Bluetooth Digital Cameras?

WebfishUK asks: "Pretty simple question really, does anyone know when we might expect some decent cameras with bluetooth built-in to arrive on the scene? I know there are a couple out there, like the Concord Eye-Q Go Wireless and the Sony DSC-FX77 as well as all those camera phones but wondered if there where any others people knew about in the pipeline? Alternatively what about bluetooth adaptors that could be plugged into any camera with a mini USB connection?"

Comments

I work in a digital camera reatailer

[bethane]

Imagne downloding the contents of a 1 GB microdive over bluetooth, that would take forever. Bluetooth provides approxamatly 784k/bits a sec transfer speed. This is terrible... even slower than USB 1.1

Lets compare this to USB2 which is widely used to connect digital cameras, we can get alteast 50mb/ps transfer rates from this. Which is reasonable.

Before people start suggesting 802.11b remember that this only provides around 3-4mb/sec which is not all that fantastic. Nikon have an attachment for the D100 camera which allows transfer over 802.11b.

I suggest using SCSI as a medium to connect digital cameras, after all most Digital cameras suppot the USB mass storage protocall. Gess what this is!! SCSI over USB! lets just forget the USB part and get pure 320mb/sec per channel speeds!!

Re:I work in a digital camera reatailer

[DocSnyder]

Bluetooth provides approxamatly 784k/bits a sec transfer speed. This is terrible... even slower than USB 1.1

As a different approach, if Bluetooth had a universal storage protocol like USB-Storage or CF/PCMCIA or SD/MMC/whatever, a camera might directly store a new photo on an iPod-like fileserver in the backpack, connected via Bluetooth. Or imagine a "wireless USB stick" as a storage medium, remaining in your pocket while you access or store some files on it. Bandwidth would certainly be too weak for video streams but sufficient for some photos or documents.

Red eye digital cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

It will go well with the red eye that shows up in all my digital camera photos. Bring on the blue tooth!

Nikon D2H

[Andy Smith]

While not exactly the solution you're looking for because it isn't bluetooth, the Nikon D2H is Nikon's new flagship digital SLR for sports and photojournalism. It can transmit files by 802.11b. The camera itself doesn't have the feature as standard, you need to buy an attachment.

You're looking at $5,000 for the whole kit plus lenses, etc. Definitely not an amateur solution but it is an attractive feature, especially if you're into sports shooting, and even moreso if you get a kick out of the idea that your pictures are automatically being transmitted to your laptop while you're still taking the next ones!

But then, geeky toys aside, your lovely new camera would say Nikon on it and that would be a shame.

Couldn't resist! ;-)

If you're on any sort of budget then personally I think a $25 firewire card reader is a better/cheaper idea. You can take around 400 high quality JPEGs on a 1Gb card/microdrive, copy them to your computer in a few minutes, then start shooting again. Still, if you're loaded then I guess wireless is the way to go.

Note that the Canon 1D replacement is due within a few months and it would be surprising if that didn't have wireless capabilities, either as standard or with an attachment. Price should be around the same as the Nikon D2H, maybe a little higher, but the features should leave the D2H eating dust.

802.11b on Nikon D2h, not D100

[i22y]

I too work in a camera retail shop.

The brand-new Nikon D2h, not the Nikon D100, can transmit over 802.11b when the optional WT-1A adapter. Outside North America, it's known as the WT-1.

One problem with adapter ...

[jc42]

Alternatively what about bluetooth adaptors that could be plugged into any camera with a mini USB connection?

My wife and I have a pair of digital cameras. They both have USB plugs. But the USB cables for each are not interchangeable, with each other or with any other USB cables that we have. Only the computer end is standard; the camera end is unique to the camera. We once misplaced one of the USB cables, and it took us a month to get a replacement. We had to special-order it from the camera manufacturer, for $40.

So a bluetooth-to-USB adapter would probably only work for one (or a very few) cameras. You'd find that you have to buy it from the camera maker, because nobody else would have one that fits your camera.

Yeah, you could make the bluetooth-to-USB adapter connect to the "computer" end of the camera maker's USB cable. But that's not how they'd do it. And if you could find one that worked this way, you'd have to have the maker's USB cable anyway. Since bluetooth only works within a few meters, you might as well just connect the camera to the computer as to the adapter.

how about this

[phildog]

I'd love to have a bluetooth camera that was smart enough to

- periodically look for a trusted computer (but only when it has images on the camera)
- automatically move images across bluetooth to the computer and then delete from local flash memory

This way I could come home from work, never actually take my camera out of my briefcase, and have an automatic sync take place. (My palm pilot should do the same thing.)

All the curmudgeonly griping about bluetooth being too slow for this kind of application is pretty shortsighted. Faster is always better, but lets make better use of what's available today.

While we're at it, why not have my briefcase incorporate splashpower.com technology so everything in the bag charges up when I set the bag down on a special landing pad at home.

Wires suck.