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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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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!
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 ]
Talk about your flawed logic. You say you don't think you should have to spend more than the cost of a good PC for a digital camera. Is then a Rolls Royce overpriced because it costs more than your average house. You probably think I'm crazy then for blowing $1000 on my film camera setup (Nikon N80/50mm fixed lens/24-85 zoom)What about audio? I can get a pair of binaural microphones for $65 but I still lust after the $450 Sonic Studios (and the $250 headband-mounted accessory, and their $1000 preamp). The reverse is true; if you really wanted a bitchin' setup, I'll bet you could have spent a lot more than you did on your computer. I'd love a G5 with a huge flat panel and I think I priced that at over $4000 (maybe over $5000 or even $6000, but I don't remember). I'd even love to stick with PC and get a top of the line Athlon with 4GB of RAM and half a terabyte of HD with the newest and highest end ATI Radeon.
You're comparing apples to oranges. You cannot say that product X should always be cheaper than product Y, because their price and quality are not related to each other.
Chris
The D2H uses a different battery pack than the D1h, but the review said it had a larger battery. That being said I've used the D1h extensivly, and with minimal LCD use you could take 1000- 1200 pictures on a single battery. These camera's aren't aimed at the average user, but rather at professional photographers shooting for newspapers and the like. Battery life isn't their biggest concern beacuse when you're already carrying two D1h bodies, a small array of lenses, and a monopod it doesn't matter if you have to toss in four extra batteries.
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
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.
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.
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
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.