and are able to give them the file right there.
For all of these uses, I really see the better technology being bluetooth. Yes, it's slow (though they are working on a faster standard - but at what price battery life). Still, in a lot of cases you can send reduced size version of the image (like for a thumbnail preview of 800x600) or just take the approach that the connection will take a while - you could slowly spool new images off to a storage device like a bluetooth enabled iPod, and clear them off the CF card on-camera when confirmation was received that the image was OK on the other side. Or you could have images slowy transmitting over a network provided by a bluetooth phone in your pocket.
Basically, to me bluetooth seems already to be set up better for the kind of wireless inetractions you'd want to kave with a camera, through devices you can buy today.
There is one use I can possibly see - treating the camera (and photogrpaher) as disposable, and taking a few pictures of things you are not supposed to. Someone else can receive the images and even if the photogrpaher is captured and the camera destroyed the images survive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you use the cameras in a lot of ways people are speculating about, how will teh battery life be then? WiFi is well known to chew up power...
You stated 1000-1200 pictures on one battery. Imagine with WiFi you might get 400. Think that sounds extreme? My Zaurus I think gets around 10 hours of life on a battery, or a little under two hours with a WiFi card.
Now I do think that's worst case, and Nikon has probably worked hard on this problem... but even so, I have to be skeptical until I see real life reports. Even half the battery life could be a big drawback given how fast it can shoot pictures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can use old laptops for this. For not too much money you can also get a backlit PDA and synchronize it automatically with an existing PDA (copy over the folder). Use a "keep it lit" hackmaster extension and your clock program of choice... Map Avant Go's weather station to one of the buttons, and you have basically what you are describing. You would have to shell out a few hundred for MP3 and audio streams, but for 50 bucks used you could have the best clock ever.
The ______ Agenda
The D2H is aimed at newspaper or online (read: not magazine) photographers that shoot sports among other things and have a quick turnaround time.
The 4MP is plenty for newspapers.
8 fps is great for sports shooters.
When you're shooting 8 fps at 4MP per frame Compact Flash cards fill up quick. I personally would rather spend $300-500 once for the little wireless attachment than $250 a pop for 5-10 512MB Compact Flash cards.
Most digital photographers have laptops in their car at the event they are photographing. Having a PTP wireless network between your camera and your car unloading your CF cards on the fly would be nice.
At events that you have to park more than 300 meters away chances are, eventually, they'll have an access point set up.
Bottom line: It's going to be a nice perk unless Canon makes one too.
I think alot of posts are missing the point. The WiFi solution is largely going to be useful in the studio for alot of photographers. Bluetooth might be a better choice for amateur cameras (less setup hassles).
Uploading the image over a WiFi link is likely to be much cheaper and more convenient than storing the image on the camera itself and then downloading. This also eliminates the cables that doing the same thing with Firewire or USB 2 would entail.
It does open up a bunch of possibilities for sporting events and conferences though.
Four megapixels is NOT plenty for newspapers. If you're going to run a photo full-frame at a fairly small size, it's no big deal, but some of the best shots I ever got when I was shooting sports for newspapers came from frames where a small part of the frame had to be blown up very large. If the image you want to crop is a small portion of the frame (and that's very common), you can end up with not nearly enough pixels to do it with only four megapixels.
My Canon PowerShot S40 is a great four-megapixel digital camera, and it's perfect for most uses that I have for it when I have to have something printed (for either magazine or newspaper reproduction), BUT there have been times when I have needed to blow something up more, but I couldn't. My S40 certainly isn't designed for the kind of news or sports photography that we're talking about in this thread, but I can tell you for sure that I would NEVER want to try to shoot live news or sports with only four megapixels of resolution to work with, whether it was for newspaper or magazine use.
But what prevents the following?
I'm wondering why Nikon didn't add the security options or maybe it's going to appear in their next firmware release. SSH tunnelling support, maybe? SFTP?
The camera is majorly cool, but if my salary/income depended on it, I would want to know that WIFI won't be responsible for my camera taking a hit or my footage being stolen.
Not saying the above are high possibilities, but being a bit paranoid about some possibilities doesn't hurt. I've had my Wifi drop connection on me enough times to know that it still isn't a sure thing.
Winged Power Photography
Wow! Crazy crazy crazy...
I think that a GPS module would be better than 802.11. Wouldnt it be nice to say "I took this picture here," and be able to map it on your webpage? It is being done (in Japan, of course) with Phone cameras (that have GPS). example. Why not for full SLR cameras? Just embed the info in the EXIF tag.
That would be cool and useful.
I would love to own and use cameras like this, but not to pay for it. So far, the Olympus E-1 is closest to what I want. And I agree with what Olympus is trying to do; A "open" standard for digital SLR lens mount. /. article.
Maybe I should write a
J.
Since one is probably using fast film at a sports event, grain becomes a problem as the image is enlarged. There's no grain on a digital image, and enhancement tools with pixel interpolation can keep the jaggies at bay. In the context of a sporting or other event where I'm not in control of the pace of the action, I'd rather work with digital (even at 4MP) than film.
We've all seen the deal. You're taking pictures of someone's wife or the details of a military installation (or a bus station in our lovely Ashcroft country), and the next thing you know, some goon's wrestling you to the ground and confiscating your camera or exposing your film. Well no more. As sooon as you take that picture, the damage is done. Go ahread, meekly surrender the camera. Heck, you can throw it at the goon and make your escape.
What about a device that would connect to the flash memory port of any existing digital camera, providing both storage capabilities and the wifi functionality? Would this be a viable option for professional users?
What the fuck? This thing is clearly designed to be used on random public hotspots, so WEP is unlikely most of the time. And it uses... FTP. How many people do you think will just put their general webhost FTP password in there, and blast it out to everyone in the vicinity every time they upload?
Don't even start to tell me "people should make an upload-only account". That's a load of crap. Vendors should stop shiping FTP-only products, and encourage users to use something secure.
I see FTP passwords on wifi *all the time* and this camera just means more. If a bad person wanted to hack a website today, all they would need is a wifi card and a few minutes of packet capture in any decent sized city. I find it very unlikely that all the other wireless sniffers are showing as much restraint as me.
I mean, you don't see mentions of $1000 macro ring flashes on here.
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My digital camera Holy Grail is simple. Atleast 6 megapixels atleast 4 frames per second, and a full sized sensor...
For those who don't know, the sensors aren't quite the same size as 35mm film so your wide angle shots aren't quite as wide...
And if it could be done for 12oo buck that would be a plus.
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
32 megs sounds like more than enough - if you allocate say 20 megs as picture buffering storage, and run your operating system in the remaining 12 megs to read mail and stuff.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Well, if you do have RIGHT camera, of course. Leica announced exactly this thing for its SLR bodies R8/R9.
t almodul/index_e.html
http://www.leica-camera.com/produkte/rsystem/digi
I understand this particular camera is aimed at newspaper photographers shooting sports events. For that WiFi is good, but a consumer camera this is not.
What about having a standard way to move pictures from the camera via a GSM phone to the recipient? This would work where there is GSM coverage, i.e. pretty much everywhere at least here in Finland. There are printers that can accept pictures directly from the camera, something similar might be appropriate for GSM phones. If the camera and phone have Bluetooth, it is also wireless and the photographer can keep the phone in his/her pocket.
I would assume that reporters would buy this, they could send the photos to office right after having shot them. A paparazzi would love this, the shots are sent to the newspapers before the victim has time to break the camera.
Oh, I should have been more specific...the 32 is for a picture buffer. I don't know what it has to run it's own OS, etc. You get 21 frames buffered shooting as high quality JPEG mode, and about 12 (I thik ) shooting NEFs (raw mode).
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
> Now bring on the powered WiFi speakers that play streamed digital music in any room
> from a personal media device (TiVo-like entertainment center combined with WiFi) or
> home computer.
These are almost with us. I ran across speakers which do almost exactly this last week, except these are analog RF (Using the headphone/preamp output)
Get a real camera with a real lens, learn how to frame the picture correctly and you won't have to crop down nearly as much.
BTW reqs. for newpaper and magazine reproduction are about as different as you could get. Try 600dpi+ for magazine. You could get away with 150dpi, if you had to, for a newspaper. You aim for 300dpi, anything above 150dpi will work.
I'm very surprised that none of the geniuses here has suggested, or mentioned, this very useful device:
X'S Drive
- mere Nikon 995 owner