New Disposable Digital Cameras with LCDs

del_ctrl_alt writes "Pure Digital Technologies are set to introduce the world's first ever disposable digital camera [ed. note: see below], retailing in the USA for $19.99. Ritz, CVS, Disney World and Longs Drugs are all going to stock the 2-megapixel camera, which somewhat amazingly has a color preview screen and allows you to delete images before you take it to the store for processing (where you will receive a free picture CD along with your prints)." It's not the first disposable digital camera, which was hacked shortly afterwards, but these include a LCD display (they're made by the same company which made the first ones). Have fun!

Comments

Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

Film processing is expected to retail at $280 per camera.

Re:Processing

[mangusman]

Gotta believe this market window for this is very short, as the price of 3 and 4-megapixel cameras will continue to drop considerably.

Re:Processing

[Short Circuit]

Some people will only want the digital camera for special events like a hiking trip, geocaching, a birthday, camping, Christmas, etc.

Sounds to me like they've got a pretty solid market.

Re:Processing

[jhoffoss]

Not to deflate the humor here, but I believe processing/prints/photo CD is include in the price of the camera.

Re:Processing

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Better yet- in a different form of processing, for hardware hackers everywhere they just came out with the $20 1.5" computer monitor- a few of these babies, a mirror and some lenses, and you can probably build yourself a sub-$100 projector....

Re:Processing

[thpdg]

Brazil. 'nuff said.

Re:Processing

[The Fanta Menace]

Well, if they're $20, and you want a sub-$100 projector, then "enough" is clearly anywhere from 1 and 4.

Re:Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like you have stock options, and are crossing your fingers.

Re:Processing

[milkman_matt]

Some people will only want the digital camera for special events like a hiking trip, geocaching, a birthday, camping, Christmas, etc.

Sounds to me like they've got a pretty solid market.

And some other people will voice the concern of my g/f when I suggested she took my olympus with her to Italy. A lot of people won't want to bring a $300/$400 or even more expensive camera with them when they're just going to be taking snapshots to show off what they did and where they were and other touristy stuff. I think they've got a solid market as well. This would be perfect for people worried about losing their camera on a big trip like that.

Re:Processing

[Treskin]

I work at Wolf/Ritz, the processing is NOT included in the price of the camera. I believe a single set of prints with index and CD comes to about $14. Knowing that, I usually only suggest them for people who want to *try* a digital camera, because a film disposable + processing is a good $10 cheaper. These LCD models have actually been on the shelves for at least 2 months now, and I've only seen about 4 come in for development.

Re:Processing

[krymsin01]

Or get two of them and build yourself a nice head mounted display to play doom3 with. ;)

Re:Processing

[instarx]

A lot of people won't want to bring a $300/$400 or even more expensive camera with them when they're just going to be taking snapshots to show off what they did and where they were and other touristy stuff.

I see a use for these for myself, but I don't know how typical I am. I have some very expensive medium format cameras and when in poorer countries I often feel morally uncomfortable pulling out a camera that can cost the equivalent of 10 years of per capita annual income. Even a $150 digital camera could easily cost several months of local income.

A $20 disposable camera would make me less self-concious as well as reduce the chance of having my expensive equipment stolen.

Re:Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some very expensive medium format cameras and when in poorer countries I often feel morally uncomfortable pulling out a camera that can cost the equivalent of 10 years of per capita annual income.

way to go and look out for your all important *feelings*...typical fucking limousine liberal.

Somewhere in Texas, a village has lost its idiot.

Poor Massachusetts. Did you move there just to get "married?"

Heh, this should be short lived.

[Kenja]

How long before "disposable" becomes "free" with a simple hardware/software hack?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[numbski]

Do you know how to count in negative numbers?

Heck, do you know how to click the links in the article? In fact, the very last word?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[LilMikey]

If it's like the last disposable digital, about 3 weeks.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Kenja]

Read it, unlike you it seems. No hack there, just hardware/software information.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Ianoo]

Well, the article claims "no wires" but I wonder just how the shop gets the pictures off the camera? Perhaps some hidden memory card inside the camera waiting to be hacked or even a USB interface behind a plug? Certainly I think this thing could be hackable.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[rost0031]

I have the first edition of these cameras (the ones without the LCD) and they are pretty good considering they are only 12 dollars. Picture quality is fairly good. Now that these new ones are 2MPixel, I can't wait for the hacks.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[rost0031]

It's an interface similar to the old Palm III cradles. It's hidden behind a removable plastic tab on the side. For my hack, I used a piece of a Centronics cable connector attached to a USB cable. Google for "dakota camera hack" and you will find the details.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Kenja]

Take a look at some of the images. You can see an edge connector along one side of the PCB. Odds are this is there data is pulled from. Since they (the hackers) claim to have been able to update the firmware, I would assume that they are close to being able to pull data off as well.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[nacturation]

An interesting thought: is the memory actually wiped after it gets recycled from the last person, or do they simply reset the index? If they don't wipe it fully, it may be possible to undelete the files and recover the last user's pictures from the device.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Gulik]

How long before "disposable" becomes "free" with a simple hardware/software hack?

It seems to me (and this is admittedly off the top of my head, and I apologize if it can be trivially proven to be stupid) that, if you set the camera up so the camera encrypted the JPEG in hardware before it landed on the memory card using a public key, you'd need a private key to get to the JPEG, and the private key would only be on the developing station.

So, sure, someone could hack the developing station, but those are going to be a lot harder to lay hands on than the cameras are. And if the only thing you can ever get from the camera is the public key, and you can't work around the hardware to intercept the image data before encryption, I would think you're pretty well stuck.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting idea...

However, there has to be an unencrypted picture somewhere to use for the preview screen, though that could be low-res.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already well on its way.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Until some geek (probably a /.er) who works at a developing station releases the private key onto the internet.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[IGTeRR0r]

It already is free. I just download my disposable digital cameras from Kazaa. Once they run out, I download a new one.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Have Blue]

I'm pretty sure only the index is wiped.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[morcheeba]

That was the reason for my original hack of the old camera. I never got an answer, because I never found a recycled camera. One Ritz employee said that they had a box of all of these cameras that they had ever developed (5-6) sitting around and they hadn't sent them back for reprocessing. The scary thing is that the processing machine doesn't seem to clear the pictures* -- it must be done at the reprocessing place. A good reason for that is the accidental erasure of the pictures -- you don't want to give the clerk the ability to accidently erase the camera before getting the pictures.

The old camera wasn't really recycleable. The case was painted, so any scratches would show. Changing the body would require removal of about a dozen screws (of a few different sizes), so it's impractical to do.

The new camera design is held together with three easy screws and it's easy to replace the case. The body is not painted, so scratches will be hidden. I'm excited to find out if we'll actually see recycled cameras.

(* note: that's heresay and I can't guarantee it)

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[pclminion]

How long before "disposable" becomes "free"

Even better. You might be able to turn "free" into "profit" if you can sell the constituent parts for more than the $20 purchase price.

Who the hell is interested in "hacking" these things anyway? The picture quality sucks. Sure, it's a cheap camera, but I'm far more interested in the profit potential. Imagine if you could buy a "disposable car." The catch is, you can't refill the tank. However, you legally bought the car so there's nothing stopping you from taking it apart and selling the parts. I don't know about you, but I'm more interested in reselling the parts than in "hacking" the car to be able to refill the gas tank. Especially because the car is a Yugo.

If enough people do this it will destroy the disposable digicam business model, but that's okay. It's a fucked up business model anyway. They'll have to move to a true rental system.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Lodragandraoidh]

A previous message said they already were able to update the firmware through the data port - which tells me you could wipe the encryption scheme - and save pictures unencrypted (if they are encrypted to begin with).

This looks like a great and cheap hacking project.

I could see hacking this as very useful for 'throw away' applications - where losing a $1000+ SLR would be heartbreaking.

Does anyone know about the power supply - and how easy is it to replace the battery?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I can see the flash memory and the screen being very usefull.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[mark_lybarger]

16mb of flash memory (maybe they're using less, i didn't read the article of course) is very cheep these days. you can't even give that stuff away. everyone needs 128 or 256 for their digital cameras now.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Mysticalfruit]

Actually, you hacking the camera is worked into their profit model. Adding in a dedicated encryption IC drives up the price. It's cheaper to just let .003% of the consumer targets hack the thing. For them it's a win/win.

If you hack the thing, you still have to buy, so they're going to make a profit off of you. Not as much as the sheeple who'll just drop the thing in the slot, but a bucks a buck.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Smidge204]

If you hack the thing, you still have to buy, so they're going to make a profit off of you. Not as much as the sheeple who'll just drop the thing in the slot, but a bucks a buck.

So how much does it cost to produce the camera if they still make an acceptable profit selling them for $20?

Their business model relies on people returning the cameras for recycling. I'm sure they accounted for a loss of devices over time (mostly people losing/breaking them through general clumsiness rather than hacking), but overall they are hoping a camera will get recyled 10 times or more so they can make their money back on the hardware plus profit.
=Smidge=

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Carnildo]

Who the hell is interested in "hacking" these things anyway? The picture quality sucks.

Let's say you need to take pictures of something, but you're fairly sure the camera isn't going to survive. A few of these cameras, hacked for continuous download, would be a good solution.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I can always find a use for 16MB of flash memory- one way or the other. Heck- 256 bits of flash memory is just perfect for holding a universally unique identifier.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Piranhaa]

Just a thought. Even when you delete files off solid state media, they are still recoverable with certain software. I know I tried it for fun a bunch of times, and each time I got the pictures I had deleted previously. Just because it says *DELETED*, doesn't mean it's not recoverable!

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[mrgreen4242]

Does anyone know if the original models are stull available at Ritz cameras? Are they going to phase them out all together with these new ones? I'd like to grab one (or two) of the older, definately hackable models before they are gone.

Rob

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

windex...wipe... this some sort of cleaning funny?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very curious what software you used.

I'm holding on to an old SD card of mine that I deleted before I copied the pictures and would like to recover them. Any recommendations?

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[StarKruzr]

The processing machine is nothing more than an IBM server (either an eServer or Intellistation Z Pro, for Ritz) running some Fujifilm software that receives the images. The software doesn't go around deleting pictures; I don't even think it's capable of doing so.

Disclaimer: I actually DO work in the photo industry.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a "refurbished" phone that still had somebody's memory & caller ID numbers.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[serutan]

They might not make money from you if you don't return the camera, but as the parent poster pointed out this is probably an insignificant minority of people, not worth the cost of defeating.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[jdray]

I tried the last link for the article, thinking that info on a hack was what I'd find. The link's dead, even after a couple days of this story being out. Can you a) point us to a mirror, or b) summarize? thx

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[jdray]

I'll wager that the cost to produce is well under $5, and that they could honestly care less if any of the cameras actually get recycled. But even if the cameras cost them $22, it could still be profitable if they charge heavily for processing the output. It's called a "loss-leader" marketing plan.

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[OneDeeTenTee]

Here's my summary.

The original ritz/walgreens no-lcd camera has been thoroughly hacked. Download programs/drivers exist for both Windows and Linux.

The newer no-lcd camera has not been completely hacked, but you can add a memory card slot and download your pictures using your memory card reader. IIRC it's "smartmedia" memory cards.

The newest lcd cameras have not been hacked, nor is it possible to add a removeable memory card. Progress is ongoing, but of course it depends on the free time available to the hacker(s).

The LCD is a known device and the datasheet is available, so the possibility of using it in projects is high.

Personally, I am eagerly awaiting the debut of this in my local CVS,

Re:Heh, this should be short lived.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since most flashcards use a FAT file system, you might be able to undelete using any FAT undelete program. I think one comes with some version of Windows.

cool

[JoeShmoe950]

I really hope it is hackable. I mean, a 2 megapixel digital camera with LCD for $19.99 would be a pretty good deal, even if it takes a day or two, and even 1 or two broken cameras first. I hope someone comes up with a hack!

Re:cool

[ackthpt]

I really hope it is hackable. I mean, a 2 megapixel digital camera with LCD for $19.99 would be a pretty good deal, even if it takes a day or two, and even 1 or two broken cameras first. I hope someone comes up with a hack!

Perfect also as a low cost camera for attaching to radio controlled plains and kites. All that's required is figuring how to trigger the exposures.

I wonder if the guts are dipped in epoxy to discourage what happened to the CueCat, i.e. they sell/give out several thousand but only half ever come back or are used as intended.

Re:cool

[cmackles]

2 megapixels just means that you can blow the actual print up more without losing image quality. Now what you're really interested in is the CCD and the lens(es). That's what determines how good the picture looks, not necessarily how high its resolution is. VGA cameras (640x480px) can produce just as good quality as a 5mp camera with an equivalent lens.

I never understood why mp was such a big deal.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really 2 Megapixel. I took a look at one. It's "interpolated" to 2 megapixel.

Re:cool

[Mateito]

I never understood why mp was such a big deal.

Marketting - Its a number that they can stamp on the front of the Unit, and to most people "bigger number" = "Better camera".

There are a few of us who would actually see the difference between a 2MP and an 8MP image, but you are dead right is stating that optics in a standard consumer grade camera probably aren't up to scratch.

Me, I'm waiting for a Canon's next- or next-next- generation EOS digital so I can use it with my existing lenses. In the meantime I have a shitty Kodak digital camera that I use for taking shots to post to the web.

Re:cool

[drinkypoo]

If you clicked on the last link in the story submission you'd know that it's not potted in plastic. Also, way less than half the cuecats were used as intended, probably because the USB ones only came out towards the end. I have two declawed cuecats, one USB and one PS/2. I think the PS/2 thing is too hard for people though :)

Re:cool

[AndroidCat]

I want to attach one of those pocket telescopes to one (the cheaper one without the LCD). 24/7 surveillance at the bird-feeder!

Re:cool

[ackthpt]

If you clicked on the last link in the story submission you'd know that it's not potted in plastic

Couldn't get it, was /.ed already.

I still have a CueCat, but boxed it away after the lawsuit of Digital Convergence vs. the guy who had the cool site. Forgot to check up again, seeing all these nice informative sites, what with DC being consigned to the dustbin of the dotbombs, I should dig it out and resume playing =)

Re:cool

[timts]

I dont think you need to hack it
a CMOS based 2M digital camera with no optical zoom, a little internal memory and memory card support could be found $19.99 some where, if there's a deal or something, though the picture quality might not be that great
you can just buy it for your kids and nobody is going to buy this "disposable" one any way.

Re:cool

[CodeMaster]

Is it just me or the fact that you can get a nice little LCD attached to something is the real item here?

We've all seen the hackable "disposable" digicams here before, and considering the quality of pictures and the hassle to get them off the camera, this one is actually hackable in the old fashioned sense...

Anyone has any info on getting this nifty LCD to work/interface with anything? (case modders...)

get a free iPod

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean theres more of a difference than what zoom factor I have to use to make it fit on my screen?

Re:cool

[3terrabyte]

Exactly how would you have gotten busted playing with stuff in your basement?

Or do you mean you put it away because you couldn't find any good sites on it after the shutdown?

Re:cool

[accelleron]

or the local nudist beach...

Re:cool

[accelleron]

... or the local nude beach.

Re:cool

[nosphalot]

Me, I'm waiting for a Canon's next- or next-next- generation EOS digital so I can use it with my existing lenses

Whats wrong with the EOS 1Ds? Aside from price, it seems to be the perfect DSLR with a full size sensor so a 14mm lens behaves like a 14mm and not a 21mm as on cameras with smaller sensors. If you just want compatibility with other Canon lenses, there are many models that do that, try the EOS Digital Rebel at the low end for $899, all the way up to the EOS 1D Mk II for $4500.

Re:cool

[svferris]

FYI, Canon just announced their next generation camera today:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0408/04081909canon_eo s20d.asp

Quick summary:
Canon has today revealed the EOS 20D, the eight megapixel successor to the EOS 10D. The new sensor is however only half the story the EOS 20D has a slightly smaller and lighter body, a brand new 9-point AF system, near instant power on time, 5 frames per second continuous shooting, support for EF-S digital lenses, true RAW+JPEG, a B&W mode and USB 2.0. In total we've counted approximately 30 noteworthy improvements on the EOS 20D. Naturally we have a detailed eleven page hands-on preview of the EOS 20D and will have sample images available in a few days time. Price on the street around US$1,500.

Re:cool

[SillyNickName4me]

> I never understood why mp was such a big deal.

It depends on the use (besides it being a bit of marketing)

If you are making pictures for a picture cd or use on a webpage or such, then a vga or slightly better resolution will definitely do.

Printing it on standard size photopaper however will often show the individual pixels quite clearly.

2mp will not have that problem and allows for slight maginfication on print without such issues as well.

At any rate, jpeg compression is often more damaging for picture quality then resolution when it comes to digital cameras.

Re:cool

[realdpk]

"All that's required is figuring how to trigger the exposures."

I must be a terrorist.

I read "explosives."

Re:cool

[Mateito]

The 1D is an extremely cool camera, and I want one. But you hit the nail on the head. Price. When it comes down to under $800 for a body, I'll get one. I am half considering the Rebel-D, as there is custom firmware floating around that removes the restriction, but I still am not a huge fan of plastic bodied cameras, as I tend to be a bit careless sometimes.

Re:cool

[Mateito]

Guau. Thanks.

Gotta go and be nice to the girlfriend....

(and I meant the 10D in the above post, the 1D is, and will always be, out of my price range)

Why?

[Espectr0]

This is even a worse idea than the "2 day dvd lasting" media.
Why do this?

Re:Why?

[molafson]

N.B. The cameras aren't "disposable" in the sense that you throw them away. The company refurbishes them 5-8 times and puts them back on the market.

Re:Why?

[artemis67]

Considering that this is "version 2," I assume that it's because they made a lot of money off the first one.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

And your grammar is even worse than the idea. "2 day dvd lasting?" What the hell? Pick up a thesaurus, my friend.

Re:Why?

[laigle]

Without the need to take the thing apart to get the film and with fewer moving parts, these should actually get a many more re-use cycles than the film versions. So I'm betting the profit margins they're looking at are a lot better even with a higher camera cost. The big problem will be if the things are hackable, which means they'll be pulling the DMCA out like mad.

Of course, at 2 Mp I'm thinking you'd get better pictures off the cheaper film version anyways.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

This brings a question: People are bastards: what if everybody would scratch his name on the case, rip off the objective or paint some grafiti "I 0wned this bitch" on it? The company would sink instantly...

Re:Why?

[EnglishTim]

... because the plastic casing is the most expensive part of the camera?

Re:Why?

[morcheeba]

So far, I've got a lot of respect for the legal department at PureDigital: they have not threatened anyone, with the DMCA or otherwise. By my reading of the DMCA, writing drivers for interoperability purposes is legal (and, IMHO, fair use of purchased hardware). The new camera so far seems to be locked down tighter (i.e. no one's gotten any message at all back from it yet; we presume it's waiting for the right password). I am glad to see PD using technological measures rather than trying to find a judge that will turn the DMCA into a blunt instrument.

Re:Why?

[Wescotte]

Because of people out there who when they hear the word "digital" attached with any product they instantly think it's a better product.

Marketing

[johnhennessy]

Finally my point is proven - this is what happens when the marketing department controls projects !!

Re:Marketing

[iso]

So ... you get a product that the general public actually wants?

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

> So ... you get a product that the general public actually wants?

And breaks the company in the process? Yeah, I guess so.

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you work in Marketing or something? Because personally it seems like this is actually a pretty good idea with a not entirely unsound business plan.

1) Rent out cameras with free processing
2) Refurb Cameras
3) ...
4) Profit!

As long as the cameras get refurbed on average 5-6 times i'd imagine that they will see a reasonble profit return on each unit.

Sure people could hack them, but that probably wont prevent all that many cameras getting back to them in the end. Especially if these things go mainstream, which I rather hope they do.

The one problem I can see them having is not having as good picture quality as a cheap disposable. Put I suppose not that many people make massive prints of their photos, so it should be ok.

I know I'm trolling, but...

[mblase]

For exactly which economic bracket is $20 considered "disposable"? I consider myself middle-class, and I'm not going to throw anything away unless it cost under $8, if I can help it.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Diphthong]

I think their notion is that you get more than $8 of value out of this thing. Because it's digital with preview/delete, you can nix bad pictures before going to get them developed, something you cannot do with a disposable film camera.

In other words, they're banking that a $20 disposable digital is worth about two $10 disposable film cameras, or more.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Rob the Bold]

True, even small amounts add up . . . quarter million here, quarter million there, pretty soon you're talking real money.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[AKAImBatman]

What I want to know is how they can sell these things at $20 a piece? LCD screens have come down in price *some*, but they can't be THAT cheap! Are these actually disposable, or is it really just a tricky recycling maneuver?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[FooAtWFU]

The economic bracket that goes to Disney World, for one. But really- how much does the regular disposable camera end up costing you? And how many of the shots do you waste because there's no preview/delete?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[jdreed1024]

For exactly which economic bracket is $20 considered "disposable"? I consider myself middle-class, and I'm not going to throw anything away unless it cost under $8, if I can help it.

Well, you said you're trolling, but I suppose there might be people who have never used disposable cameras. They're not throw-away. You're basically renting them. You're paying for the convenience of not owning a camera or not having one with you. The camera doesn't get thrown away when you're done. You just don't get to keep it. More like leasing than renting, I guess. You take it to the processor, and they give you pictures and then refurbish the camera and sell it again.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[zerocool^]

It depends... from the site, it appears to have a 16MB memory capacity, which at 2 megapixel is something like 50 or 60 pictures. Considering a decent disposable camera that takes 24 pics costs $5, this is less than twice as much per picture, and gives you the ability to preview and delete pics you don't want developed. Add to that the possibility of modding/hacking it and the potential environmental friendlyness of not using film, and you're not talking a huge cost for the value.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they're recycling, duh! Did you real think the throw the thing away after processing your pictures?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[jhoffoss]

A recycling maneuver. Ritz/whoever keeps the camera, downloads your pics, prints your prints and burns your CD, then resells the camera to someone else.

I wonder if they *really* wipe the memory, or just delete/dealloc the memory. It'd be very mildly entertaining to see if you could wait a bit and find someone else's pics in the memory.

Of course, the only folks buying these right away (I'd guess) are /.ers who will soon hack it for personal reuse.

/me runs to ritz

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> For exactly which economic bracket is $20 considered "disposable"?

I'm guessing the economic bracket that wouldn't buy this anyway because they already have a DSLR and a camera phone.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[AKAImBatman]

I wonder if they *really* wipe the memory, or just delete/dealloc the memory. It'd be very mildly entertaining to see if you could wait a bit and find someone else's pics in the memory.

I can see it now. "This is Marge waving with her left hand. This is Marge waving with her right hand. And for the big finally, this is Marge waving with BOTH hands!!!"

Most people's pictures are terminally boring. Trust me. ;-)

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[poot_rootbeer]

"Disposable" is quite a bit of a misnomer here. A more descriptive term might be "open-term rental".

You "buy" the camera from your shop, carry it around for as long as you want, take some pictures with it, then you return to the shop to hand the camera in and get the pictures on it developed. The shop doesn't crack open the camera like a walnut shell and toss it in the trash -- after extracting your pictures from it, it's refurbished and re-"sold" to the next person.

These aren't contributing to landfills any more than any other digital camera -- they only get disposed of when they've been damaged so badly that they cannot be repaired.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[p3d0]

No, 16MB at 2 megapixel is only about 25 pictures.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[operagost]

"Finally" ... the "finale".

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[AKAImBatman]

Doh! Good catch.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[stratjakt]

Disney and other theme parks are where this will make the bucks. They have a captive audience. You forgot your camera, huh? Here, buy one of ours. Only 50 bucks. I can guarantee you Disney won't charge MSRP to use the thing.

Or, better yet.. At the front gates. "Sorry sir, but to improve the customer experience, our Fun-gineering department now requires that no cameras or recording devices may be allowed in the park. If you like, you can buy one of our disposable cameras on Main Street USA".

Thirsty? We have water. 5 bucks. Etc. It's no secret to anyone who's been to a theme park that they do everything they can to gouge you once inside.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[jhoffoss]

That wouldn't surprise me in the least. That's why I threw the "marginally entertaining" (or whatever it was I said...) in there.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[mrchaotica]

The problem is that IMHO $20 is a lot to charge to rent a digital camera. I'd pay the $20 to buy one and hack it, sure, but not to use it in the way it was intended. I realize it has to be that expensive, to recoup the losses from people like us (and broken cameras), but at that price I doubt the market is large enough to be profitable.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you see this now? "This is Marge blowing me. This is Marge's friend blowing me..." Can you guess the finale??

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You wish.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[cecille]

Not only that, but it'd be worth the $20 if you were going to take it on a vacation or a trip where it might get totally wrecked. A $20 camera is way more affordable than trashing your good digital.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[SydShamino]

>> You're basically renting them. ... You just don't get to keep it. More like leasing than renting, I guess.

You described it correctly - as the company that markets it would. However, unless I have to sign a lease agreement to take one of these home, my transaction to purchase it can be considered final. There's no law that stops me from buying a radio, or a camera, or a disposable camera, or a disposable digital camera, then taking it home and smashing it with a mallet. Or, from taking it home and scrapping it for parts.

The DMCA might (might**) prevent me from reverse engineering the encoding scheme on the memory to extract my pictures, but it certainly doesn't stop me from reusing the LCD screen.

** "might" is important. As the owner of the photographs I took, I have the rights to those pictures. It's not illegal to circumvent copy protections if you own the rights to copy the materials in question.

Of course, if they do make you sign a lease agreement when you get the camera, which could include a requirement that you not destroy the camera, or that you cannot claim ownership of the photos in their encoded form, all of this may be moot.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[poot_rootbeer]

The camera doesn't get thrown away when you're done. You just don't get to keep it.

Well, you COULD keep it, if you never decide to take it in and get your pictures developed. It's not like they're going to send goons out to find you and recover the device if you don't.

I myself still have a Tandy CoCo computer that was "loaned" to my father by a friend in 1983.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can you guess the finale??"

You blowing Marge/Marv the she-male?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[toddestan]

A lot depends on the compression used. I have a 2MP Sony Cybershot where the pictures are about 400-500k in size at the "highest" quality. So about 25 pictures would be about right if I had a 16MB card.

However, I would guess since the photos are likely already low quality due to a really crappy lens, they probably just compress the hell out of the photos so you'll get 60 out of the 16MB.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

when I went to Disney in 2003, my digicam died, so I got a 27 shot Kodak disposable camera... you know how much THAT costed me!!!??? $17! (almost positive)...

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[DrXym]

A camera that eats batteries thanks to a colour LCD on the back can hardly be called environmentally friendly.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Jeremi]

It's not illegal to circumvent copy protections if you own the rights to copy the materials in question.

Are you sure about that? I thought one of the complaints against the DMCA was that it made circumvention illegal, no matter what.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[SydShamino]

From 17 U.S.C. 1201, found somewhere on the internet (so you know its accurate):

(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. [...] [17 U.S.C.A. S 1201 et seq.].

(B) The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).

----

I'm sure there are many interpretations of that law. But, if one owns the rights to a work, making a copy of that work does not infringe on the rights of the owner, and is thus a "noninfringing use" of the work.

Also, article (A) only applies to works protected under copyright law. As the owner of your work, you can just place your own pictures in the public domain. Then they aren't protected by copyright law, and the DMCA protections clearly don't apply, and you can circumvent all you want.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Politburo]

Is it really a lot though? Let's say that 1/2 of the shots you get from an analog disposable camera are throwaways. That's generous, imo. I haven't bought one in a while, but the disposable cameras are generally $5-10? With this, you can go on a whole vacation and come back with 20 shots that you know are good quality for $20. With the current method, you have to shoot 100 shots and hope a few come out nice. Assuming developing costs are the same, and if you need 2-3x the analog prints to get the same amount of usable shots, the 'disposable' digital becomes cheaper in the long run.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the company has already figured into their business model the .05% of the population that is mentally retarded like you. Most people will use the camera and take it back for processing. Period.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[morcheeba]

No, that's the EUCD (european union copyright directive), which is far worse than the DMCA. Here's my DMCA analysis on the old camera.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[avida]

The manufacturing of this camera probably kills hundreds of beavers and rodents. It's not just about avoiding film -- you have to avoid most things made by technology if you want ot be environmentally friendly. Man should just wipe itself off the planet if it really wants to play fair with the Earth.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[mrchaotica]

hmm... good point!

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[John Courtland]

I wonder what's worse, the development fluids or the battery fluids?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[TheGavster]

This brings up an interesting point: can you change the battery in the camera, or are you all done when it runs out?

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[bhtooefr]

Not when 25 pics is a hardcoded limit in the firmware of every Dakota Digital camera, 1.3 OR 2.0 megapixels...

It appears that the camera isn't really 2.0MP, anyway... it's just they resize the image to 2.0MP...

I remember having an Agfa camera that was 1024x768 (ePhoto 780, maybe?) There were two other models of camera that look IDENTICAL to it - one by Polaroid, and one no-name. The Polaroid was 640x480, IIRC, and the no-name was 640x480 interpolated to 1024x768. I'm suspecting that the Agfa was the same way (it was DISCONTINUED for about a year before the Polaroid OR the no-name came out).

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[bhtooefr]

http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/pv 2-disassembly.html

Two AAs, it looks like. They don't make it too easy to get in, but...

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[waynelorentz]

"Sorry sir, but to improve the customer experience, our Fun-gineering department now requires that no cameras or recording devices may be allowed in the park. If you like, you can buy one of our disposable cameras on Main Street USA".

Ringling Brothers circus already does this. I was at their show in Houston when they turned away dozens and dozens of parents with crying children because they brought their still and video cameras. But there on the inside -- you could by Ringling cameras.

Even worse, they wouldn't let the lady ahead of me in because her kid had a half-eaten candy bar. No outside food allowed.

I'll never go to another one of their circuses again.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[pocomoonshiine]

On a camera this cheap could it be possible that the firmware and the image cache (before compression) is on the same memory "chip" as the stored images? Seems that good digital cameras have 16mb or even much more "firm" memory on their circuitboard to allow all the UI software to work, screen buffer, images to queue, etc.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[SubtleNuance]

Its for the economic-brackets where end-user responsibility is nigh.

Its also for the end-user brackets that dont care about their ecological foot-print... and live an a backwards economy that doesnt include ecology in economics.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[Halfbaked Plan]

Not just beavers and rodents. The manufacturing of this camera crushes cute little puppies and kittens!

Also, a manatee has to die for each 100 cameras produced.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[hcdejong]

These aren't contributing to landfills any more than any other digital camera
Actually they do. If you own a digital camera, you're likely to get a set of rechargeables for it. This thing looks like it uses nonrechargeable batteries.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[DrXym]

I have a first generation Dakota Digital (that I bought while in the US) and it uses 2 AA batteries. There is even a normal hatch to replace the batteries. I have no intention of ever returning the camera so it will be truly recyclable as far as I'm concerned.

I intend to fashion a USB connection for it and throw the thing into the car glove box. Then I can take pictures when I go places even if I forget my regular (and expensive) digital.

1MP isn't great but it will be better than nothing.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[WhiteDragon]

The DMCA might (might**) prevent me from reverse engineering the encoding scheme on the memory to extract my pictures, but it certainly doesn't stop me from reusing the LCD screen.

** "might" is important. As the owner of the photographs I took, I have the rights to those pictures. It's not illegal to circumvent copy protections if you own the rights to copy the materials in question.

It is true that you have the rights to those photographs, but where the DMCA comes in is that the manufacturer of the camera owns the rights to the firmware operating system that is storing your pics in memory. If you hack that software (eg to download your own pics), that is where the DMCA might come in.

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[WhiteDragon]

Sorry sir, but to improve the customer experience, our Fun-gineering department...

actually, at Disney(tm) parks, the correct term is "Imagineer" :-)

Re:I know I'm trolling, but...

[bedessen]

Not only that, but it's a logical fallacy to not include the resources required to manufacture the two things being compared. Fabs to make digital ICs use all sorts of nasty chemicals.

For example, suppose that it takes 5 'units' to manufacture a regular optical camera and 1 'unit' per roll of film to process. (Here a "unit" is just a figure of speech, let it represent whatever you're comparing, e.g. amount of detrimental environmental impact.) Compare to the digital camera whose environmental cost might be, say, 0.5 'units' per set of images printed. On the face of it, it seems like the digital one requires less resources, but what if it takes 20 'units' to manufacture the digital one because of all the dozens of processing steps necessary to make those wonderful modern CMOS chips? Unless it's re-used 'n' times it's more of an environmental detriment than the optical one, where 'n' is whatever break-even point.

Now obviously that's quite a contrived example, but really my point was you can't just look at the thing and say "processing digital images doesn't use nasty chemicals, therefore it's better for the environment." You have to take into account all of the resources required to manufacture and dispose of the item, among other things. As the parent points out, batteries are an especially nasty example of something with a high "hidden" environmental cost of disposal.

Disposable Society

[Alaskan Snake]

Hear that? That's the collective sigh of landfills across the nation.

Re:Disposable Society

[FooAtWFU]

You don't throw the camera away. You take it back to the drugstore for processing, where they reset, refurbish and generally sell it again.

Re:Disposable Society

[hudsong]

NO kidding man. Christ...do people think resources are endless? "Oh, theres more oil in Alaska!" Yeah..1 months worth.

Re:Disposable Society

[tanthalas]

Oh no, I doubt those cameras will be entirely disposable. You see, in order for your prints to be made you have to give it to one of those stores with said processor. Do you really think you're going to get your camera back? What happens after that? The store keeps it, makes it look pretty again if it was slightly damaged, repackages it, and resells it. These cameras are reusable in every way, from what I can see in the article. I'd say they'd make a lot of money from just selling one camera over and over again.

Re:Disposable Society

[kaschei]

Your sig is entirely too appropriate to the discussion at hand.

Re:Disposable Society

[mst76]

In other words, you're not buying it, you renting.

Re:Disposable Society

[SlamMan]

You mean exactally like the ol dfilm disposable cameras? What else would you like to do with it besides take it to a film developer?

Re:Disposable Society

[glamslam]

Ironically... since you are "renting it", if you lose the camera, they lose money.

Re:Disposable Society

[Halfbaked Plan]

Well, the old film disposable camera often has a good and usable strobe bulb, strobe capacitor, etc.

A bunch of them could make some pretty cool visual effect things.

Re:Disposable Society

[Keith McClary]

You don't throw the camera away. You take it back to the drugstore for processing, where they reset, refurbish and generally sell it again.


But this involves shipping it to Chicago.

Wouldn't it be smarter for them to just reset it and give it back to you - since you are a captive customer for their processing (mod hacking)?

I guess they'd have to remind you to change the batteries.

Re:Disposable Society

[DataCannibal]

You insensitive clod, we don't have drugstores in the UK

Digital

[hudsong]

Link to old slashdot post 404s Yeah I wonder if these work well? I guess all it means is more shitty pictures on the internet. Oh well.

Re:Digital

[wastingtape]

maybe it means every picture you take is a red "X"

This seems strange to me...

[StevenHenderson]

First off, how in the hell do they charge so little for something with an LCD? Can we hope that such cheap technology could be used im other smaller devices? Also, why pay 20 bucks for a disposable digital camera when you can get a 35mm for like 7? Seems to be an amazing advance in technology/ price point, but nevertheless a futile effort to make everything digital.

Re:This seems strange to me...

[FooAtWFU]

They sell it more than once. To the consumer, the "disposable" angle is that they only use it once, and return it when the pictures are developed.

With a 35mm camera, you don't get to delete pictures and review pretty screenshots before you print. It's just not the same.

Worth the extra $? Perhaps, perhaps not- depends on how much $ you have to throw around. But I'd hardly call this a "futile" attempt. It will make the next round of similar cameras even better and cheaper. There's money in it.

Re:This seems strange to me...

[Yardboy]

The benefit is being able to recognize, delete and re-shoot poor pictures, which is one of the big pluses of digital photography. The $7 35mm disposable, 24 pictures, might on average net you 8-10 keeper pics. With the digital version, you're guaranteed 25 pictures that you want processed, because you can keep re-shooting until you get 25 good ones. Net-net, probably close to break-even on cost (assuming my 33% estimate above) - coincidence? Also, while some processors don't force you to pay for pictures you don't like, that doesn't alleviate the "sighing landfills" issue. IF you are going to buy a disposable camera, then this would be the more environmentally friendly version, assuming the cameras themselves are recycled as advertised.

Re:This seems strange to me...

[pclminion]

First off, how in the hell do they charge so little for something with an LCD?

They don't. The shops which sell these things pay more than $20 for them. They can "sell" them at $20 because people have to return them to get their photos. Once they have the camera back, they can repackage and resell it again for $20. And again. And again. Until it gets too scratched up, dirty, or gross to sell any more.

There hasn't been some magical advance in technology to make these things so cheap. They aren't. It's just that there's a big incentive to return the camera (i.e., you can't get your photos if you don't).

Do you really think the camera shop just tosses a perfectly good, reusable digital camera in the trash after a single use?!

It was bound to happen

[UMhydrogen]

In a day and age when it seems that almost everyone uses digital cameras, I'm not surprised that they came out with disposable digital cameras. If you look now, most people are using either digital, or film disposable cameras (aside from professional cameras, which are increasingly turning digital).

Digital cameras make things so much easier - no bad pictures (as this one disposable will allow), you can see the picture after it's taken and you can get a copy of it digitally (non-scanned). There are so many reasons for a disposable digital camera - they include every reason to have a digital camera over a film camera.

Re:It was bound to happen

[Roadkills-R-Us]

There are very few reasons to have a disposable digital camera, and fewer good ones. You could just as easily make the thing "renewable". The only difference in that concept and this one is that it's not disposable - it gets reused. You buy the camera for $20, you take it to the store, they stick it in the magic machine to get images and reset it, you get the camera back with the prints (or even when you drop off for processing).

The primary reason for a disposable is that we live in a selfish, stupid society. Lots of folks will buy a disposable for $20, when they wouldn't buy a non-disposable for $20. ``I already have a camera, I just forgot it, I don't need a cheap one.'' Fine, give it to your kid! Give it to a mission group. Give it to a school. Give it to the guy who wants to stick LCD guages all over his house (elsewhere in this topic). Someone will take it. If it's used 10 times before it breaks (I wonder what the true life expectancy of this system would be if it wasn't intended for death row), that's a phenomenal savings in materials, land fill capacity, etc.

But making things intentionally disposable merely plays to our devolutionary tendancies. ```Let's screw the planet up as quickly as possible.''

Re:It was bound to happen

[cens0r]

But they aren't really disposable. They are recycled.

walgreens

[munboy]

our walgreens has had digital cameras for $9.99 since like a year ago, but they don't have a preview screen. you can just delete them before bringing it back. you also get a free picture CD.

Cheap LCDs

[MikeMacK]

Wow, if there was ever an argument for how cheap LCD's have become, this would be it.

LCD's and Muvo's

[pr0file]

How much do you want to bet that people will bulk buy these things just for the screens
hmm.. come to think of it.. i'll get my orders in now!!!

Gauges

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking foward to sticking LCD gauges all around the house with these babies! :)

Re:Gauges

[SubtleNuance]

Arent you going to end up with the same issues as dead laptop LCDs? Their hasnt been a Ask Slashdot about this topic in at least 6 months, looks like we should discuss the "have lcd what to do with it" question again.

cexx.org: the last link in the article, pre-/.ing

[jhoffoss]

Controller
SMaL Camera Technologies

Numbering on controller chip:
AIC0021B
02TWN5103
C68051.00
Memory
16M x8 NAND Flash memory: Samsung K9F2808UO8-YCB0

4Mx16 SDRAM: Micron Technologies MT48LC4M16A2TG-75E
Preliminary stuff of interest
The edge connector of the PV2 electrically matches that of the classic Dakota, at least as far as the USB pins go; whatever cable/contraption used to access the classic should work for this one without modifications.

Holding down ALL the buttons at once (shutter, Display, Delete) while turning on power will display a diagnostic screen showing the camera's serial number, firmware revision and similar information.

See John's Dakota page with an update for the PV2, including some USB info, datasheets for the more interesting parts (including the LCD) and a gallery of good dissection photos.
USB info
Here is the dump-out from SUCR commandline, walking thru the device properties. (All versions of SUCR do this, in case the manufacturer decided to get clever and move the devices/interfaces/endpoints/altsettings around). This gives a good idea of the 'organization' of the camera's USB interface.

usb_set_debug: Setting debugging level to 3 (on) LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_init: dll version: 0.1.8.0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_init: driver version: 0.1.8.0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_busses: found bus-0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_devices: found \\.\libusb0-0003--0x058f-0x9254 on bus-0 LIBUSB_DLL: usb_os_find_devices: found \\.\libusb0-0004--0x0dca-0x0027 on bus-0 Looking at device with USB id 058F/9254 Looking at device with USB id 0DCA/0027 Found camera... This device has 2 possible configuration(s). Looking at configuration 0...This configuration has 1 interfaces. Looking at interface 0...This interface has 1 altsettings. Looking at altsetting 0...This altsetting has 2 endpoints. Endpoint 0: Address 81h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (In) Endpoint 1: Address 01h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (Out) Looking at configuration 1...This configuration has 1 interfaces. Looking at interface 0...This interface has 1 altsettings. Looking at altsetting 0...This altsetting has 2 endpoints. Endpoint 0: Address 81h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (In) Endpoint 1: Address 01h, attributes 02h (Bulk) (Out) Set config: 0 Found bulk endpoint 129 on Configuration 1 Interface 0 Altsetting 0 Set alt. interface: 0 [...]

The camera has 2 configurations, one is for 200mA and the other is for 100mA, but "seem" otherwise identical. (See the testlibUSB dump-out below for additional details.) When the configuration is set by SUCR, the camera emits a 2-tone ascending beep, and the LED comes on. However, regardless of which of the configurations is used, all control transfers produce a CRC error message from Windows: LIBUSB_DLL error: error sending control message: win error: Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

Here is the output from testlibUSB: DLL version: 0.1.8.0 Driver version: 0.1.8.0 bus/device idVendor/idProduct bus-0/\\.\libusb0-0002--0x0dca-0x0027 0DCA/0027 - Manufacturer : SMaL - Product : Digital Camera wTotalLength: 32 bNumInterfaces: 1 bConfigurationValue: 1 iConfiguration: 3 bmAttributes: 80h MaxPower: 100 bInterfaceNumber: 0 bAlternateSetting: 0 bNumEndpoints: 2 bInterfaceClass: 255 bInterfaceSubClass: 0 bInterfaceProtocol: 0 iInterface: 0 bEndpointAddress: 81h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 bEndpointAddress: 01h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 wTotalLength: 32 bNumInterfaces: 1 bConfigurationValue: 2 iConfiguration: 3 bmAttributes: 80h MaxPower: 50 bInterfaceNumber: 0 bAlternateSetting: 0 bNumEndpoints: 2 bInterfaceClass: 255 bInterfaceSubClass: 0 bInterfaceProtocol: 0 iInterface: 0 bEndpointAddress: 81h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0 bEndpointAddress: 01h bmAttributes: 02h wMaxPacketSize: 64 bInterval: 0 bRefresh: 0 bSynchAddress: 0
Some dissection pictures
Back of the PV2. The case is held together by 3 screw

Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Ced_Ex]

Why does society insist make making more and more disposable crap? Like we need more things filling up landfills.

This whole disposable movement just evolves us to making more stuff that has lower and lower quality. Hence the saying "They don't make 'em like they used to."

Sound familiar? Back in the day, ALL cameras were made of a metal body. You could blugeon someone to death with your camera and it would still be alright to take the murder scene photos afterwards. You can't do that with today's plastic cameras.

Granted some items being disposable do in fact better society, such as facial tissue and toilet paper, but for non-consumable items, we should stick to making durable QUALITY goods!

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[JaffaKREE]

You could blugeon someone to death with your camera

So, uh... I guess that film career didn't work out for you ?

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[nacturation]

Of course, in this case Disposable == Recyclable. Or do you really think they simply pitch the 2 megapixel CCD sensor, LCD display, internal memory, camera body, etc. in the garbage after you bring it in?

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[nharmon]

Simple. Why make a $50 camera that will last for 50 years, when you can make a $10 camera that will last for 2 years? Make things cheap and easily broken, and people will buy a new one every few years. That is the mentality.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Coneasfast]

Like we need more things filling up landfills.

im suprised the mods didn't see this!
the cameras do NOT, i repeat, do NOT go in the landfills, they are resold back to the public from the store after use.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Ced_Ex]

I think there's a name for that.

"Built-in obsolescence"

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[That's Unpossible!]

im suprised the mods didn't see this!

You must be new here. :)

the cameras do NOT, i repeat, do NOT go in the landfills, they are resold back to the public from the store after use

Yes, I am continually amazed by the ignorance. Disposable camera means the CONSUMER disposes of it, not the "film processor."

What I'd like to know is, how many times have these ignoramuses bought a disposable camera, taken a roll of pictures, and then tossed it in the garbage?

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Ced_Ex]

You're not look far enough. At what point do they realize that they can't re-package and re-sell it again?

Being "disposable", people aren't going to care. They'll bring it back in the worst shape possible. Scratches on the lens, chips in the body, cracks. At some point it IS going to be disposed. And for what it's worth, somewhere along the lines of the design phase, they factored in the cost of actually having to throw out cameras and building their replacements.

Sometimes you need to read between the lines of the article.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Mateito]

Why does society insist make making more and more disposable crap?

I'm glad you laid the blame on society, because if people didn't buy disposible crap, there'd be no money in it, and companies would stop making it.

Of course, the decades of Marketing that equate "disposible" with "convenient" have been a major contribution to the problem in the first place, but it goes to show that although there is a lot of lip-service paid to "environmentally friendly" options, the actions of the consumer show that, in reality, he couldn't give a fuck.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital camera tech is still advancing very fast, so it makes little sense to make housings that last. Would you use your all-metal 1.3MP camera from a few years ago, or the latest 4MP big CCD better lens plastic camera that's a lot cheaper?

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Why does society insist make making more and more degenerate retards? Like we need more ijits filling up web forums.

This whole retard movement just devolves us to jumping more conclusions that has lower and lower sense. Hence the saying "You've never taken a disposable film camera back to the drugstore!?!? WTF!?!?!?!".

Sound familiar? Back in the day, ALL slashdot posters were sensible enough to figure this was the same deal, flash substituting for film. You could blugeon someone senseless with your big antique camera and they would still be alright enough to know this. You can't do that with today's slashdot ijits.

Granted some "disposable" stuff do in fact get reused, such as moronic slasdot rants, but for others, we should actually take the time to decide if they are truly disposable.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[DrCash]

It's a sad fact. I for one would never by a crappy disposable digital camera, and hope that most consumers agree with me so that we can stamp this puppy out before it gets mainstream.

The primary reason they're doing this is purely economical. They're using cheap plastic parts and hiring some guy in China or India for $2.00/day to put these things together so that they can sell them for $19.99. That's almost pure profit for the company, and the average American consumer won't give a flying fsck as long as they can buy this shit at Wally World. But the irony is the fact that these same American consumers are the same ones that are whining about where all of our manufacturing sector jobs have gone,...

Goes to show the intelligence of your average American consumer.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Ford Prefect]

Sadly, durable stuff is likely to outlive its usefulness.

I've got an old Toshiba laptop somewhere - powered by a 7.14MHz 8086. The machine is heavily built and works fine, has decent battery life and, apart from being a bit grubby and yellowed, works just the same as it did when new.

Except it's almost entirely useless when it comes to working alongside modern computers. It and my modern iBook have no ports, disks or anything in common. I'd need a third computer to get data between the two.

Then there's digital cameras. I've got a Fuji FinePix 6900 Zoom, which I've had for a bit over two years now. It still takes really good photos, and continues to work extremely well, but I have a feeling I'll be replacing it because of obsolescence rather than it breaking.

I'm eyeing up Canon DSLRs, looking at new things they can do which my camera can't - new advances that simply hadn't been (affordably) available when my camera was designed. Long, low-noise exposures, high-capacity rechargeable AA batteries, higher resolution, and so on...

Technology advances ridiculously quickly. Yes, you can stick around with something prehistoric, but unless you have very limited needs you're likely to constantly lust after what's you're missing on a newer device. I'm not advocating disposable hardware, but at times I understand why things now are rarely (over-) engineered to last. By the time they break, they'll be dinosaurs surrounded by smaller, faster, cheaper descendants...

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[DrCash]

Why does society insist make making more and more degenerate retards? Like we need more ijits filling up web forums.

I thought that was the purpose of the Darwin Awards? To try and filter out the gene pool,... Perhaps the filter needs replacing again?

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[penguinoid]

Why does society insist make making more and more disposable crap?

Because at the rate (this) technology is advancing, you might as well consider all digital cameras disposable within a few years. Also, there are people who demand desposable cameras so they won't be afraid to take it on their mountain climbing trip.

This whole disposable movement just evolves us to making more stuff that has lower and lower quality.

Yes, because we all know that this 2 megapixel camera with LCD display is of extremely poor quality as compared to the 1 megapixel cameras that cost several times more. (Won't even bother to tell you that these are returnable, not disposable)

Hence the saying "They don't make 'em like they used to."

Reminds me of another old saying, "Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions." -- Ecclesiastes 7:10
it is not wise to ask such questions." People have been complaining about how good the old days were for 3000 years already. Maybe you should just accept progress and be happy with our improvements in medicine, travel, etc. (You can mod me down now, for mentioning the bible.)

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[gl4ss]

actually this device is going to be used more than one customer, they take the camera back and sell it again to the next customer - the point is that they don't send it to the landfill after first customer returns it.

back in the day you used to also have cheap cameras and then again the good cameras.

(also if making it "durable" costs 50 times more.. then whats the point.)

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Ced_Ex]

I believe there are portions of your reply that are similar to my copyrighted works. Therefore, please be advised that you will be receiving legal notification from my SCO lawyer to take down your work, or submit to financially compensating me.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[The_REAL_DZA]

Thanks for the chuckle (actually, I'll probably GMAO all day) at the idea of some knucklehead buying a "disposable" camera, taking pictures with it, and then chucking it into the trash instead of taking it back to the drugstore.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[stratjakt]

Cheap cameras have existed ever since Polaroid entered the scene.

Hell, people used to make their own pinhole boxes, and just buy the photographic plates to slide into the back. This is what I suggest for the OP.

Take your giant, wooden, inefficient, and ridiculous contraption to disneyland, and ask the guy in the Mickey suit to hold still for 30 minutes in the searing midday sun.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Zangief]

Sound familiar? Back in the day, ALL cameras were made of a metal body. You could blugeon someone to death with your camera and it would still be alright to take the murder scene photos afterwards. You can't do that with today's plastic cameras.

And not being able to kill someone with your camera is bad because...?

Buy a knife, hammer or gun. Most do-it-all devices don't do anything well at all.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that the iBook will probably break earlier than the ancient Toshiba.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Why make a $50 camera that will last for 50 years, when you can make a $10 camera that will last for 2 years?

Because then all the consumers (With almost 300 million people in the USA, lets figure there are 150 million consumers) will buy your $50 camera.

150,000,000 x $50 = $7,500,000,000, or 7 BILLION, 500 MILLION dollars.

Now, on the other hand, if you are one of 100 companies providing a cheap $10 camera, you would sell:

150,000,000 X $10 = $1,500,000,000
now, adjust for the fact you only get 1/100 the trade:
$1,500,000,000 / 100 = $15,000,000
Now, adjust for the fact you sell 25 cameras in 50 years, not just 1:
$15,000,000 X 25 = $375,000,000, or 375 million dollars. Still a LOT less than if you just made a durable product and cornered the market.

Does nobody teach economic theory (or even common sense) anymore?!?!

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[gcaseye6677]

Anyone who is buying a camera for non professional use wants the most features for the least amount of money. A modern camera with all the latest features with a hard metal case would cost a few grand. Would you pay this much for something to use to take vacation photos? When people complain that they don't make things like they used to, they fail to factor in the price difference. Cameras used to be a lot more expensive than they are now, factoring in inflation, and the same can be said for just about any device.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality is not always appropriate for products that will be obsoleted by tech advances within months.
Recyclabilty may be a better approach.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[be951]

Because then all the consumers (With almost 300 million people in the USA, lets figure there are 150 million consumers) will buy your $50 camera.

I don't know who allegedly taught you economic theory (or common sense) but maybe you should ask for your money back if they didn't teach you about a thing economists call a "demand curve" which relates demand to price. It is the simplest model, but it adequately demonstrates that not all consumers are willing to buy at the higher end of the price range.

Also, the profit (price minus cost) per unit is more important in determining how much money you actually have when you're done than sale price.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[theLOUDroom]

Because at the rate (this) technology is advancing, you might as well consider all digital cameras disposable within a few years.

Actually I see the complete opposite.

Digital camera resolutions are finally getting high enough so that OTHER things are starting to matter, like like lenses.

See, once your digital camera can shoot better than you can see, you don't really care how many megapixels it has.
I predict that within a few years, cameras will no longer be marketed based on megapixels but instead on lens quality and light sensitivity.
In a couple years, just about any decent camera is going to have all the megapixels you could want. You're going to care a lot less about 20 MP vs 30 MP than you will about a cheap, shitty plastic lens vs real quality optics.

You can already see the beginnings of this trend now with major companies like Sony and Panasonic buying lenses from Zeiss and Lecia to use on their miniDV cameras.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the saying "They don't make 'em like they used to."

That's true. Often, they make them better today. Cars have improved dramatically over the years. Tires, handling, performance, efficiency, safety, airbags, crumple zones, antilock brakes, traction control, etc. etc.

A new minivan is faster than many sports cars of the past.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

...a "demand curve" which relates demand to price.

Well, let's look at the options from the consumer's point of view:

Buy One device for $50 in 50 years. Total: $50

Buy 25 devices for $10 in 50 years. Total: $250

So, the obvious conclusion is that consumers will buy the one that is cheaper in the long run.

But, even if you assume most of the population is stupid and doesn't see the benefits, you still only need 1/20 (.05) of the population to buy you product to acheive the same sales as the companies who need 10%.

In short- it's CHEAPER for the consumer, and it makes MORE money for the business. What's not to like?

Oh, Right- It's Not The Way We Do Things

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[be951]

Well, let's look at the options from the consumer's point of view:
Buy One device for $50 in 50 years. Total: $50

Except for the fact that lasting 50 years (in reasonable working condition) does not imply 50 years of useful life. Better quality (of pictures, using the camera example) and new features can make a product of a few years ago less desirable to a user than the newer cheap product despite the fact that the cheap version will wear out or break long before the older one. You'd probably have a hard time finding products from 30, 40, 50 years ago that were "built to last forever" even though the people who bought them are relatively plentiful. There's a reason for that.

Buy 25 devices for $10 in 50 years. Total: $250

The fact that you can make a product that will last 50 years in no way implies that a consumer will want or need it for that length of time.

But, even if you assume most of the population is stupid and doesn't see the benefits, you still only need 1/20 (.05) of the population to buy you product to acheive the same sales as the companies who need 10%

Again, sales are not the same as profit. You are assuming they are at least proportionate, which is often not the case. Businesses usually want to maximize profit.

In short- it's CHEAPER for the consumer, and it makes MORE money for the business. What's not to like?

It isn't necessarily cheaper, and almost certainly doesn't make more money for the company.

What's not to like?

It probably does not meet the needs of most consumers. You're only considering two factors: durability/long life and price. Will consumers chose a smaller, lighter product even if it means it won't last as long? Obviously. And that makes it less expensive too? C'mon. And depending the specific product, there may be many other factors involved as well. Do lots of consumers make poor buying decisions because they are mainly price-driven? Sure. But whatever you're buying, you should consider what best meets your needs. Buying cheap is not always a bad choice.

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

lasting 50 years (in reasonable working condition) does not imply 50 years of useful life.

Um, yes it does.

Better quality (of pictures, using the camera example) and new features

Better quality? Pictures get printed. Printed at a MUCH lower resolution than todays current cameras take pictures at. Having a 1000-megapixel camera doesn't matter if you print a 3 x 5 out at 72-dpi.

As for New Features- a Camera is supposed to take pictures. Period. What new features can they add?

You'd probably have a hard time finding products from 30, 40, 50 years ago that were "built to last forever" even though the people who bought them are relatively plentiful

Houses. Cars. Buildings. Highways. Bridges.

And I didn't have a "hard time" coming up with those.

The fact that you can make a product that will last 50 years in no way implies that a consumer will want or need it for that length of time.

So, the can throw it out sooner. And buy a new one next year. MORE money for me!!

Buying cheap is not always a bad choice.

IT wastes money and fills up the landfills with waste.

How is this a "good" choice??

Re:Disposable = Poor Quality Crap

[be951]

ME: lasting 50 years (in reasonable working condition) does not imply 50 years of useful life.

AC: Um, yes it does.

No, the fact that a product still performs the function it was intended to has no bearing whatsoever on whether that function is desired or needed by the consumer (i.e. useful). Try again.

Better quality? Pictures get printed.

Yes. I'm not enough of a photography enthusiast to argue the relative photo quality of moderately priced cameras of 50 years ago compared to cheap cameras then and now. But the point does not apply to strictly to cameras. Today's cheap piece of crap is often better (quality and/or features) than yesterday's good quality product.

As for New Features- a Camera is supposed to take pictures. Period. What new features can they add?

Auto-focus, electronic zoom, automatic advance and film rewind, faster or variable aperture speed, built-in flash, etc....

Houses. Cars. Buildings. Highways. Bridges.

None of those are consumer products. Cars might make it as an extreme stretch. Try to stay focused.

ME: Buying cheap is not always a bad choice.

AC: IT wastes money and fills up the landfills with waste.

No, spending $50 on a product when a $10 one meets all your needs is a waste of money. If you're worried about landfills, recycle.

Peace of mind maybe?

[wastingtape]

$20 isn't so bad. I really wish the article would have mentioned how much storage space you got, or how many pictures it could take.

The one advantage i see to this is you worry less about your camera. I own a few digital cameras, one being a Sony F717. It was a bit on the pricier side when i bought it, and even has it's own leather bag. Problem is, when taking it to places like Disney land, i always worry about it, wondering if it's going to be ripped off or broken, or fly out of my hands on a ride. It's more of a burden than anything. A disposable digital camera, ah, if i breaks, only $20. :P The piece of mind might be worth it for these amusement-park "memory" type things.

Re:Peace of mind maybe?

[bhtooefr]

16MB (IIRC), 25 pictures.

Also, from what I've heard, it'll be $40 to $50 in Disneyland.

Just for the oops?

[grunt107]

This seems to be adding a previewer to existing photo capabilities, since the camera does not get used again.

Hopefully the processed cameras are just repackaged (with new cardboard shell). Otherwise, what a horrible way to increase trash output.

If it is pure throw-away why not trap the image, allow a Y/N selection, and open the iris to the film medium if 'Y'.

Re:Just for the oops?

[bhtooefr]

It's a DIGITAL camera. Flash memory. It's a plastic shell.

When you take a picture, you jab "Display" to see it. You can then choose to delete it. Display only shows the last picture, and delete, well, only deletes the displayed pic. There are a couple buttons inside the case that are believed to be forward and back buttons, though.

Not truely 'Disposable'...

[DragonPup]

After you get your prints, the memory is wiped and the unit is repackaged. The camera is then resold to the general public.

Re:Not truely 'Disposable'...

[cmackles]

That's why the Kodak reps always bitched at me to call them "one-time-use cameras".

Great...just what our environment needs.

[Savage Conan]

Am I the only one who is troubled with disposable cameras? The old kind were bad enough to our environment. What the hell are a bunch of LCD's gonna do to our environment. Besides why would you want a disposable when the real thing doesn't cost that much more.

Re:Great...just what our environment needs.

[Savage Conan]

One more thing...when something is made to be thrown away after a couple of uses, I think it would be a great idea to make that company have a decent recycling program for the items that just load our land fills.

Re:Great...just what our environment needs.

[Rob the Bold]

I suspect that the guts are re-sold a few times rather than being disposed of.

Re:Great...just what our environment needs.

[pclminion]

I think it would be a great idea to make that company have a decent recycling program for the items that just load our land fills.

You realize they would have to raise their prices in order to pay for such a program, right? Everything is a "great idea" when it doesn't cost anything.

How about we move away from disposable products, period? But this is offtopic, since the cameras are reused, not disposed of. The term "Disposable digital camera" is a complete fucking misnomer.

Re:Great...just what our environment needs.

[narcc]

Please think or RTFA (preferably both) before posting.

1) Even current "disposal" cameras are recycled (at least in part)

2) The article mentions that these cameras are ment to be "recycled" (think: rented) 6-8 times (probably much, much more than that.)

3) I want a $20 color LCD. Don't you?

How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

Is it possible to make something like this that's more trouble to hack than it's worth? How much work would it be?

Embedded CPU with built-in mask-programmed or fusible-link ROM. Encrypted images in the flash, with the key in the CPU's ROM so it can't be read out. It shouldn't be impossible to lock something like this down hard enough that it'd cost more than the value of a cheap digicam to unlock it.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[grahamsz]

Well obviously they could lock it down - they could devise their own interface spec, build a custom chip to put in the camera...

But in reality they decided to use off the shelf components to slash development costs and it's coming back to bite them.

The problem with anything like that is, that the reverse engineering will always be more trouble than it's worth to the person who does the engineering. If i put 10 hours of my time into it then i could have bought a few cheap digicams with the money i've lost in earnings.

But it's a challenge and if i had the time and didn't hate debugging usb so much i'd take a shot at it. And if one person suceeds then everybody can reap the benifits.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[morcheeba]

...until someone gets the key out of the development station (not a clean room solution), or someone with a SEM at some university reads the fuse links (not easy at all, but those university kids have a lot of time on their hands)

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Stavr0]

Is it possible to make something like this that's more trouble to hack than it's worth?

"Because it's there." -- Alpinist George Mallory when asked why he wanted to climb mount Everest.

Nope. That'd just rile up the tinkerers even more.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

until someone gets the key out of the development station

Using non-symmetrical encryption would prevent that, and having multiple keys in unmarked batches would mean trying a published key on multiple cameras until you found one that worked.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

they decided to use off the shelf components to slash development costs

You sure they couldn't make it effectively uncrackable with off-the-shelf components? CPUs with on-chip ROMs have tiny amounts of ROM, but you'd only need a tiny on-chip ROM to hold the key and the crypto code... the rest of the firmware and RAM could be external. Even if all the interfaces are standard, if you have to replace the CPU and firmware to hack the camera that'd pretty much eliminate the incentive.

Locking it up enough to keep people who don't want to crack the camera open out is even easier... that's just a matter of software.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[morcheeba]

I was assuming the camera had the data's public key, and the developer had the private key -- that's non-symetric, right?

Multiple camera batches would make it far more difficult to do without getting the master private key list.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[pclminion]

Is it possible to make something like this that's more trouble to hack than it's worth?

Even if they did, I can still take advantage of the system by buying thousands of cameras, disassembling them and selling the parts at a profit.

This business model is completely screwy, and won't last much longer. They'll have to move to a true renting model where you are required to return the camera.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[grahamsz]

It's true that they could place a key in a ROM area on the CPU, but that would require a CPU with enough space cycles to perform encryption and decryption.

You'd either have to store the images unencrypted on the flash and encrypt the transfers, or you'd have to encrypt them on capture and decrypt them each time you try to review one.

I know nothing about that particular smal chip, but i'm sure it's general purpose CPU isn't all that fast. Most cheap USB controllers use some sort of FPGA arrangement to do bulk transfers, which of course limits your encryption choices further.

Of course if there is an encryption key in there then you have to somehow stop the employees at every Big Print Central location in the US from copying it off the hard disk or leaking their latest software update CD....

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

I was assuming the camera had the data's public key, and the developer had the private key

The distinction between the private and public key is a matter of which one you need to keep secret. But that's a good point, you don't really need to keep the key in the camera secret at all, since you can't use it to decrypt the images... and being able to create your own encrypted images is worthless. That helps... you don't need to keep the crypto in the camera locked down that tightly.

That does mean that the list of keys would be worth stealing, but they could reprogram the cameras when they're refurbished so any list would only work on old stock.

They also don't need to load the key into the development station until the camera's brought in. It could download the key from a dialup server than. The store has to have a phone line for dialout anyway for card purchases.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

disassembling them and selling the parts at a profit

How much of a profit? The parts might *cost* as much as $100 to buy in small quantity, but I doubt it, and apart from the LCD they have pretty much zero resale value. Unless the LCD is in really tight supply, if you can get 1/2 its original value as a desoldered "pull" you're doing really well.

So, how much is the LCD worth? Enough to make this kind of piracy profitable?

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

that would require a CPU with enough space cycles to perform encryption

What about a scheme where it generates a few hundred bits of cryptographic hash on each boot (hash that can be regenerated by the development station), and just xor the image with that when it writes it to flash?

decrypt them each time you try to review one

Save an unencrypted low resolution thumbnail that isn't worth hacking.

stop the employees at every Big Print Central location in the US

Give each batch of cameras a different key, and download the key over a modem when you get a camera in that you don't have a copy of the key for.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[pclminion]

How much of a profit? The parts might *cost* as much as $100 to buy in small quantity, but I doubt it, and apart from the LCD they have pretty much zero resale value.

Well, think about what's in there: LCD, maybe $20 right there. CCD, perhaps another $20, but the market for CCD arrays is small, restricted to hobbyists, etc. Focusing mechanism, you might have a $3 servo in there. Lenses, another $5 maybe. Power regulator, another couple bucks. The battery alone is probably worth a couple bucks. 64 megabytes of nonvolatile storage has got to be worth at least a few bucks, maybe $10.

(And I'm talking about prices you might fetch on Ebay, not prices from the manufacturer, which would be higher.)

I think you underestimate the market for loose electronic parts :-)

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

I think you're significantly overestimating what's in there. Here's what's in the box: 8M RAM, 16M NAND flash, LCD, SMaL CCD, fixed focus lens, two alkaline batteries, and a bunch of surface-mounted components that are worth approximately zip.

Better cameras retail for under $100, so the total value of the parts in this one, new, can't be more than $40-$50. You really think there's anything worth more than a buck or two other than the LCD? I can't see there being much profit in eBaying these, especially after people start posting where you can get the bits cheaper yourself.

I'm sure individual tinkerers will buy a few, but I can't imagine that's going to be enough to hurt them.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you underestimate the market for loose electronic parts :-)

You yourself say that "the market for CCD arrays is small". So one assumption being made is that you would actually sucessfully sell all the components you had. Second, even if you managed to sell off all the pieces for ~$60 (tripling your investment), how long is it taking you to actually pull all these pieces, to put up the ad's on ebay, to box, ship. You end up making what, maybe $30/hr max, again, assuming you can sell all the parts for the amounts mentioned (and with ebay, this is the best case scenario since you will either sell for less or not be able to sell the parts at all).

I don't really see a large market for the parts here. And after the first several, I see the market saturating pretty quickly. Remember, these are "used" parts, so while the price brand new from a manuf. might be higher, really you're competing against other used merchandise.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[morcheeba]

good ideas! I thought that the database of unique keys would tighten up security quite a bit, but it's a cost-benefit analysis. The cost of updating the machines, plus a 1-800 toll charge, plus infrastructure may not be worth it. Then, there are always other avenues to hack, but I've been keeping those to myself because I don't want to do their work for them.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Fire Dragon]

I would assume that cost of making the camera unhackable would be a lot greater than the lost amount of cameras being used by hackers for their own purposes. They are planning to sell 500.000 units this year(they propably counted also the resells of returned ones), so loosing few thousend units is not that much.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

The cost of updating the machines, plus a 1-800 toll charge, plus infrastructure may not be worth it.

Remember, they are often making a modem dialout call already when you buy the camera to confirm your credit/ATM card. And you can probably cache keys for days or week without significantly compromising them if the *developer* has even minimal security.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Fizzl]

It would be theoretically easy to make it unhackable.
Just encrypt the pictures with some public key algorithm, and only the printing machines the stores own would have the private key.

In reality, I'm sure there is not enough oomph in the cheap kit to implement it.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

Generate a few hundred random bits and encrypt them with your public key and store that on the card. Then xor the pictures with those bits. You only have to do the public key algorithm when you're booted, and can run a cute animation while it's going on to bluff the punter.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

That's a good point. I was assuming that people's fears of massive opportunism (like the stuff that doomed the iOpener and the Cuecat) were real. This may actually be a non-issue.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Fire Dragon]

It seems like a massive opportunism when you read post on /. , but seriously, we are not the only ones being targeted as potential customers.
If half of /. intends to do something it doesn't mean that half of rest of the people would act the same.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[alienw]

Ummm... HELLO? If you make the firmware external, then it's rather easy to reflash it with firmware that doesn't encrypt anything. Of course, if the firmware is encrypted, you're kind of screwed. And besides, who wants to use it as a camera when it's a total piece of shit? I'd rip out the well-documented LCD module and use it in my own projects.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[alienw]

What about a scheme where it generates a few hundred bits of cryptographic hash on each boot (hash that can be regenerated by the development station), and just xor the image with that when it writes it to flash?

Ever hear of known plaintext attacks?

Give each batch of cameras a different key, and download the key over a modem when you get a camera in that you don't have a copy of the key for.

Too much hassle, don't you think?

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

Ever hear of known plaintext attacks?

How do you get a known plaintext to make the attack with, since the hash only exists in RAM until you turn the camera off and a new one is generated the next time you turn it on...

Too much hassle, don't you think?

Whether it's too much hassle for the guy behind the counter to occasionally wait an extra 30 seconds for the 'developer' to download the key because it hasn't seen the camera before, well, that depends on how many people like you who just rip out the LCD for their own projects there are...

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[BillX]

And, being the raving geniuses that they are, they store the on-camera key on a little serial EEPROM just like network card makers and everyone else use for unique identifiers ('93C46...), and the hacker cuts its clock pin to set the key to 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00.... :-)

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[shepd]

>But that's a good point, you don't really need to keep the key in the camera secret at all, since you can't use it to decrypt the images...

Well, that puts that idea out of the realm of this camera. The LCD lets you check your photography, so we can be sure that any encryption done on this camera (if it is) will be decryptable on the same camera.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

The LCD lets you check your photography, so [the pictures must be] decryptable on the same camera.

Not if it saves a lo-res thumbnail just for the LCD.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[bhtooefr]

However, the camera could make TWO images - the encrypted photo, and a non-encrypted thumbnail. Also, since only the last image is displayed, there only needs to be one thumbnail.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[grahamsz]

If the key is generated when the camera is turned on then how will it be exchanged with the host?

Anwyay the first 128 bits of a jpeg file should be guessable - possibly more. Once you've got that, a known plaintext attack is trivial.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

The camera has a public key. It generates a random string of bits and encrypts it with the public key. When it takes an image it stores the encrypted vector, a thumbnail of the image for the LCD, and the image encrypted using a computationally simple algorithm by the string of bits.

JPEG encoding is moderately compute-intensive by itself, so the processor can't be THAT limited if it's doing it. And it doesn't need to create a complete legal JPEG file anyway with the JFIF prologue and everything... the only thing that's going to be reading it is the complementary software in the developer.

And it can gen up a new vector and its encrypted copy whenever it has enough time, so there wouldn't need to be more than a couple of images using the same one.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[Eil]

Encrypted images in the flash, with the key in the CPU's ROM so it can't be read out.

Actually, it would be a lot harder to break with public key encryption. All they need to do is encrypt each picture taken with the public key before it gets stored in the flash memory. You can download the pictures off the camera all you want, but you won't be able to view a single pixel without the developer's private key. They don't even need to make it hard to get the picture out in that case. Hell, they could even put a USB plug right on the side of the thing so they don't have to disassemble it for processing. They could give the cameras away for free and let people keep them as long as they want. To get the pictures out, they could take them to the developer for prints. For digital copies, upload them to the web and have them processed in seconds online for something like $0.05 a shot.

Whoops, I just stumbled across a really nifty business model and posted it in public. Oh well, consider it a gift. Just drop me a postcard when you get rich. The biggest downfall would be the encryption chip, as that alone would probably take up the bulk of the cost of the camera.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[grahamsz]

The proccessor doesn't normally do JPEG encoding.. there will be a custom DSP which will be FAR more capable.

In fact look at the block diagram for the original Dakota Disposable...

http://files.gentlenews.com/pdf/spca504bv01.pdf (Figure 4.1)

The CPU isn't on the main datapath and wont be able to do any sort of high speed processing. In fact, the CPU is a 8032 with 4k of RAM - i had a more powerful system in '84. You are going to be REALLY struggling to do any sort of encryption in such a limited environment.

Now i'm not saying your suggestion is technically impossible, i'm just saying that it's not very condusive to the way current off-the-shelf componets are designed.

Doing a custom silicon design for this camera would probably add hundreds of thousands to the development costs, and it's hard to recoup that through increased sales.

Re:How to make a digicam unhackable?

[argent]

It may not be conducive to the way the OTS components they're currently using are designed, but there are OTS components that they could use that *are* capable of doing the job. Even the five year old Dragonball can do RSA and DES fast enough for realtime SSL, and that's available for about six bucks in quantity and already used in gadgets with about the same cost as this camera's uncrippled twins.

A redesign would be necessary, but you shouldn't need to make any custom silicon.

And given the fact that other hackable products like the Cuecat and the iOpener folded, and the way game console manufacturers keep changing their designs to keep people from making unauthorised upgrades, it seems worthwhile to speculate about how this device might be improved to avoid the same problems.

How much memory?

[Ianoo]

It doesn't mention how much memory is inside one of these things. Presumably, it could easily be enough for a couple of hundred 2MP pictures. If this is the case, combined with the preview/review LCD (one of the biggest advantages of digicams when on the road, IMHO), it could certainly be successful.

Re:How much memory?

[VoidWraith]

128M. From the last link.

Re:How much memory?

[Ianoo]

I must have missed that.

Re:How much memory?

[bhtooefr]

16MB. Just to prevent any confusion, as 128Mb is technically right, but since we're used to referring to flash size in megabytes, not megabits... (the manufacturers refer to it in megabits)

Oh, and it's 25 pictures.

Won't someone mind the landfills...

[Wynken de Word]

...or the third-world slums where this senseless 1st-world waste is gonna end up? What I'd really like to know is which creates more waste: manufacturing traditional film and then developing it, (i.e. two-stages of chemical production, film cansiters, etc.), or manufacturing a digitial camera (lots of chemical waste) but no development waste (except of course the computer you need to upgrade to edit a 10 megapixel image, and then you buy a 12 MP camera next year, etc.).

Re:Won't someone mind the landfills...

[wastingtape]

I'd assume you'd have to give the camera to the processing place in order to get your pictures. Mabye they'll ship them back to the factory for refurbushing?

Re:Won't someone mind the landfills...

[Russ Nelson]

Canada has plenty of room for landfills. What are you worried about?
-russ
p.s. are you really so transparently stupid as to think that a "Disposable" camera is really disposed of after a single use?

Re:Won't someone mind the landfills...

[brightloudnoise]

actually we ship a lot of our garbage to michigan thanks

Re:Won't someone mind the landfills...

[shepd]

Quick. Watch the Penn and Teller episode on what you're talking about now (specifically, season 2, episode 5).

Did you know all of the garbage prodced in the US in the next 1,000 years would fit in (about) a 35 x 35 sq mi field at 200 ft high? That's 1,225 sq mi of area, or 0.03% of US owned land (not including seas). I can think of VERY FEW items that are *less* important than landfills filling up the US (that will take some billions of years to happen, give or take a few million). I have a good idea that in the year 1,000,000,000 we'll be way more worried about the sun exploding earth than about landfills. Just my guess.

BTW: The person who wrote the scaremongering EPA report is on record (video tape) as explaining that he really didn't mean to make such a big deal out of it, that there really isn't much problem when it comes to landfills and the US.

You should really watch the show. I think you would enjoy it.

how about you give a reason why it's crappy then?

[gl4ss]

huh? why exactly is it a _bad_ idea, if they just can make it profitable?

ever used crappy disposable cameras? the worst thing about them is that a lot of the pictures you take turn out as total crap. a preview screen on them would be a great improvement.

it's a replacement for MEGACRAPPYSHIT disposable cameras, and a lot of folk visiting disneyworld or whatever would like one of these. it's cheap for them(customers), so they don't have to have even any stress about if it breaks in the rides or if they lose it and yet they can take better pictures than with a normal disposable one.

20$ for a rent of a 2mpix camera and service to get the pics on a cd isn't _that_ bad at amusementparks & etc..

I just want the LCD

[Trigun]

Forget the 2megapixel camera, I want cheap LCD's.
Hopefully the hardware gurus recycle all of the parts, so we can have a webcam, a display, and a memory stick, all for the low low price of $20.00

Re:I just want the LCD

[Launch]

Here is the whitesheet on the LCD, should be very easy to integrate with other projects.

Re:I just want the LCD

[Cpt_Kirks]

Here is the whitesheet on the LCD, should be very easy to integrate with other projects.

Where?

It's the missing link!

I want the LCD too.
Dirt cheap HMD, anyone?
A tiny color screen for my Tricorder.
Micro pr0n!
A cool watch.
The possibilities may not be endless, but there are a lot of them.

Re:I just want the LCD

[Launch]

DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/%7Edisplaze/PDF/L CD /AU%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf

and just for fun:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/08/18/bear.b eer.re ut/index.html

Re:I just want the LCD

[jaaron]

Ummmm...

Not Found

The requested URL /~displaze/PDF/LCD /AU Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf was not found on this server.

Apache/1.3.29 Server at homepages.nildram.co.uk Port 80

Re:I just want the LCD

[jaaron]

Forget the 2megapixel camera, I want cheap LCD's.

Seriously. I'd love to see some cool PC case mods using this. :)

Re:I just want the LCD

[Excelsior]

This just shows me how fictional Star Trek really is. Starfleet uses tiny portable computers with an LCD to save the universe from certain doom. But you've just proven that what people will really use them for is to flip through pictures of Pam Anderson while sitting on the crapper without having to pay for Playboy.

Re:I just want the LCD

[Trigun]

Not exactly with these, but a 6" LCD in one's case has been done, and it is one of the most impressive mods I've seen. Especially the one in the case side.

Re:I just want the LCD

[BrianH]

Slashdot inserts a space into the URL. Take it out and the link will work fine.

It'll never work.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Face it, 99% of the digital cameras out there are sold for the recording of the owners' bedroom adventures. Nobody's going to pick one of these cameras up when they realize that Betty Lou Bluehair down at the photo counter at Wal-Mart will get to see them rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.

Re:It'll never work.

[aredubya74]

...rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.

You can get a fat guy in a squirrel suit shipped from Japan? Wow, what will J-List think of next?

Re:It'll never work.

[smooth wombat]

to see them rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.

You must be a fan of CSI.

P.S. For those that don't know, here is what I'm talking about.

Re:It'll never work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody's going to pick one of these cameras up when they realize that Betty Lou Bluehair down at the photo counter at Wal-Mart will get to see them rubbing up against some fat guy in a squirrel suit he had shipped over from Japan.

Hey, you've got my camera! I lost it last week while going to get the pictures developed. I'll send you my shipping address and some cash for returning it safely... ummm, perhaps not, you can keep the camera.

Re:It'll never work.

[tehcyder]

So you're the one who copied my pix and put them on Usenet. Bastard.

Brain-dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it's a recyclable camera, not a disposable. You hand it to the film processor who get the photos from the memory to print, and "sells" it again to the next customer. You're essentially just renting the camera. Now renting makes sense for very expensive things that people won't use very often. Digital camera's aren't. You can get a decent 2MP Canon for less than $120, who in their right mind would buy this? Ok, maybe for the few occasions where you forgot your camera. But with more camera's integrated in phones, that market will also dry up pretty soon.

Re:Brain-dead

[narcc]

But with more camera's integrated in phones, that market will also dry up pretty soon.

You must mean the market for low-res, low-color, grainy images.

Re:Brain-dead

[wastingtape]

don't forget "un-printable" in that descriptor list.

(this was my exact reaction too)

Re:Brain-dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but girls are more willing to take their clothes off in front of a camera for you. The camera-phone has gotten me so many fun pictures of girls sans clothing. Mmmm... I love the cameraphone.

Re:Brain-dead

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The same people who are buying VHS tapes at walmart, will use this.

Re:Brain-dead

[Anonymous Coward]

But with more camera's integrated in phones

Dude, if you don't know how to punctuate correctly, at least be consistent.

Re:Brain-dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think these disposables will be much better than what the current phone cameras can do, scroll to the bottom on this forum for some examples. And you haven't seen photos taken on Casio's new 3.2MP phone camera yet. Granted, they're still expensive now, but costs will come down in a few years.

Batteries

[StevenHenderson]

No mention of batteries! They can't expect Joe Consumer to know how much power an LCD eats, and therefore, AA's are NOT going to be enough. Also, I doubt that $20 includes any batteries...yet another couple bucks onto the price.

Re:Batteries

[james_shoemaker]

Then don't use the LCD to frame the picture, just to get a quick view of it to decide if it is worth keeping, I use that mode on my kodak and am still on the original battery after almost a year of shooting.

James

Re:Batteries

[StevenHenderson]

Yes, but I am guessing that you have rechargeable batteries of some sort. My Kodak has a LiIon battery that lasts FOREVER, but also cost a fortune. My old Olympus took AAs and ate them like an old Sega Gamegear. 8 hours TOPS.

Re:Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Many digicams today come with LCD and require only 2 AA cell batts, and these aren't meant to last a lifetime-- they're for picking up on vacation and sending in for prints afterward.

The developer can stick new rechargables in when they recycle the camera.

Re:Batteries

[james_shoemaker]

If it is rechargable I have never recharged it. I just put it in the camera and have never connected any charger unless the USB charges it, and I haven't left it connected to USB long enough to recharge at the current that USB can provide.

James

Re:Batteries

[StevenHenderson]

Fair enough. As far as I know few, if any, digital cams charge over USB. As it stands, though, LiIons or NiMHs can provide sustained amts of current for longer times than alkalines. MUCH longer.

Re:Batteries

[bhtooefr]

It actually only lets you use the LCD to see how many pics are remaining, learn how to use it, or review/throw away the LAST picture you took (and deleting that pic doesn't let you go back, so deleting 24 doesn't let you review/delete 23, or so I've heard). It's not on all the time.

hurray...

[bicho]

yeah, disposable cameras with lcds
yay! hurray for pollution!

Hardware hackers rejoice!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

A $20 color LCD for all your cool projects!

Re:Hardware hackers rejoice!

[t_allardyce]

Not only that but the camera bit aswell! you could use it for bullet time or get it to do video (mass home CCTV network?) and also a memory!

Re:Hardware hackers rejoice!

[pclminion]

If the individual parts of the camera are collectively worth significantly more than $20 (which is probably the case), I think you could make a lucrative business out of buying these cameras and parting them out on Ebay.

Eventually, this would probably force the market into a true renting model where you have to return the camera.

Re:Hardware hackers rejoice!

[julesh]

I think you could make a lucrative business out of buying these cameras and parting them out on Ebay.

Eventually, this would probably force the market into a true renting model where you have to return the camera.

No, it would force the manufacturer to complain to Ebay, who, given past performance, would immediately cancel all outstanding auctions for any part that is used in the camera, whether it came from one or not.

Not a bad move

[JOhn-E G]

This looks cool, not that I would use it as I have a digital camera that I am happy with already, but the retailers can reuse the cameras making it a little cheaper for them, and the disposable camera market seems to do pretty well. I think they can replace the disposable 35mm cameras with these fairly well. However as an end users more than maybe 7-8 uses of this becomes pointless as you can get your own one for that much. Though if they are hacked and they turn into $20 digital cameras then I think the company will have to go back to the drawing board. It will be interesting to see if these become mainstream soon or not.

Relax! They're not really "disposable"

[Dzimas]

Even with amazingly inexpensive Chinese labour, you can't make a camera with LCD panel for $12 (the probably wholesale cost to the shop). Instead, they "refurb" and resell the camera to the next person - even if they replace the plastic case and battery, it'll probably only cost a couple of dollars to do. SO, they're amortizing the cost over a longer expected life-span. I wonder how many times these will get recycled. And I wonder how they work after being tossed around at a dozen or so frat parties...

Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

While digital camers are great for features and useability you still cannot beat 35mm film for quality.

My college course in photography demands students have a 35mm camera, no digital allowed. And thats for a pretty good reason as well.

Especially for the price i'd rather have a 35mm disposable than a digital the quality will always be so much better.

Re:Quality

[narcc]

... i'd rather have a 35mm disposable than a digital the quality will always be so much better.

That's not exactly true

Re:Quality

[nuggz]

if you're printing 8 1/2 x 11 or smaller, there is no effetive difference.
Many people think this is a 'big enlargement'.

Disposable cameras have such a terrible lens all your pictures will be crap anyway.

I like my elan, I use my fuji digital.

My PV2 page

[morcheeba]

I did the original hack on the old camera, and, of course, I'm working on the new one... here's my web page on it.

The next step is a ROM dump -- then we can see if there is any code in the flash memory, or if it's stored on the ASIC. I suspect that there is a bootloader on the ASIC and the bulk of the code (certainly the pre-programmed images) is on the flash. Don't know if it's encrypted or scrambled yet.

We're still working on the resolution of the sensor. I read the part number last night, but didn't return any google hits. We can't really rely on the size of the pictures one would get back from processing because, in the past, they've upscaled it.

guarantee it won't be $20 at Disney

[Zed2K]

They'll mark it up and charge $30 for it to make a larger profit.

Why?

[adamh526]

Why would anyone want this when you need to bring it to the store for processing? One of the selling points of digital cameras is that you can edit, print, etc your pictures from the comfort of your home. How about software that allows you to dump pictures from the camera once before it formats its internal disk?

I beg to differ

[Brento]

The first disposable digital camera was the SiPix Blink I got for $50 from Fry's. After using it, you want to throw it away even if you have the receipt, because you want to prevent any other human being from undergoing the sheer torture. I looked at the $50 as a charity expense.

Re:I beg to differ

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I bought a SiPix BlinkII from Fry's for $30.

Yeah, it's crap, but it makes a decent webcam with the provided USB cable, and the included movie editing software works great on movies from my Olympus!

potentially dumb question

[enrico_suave]

that I should google first but... I haven't had my quota for abuse today:

Has anyone done any cool hardware hacks to utlize a digital camera's LCD for other purposes? (thinking case mod, mp3 jukebox (like a real jukebox (friend's site), not an ipod) display.

my understanding that trying to use an old laptop's LCD (separate from the laptop) is near unpossible or not worth the effort...

*shrug* some sort of dimented light bulb went off when I saw the post...

e.

Re:potentially dumb question

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

No, but someone figured out how to hook up a PSOne LCD to a PC:

http://bit-tech.net/article/136/

The trifecta...

[Yardboy]

We have digital camera phones, we have disposable phones, now we have disposable digital cameras...next up, disposable digital camera phones - take an uninteresting picture of your cat, send it to someone you don't really like that much anyway, call them to confirm they got it, and throw the whole thing away before they answer.

Careful! It's not really 2 Megapixel

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the fine print on the box it's "Interpolated" to 2 Megapixel.

Don't expect it to look better than the 1.2 Megapixel camera it really is.

Re:Careful! It's not really 2 Megapixel

[mgcarley]

I figured that once cameras of equivalent resolution got to about ~US$20-$40, it would be about time I replaced my old Sony PSCP20 1.3MP Digicam.

Now have two nice 6 & 8MP ones - a Sony DSCF828 and a Nikon D70 - one for business and one for personal use.

Still use the old 1.3MP camera for like, set-up shots and taking to parties and stuff...

I dont get it

[mtrupe]

What the hell is the point of a disposable digital camera? Are people that stupid?

I suppose they are--- people are still wasting their money on Polaroids.

Re:I dont get it

[narcc]

What the hell is the point of a disposable digital camera?

*Dirt Cheap* color LCD with bonus CCD

Ever price LCDs? Yeah, It'll be sweetest electronics purchase you'll ever make (and at the local drug store no less!)

Re:I dont get it

[mtrupe]

Ok- maybe its good for hacking, but for use as a camera, I don't get it.

A) The whole point of digital is to eliminate the need for development and taking something in to the drug store.
B) The quality probably sucks

Re:I dont get it

[narcc]

but for use as a camera, I don't get it.

That's for the people who are completely computer illiterate (thats most 'em).

I hear things all the time like: "When I head south this winter, I'll need to have my email address changed." (From a woman who though that her email address was somehow tied to her telephone #)

Digital cameras cause alot of confusion: "If I get a digital camera that means I can use it for email but not get pictures right?" (That disconnected statement provides alot of insight into how people view digital photography.)

I also hear alot of "My friend has a digital camera and he/she says [Insert mind virus here]"

You really want to know what disposable digital is good for? Cheating the masses out of $20 bucks. Only they don't believe, nor can they understand how they're being cheated!

I hope that made sense...(I'm not using the preview button!)

Re:I dont get it

[BarryNorton]

What the hell is the point of a disposable digital camera?

Well one use (I could sell these by the dozen in the UK) is for nightclubs... you want the convenience of digital (instant review, quick uploading the morning after) but don't want to have hundreds of quids worth of equipment lost, stolen, trampled or dropped in a beer!

Hacking

[ptelligence]

They're banking on the dough that they'll get from recycling these things and selling the same camera over and over again for $19.99 a pop. That's a lot to pay for one set of prints. (especially 2 megapixels with a poor zoom) It seems to me like it's just a ploy to get the digital camera generation to spend money at your local drug store's photo lab.

I'm sure these things will be hacked and that will drive sales, but that hacking will kill their revenue stream which is banking on selling them 6-8 times over. I wouldn't be suprised if they put some type of non-tampering clause in with the packaging or stored the pics in some proprietary format. Of course that won't stop anybody from hacking it, but then how do I get the pics to my computer?

By the time these things become popular they'll be obsolete. Being bought out by Kodak (or whomever) is probably the best thing that could happen to these guys.

Disposable != One-time use

[Anonymous Coward]

Another unfortunately titled /. article leading to hundreds of pointless conversations by people who do not RTFA. I blame /. editors more than /. readers for this one though.

The cameras are meant to be used once and returned to a printing facility, whereby the images are off-loaded and then the camera itself is put back into circulation.

Re:Disposable != One-time use

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need even need to RTFA. If you saw the price and stop to think for 2 seconds before posting, you would realize that you're not buying but renting the camera's.

Environmental disaster in the making

[FFFish]

LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.

The same goes for CCDs and the electronic guts.

How the fuck can anyone conceive this as a good idea? What an utter disregard for the inheritance of our children!

That said, I want one, just to hack. But, shit, surely we humans have *got* to get a clue one of these days.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[t_allardyce]

Er i dont think they mean disposable like that - you take it back to the shop, they give you your prints/cd and the next customer gets the same camera? ofcourse it also means a cheap $20 camera for anyone whos interested in hacking it..

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[pclminion]

Uh... You don't chuck the camera in the trash when you're done with it. How the hell would you get the pictures off it?!

You take it to the shop, where they download the pictures, repackage the camera and send it out for another use. "Disposable" is largely a misnomer.

Now, straighten your panties.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

OK! Here are my "words"

You should be modded to -10000 as "MENTALLY RETARDED". or ULTRA GAY

100% of this camera will be REUSED for the next customer. DUH!

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[narcc]

LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.

The same goes for CCDs and the electronic guts.

I'm trying really hard not to troll here -- but whats with this AFAIK? You either Know or you Don't Know.

As for this "How the fuck ..." nonsense try using you head. 1) You're not sure if the manufacture of this product hurts the environment 2) current "disposable" cameras are already recycled 3) Do you honestly believe that a company can produce a digital camera w/ a fancy LCD and sell it for $20 profitably?

Hell, if I could produce a camera that cheap, I'd price it $40 clams higher and sell it as a regular digital. I'd make one helluva margin and undercut everyone else.

Yeah, I'd be willing to bet that they're going to "recycle" these using (as many other posters have also suggested) a "rental" type business model.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[stratjakt]

Your computer was manufactured with the same processes.

So, why are you using a computer, and not thinking of the children?

BTW, fab processes get ever more environmentally friendly, practically daily. There's no real reason for toxic runoff, and much of it has been reduced or stopped. There are emerging, and some existing, truly "green" techniques for fabbing electronics. So don't get so upset.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[Breakerofthings]

Shit. I tried, and failed. Sorry.

I couldn't find "-1: Fucking Moron" either.

My bad.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[FFFish]

Jesus Christ, I do need to drink my coffee in the morning. Talk about a complete brainfart.

I'd like to thank the first responder for being sensible and polite.

Fuck the rest of you.

Re:Environmental disaster in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey meta-mods! You fuckheads are idiots. This guy is meta-funny. Just what kind of an idiot are you that you meta-mod my funny +1 rating as UNFAIR?

The humor too subtle for you is it? Obviously I wasn't the only one to think he was funny since he did get at least a +2 funny. So next time you don't get the joke, just shut the fuck up and leave the meta-mod as neutral. Flaming dickweed.

Re:Disposable = Cheaper for Consumers

[rost0031]

I disagree. I, for one, don't use a camera often. It's cheaper for me to just use a disposable camera once in a while for $20 instead of purchasing a $200 equivalent. In addition to that, the technology behind digital cameras is upgraded almost on a weekly basis. When you purchase one of the top of the line cameras, you are outdated by the end of the 2 month period or so. As far as the old-school metal quality cameras are concerned, do you happen to remember the price of those things? There was a reason for the high price tag - they were well constructed. While the overall quality was higher, it was fairly useless. Unless, like you say you want to bludgeon someone to death with it, it doesn't need to be used as a hammer. There are perfectly good hammers for that. If you treat you fragile electronics nicely, they will (usually) treat you nicely. Besides, how do you convice someone to buy a new camera every year or two, when you built them to last for life? :)

Prints and Batteries included?

[TEMM]

For 20 bucks US the batteries and a set of prints are probably included. I mean i can pick up a film camera for 5 bucks CAD that includes a set of single prints. The poster says it includes a photo cd but i wouldnt be suprised it it included a set of prints as well. Also I have yet to find a disposable/recyclable camera that DOESNT come with batteries

Why are digital cameras disposable at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal cameras are disposable because locking the film into the case creates a necessity for single-use.

Why on earth is any digital camera disposable? What part NEEDS to be replaced in order for the machine to be used again?

Re:Why are digital cameras disposable at all?

[toddestan]

Why on earth is any digital camera disposable? What part NEEDS to be replaced in order for the machine to be used again?

Batteries?

Re:cool....nah

[Traa]

It is not anywhere near as good a deal as you might think. The 2 megapixel sensor (CMOS I bet, from either Micron, Omnivision or the likes) are going to be flooding the market at about $5~$8 in bulk this year. This technology is booming and going straight for commodity prices. The lens technology is desperatly trying to catch up but is still lacking. Trust me that the lens on this thing is tiny and crappy. Good enough for a quicky vacation pic, but not good enough to replace a regular (sub)$300 digital camera. All the other parts are trivial....except the LCD. Can someone tell me how they managed to get a super cheap LCD in there?

More "rentable" than disposable

[Gumber]

Why do people insist on calling these cameras disposable?

The business model is basically to rent them out for a rather steep $20, which gets you use of the camera until you fill the on-board memory and then a CD with your images after.

My guess is that the retailers have a minimal markup on the camera with the expectation that they will make their money doing digital prints.

The manufacturer makes their money by being able to rent the same camera multiple times.

Certainly some of the cameras will be "lost" to hackers, but this is a cost of doing business and is probably far cheaper than creating and inforcing some sort of deposit mechanism since, for the average user, the "deposit" is the precious memories stored on the camera that they can only get back by returning the camera.

If "hacking" of the cameras become widespread, then one can expect that the company will either take action or go out of business.

If they take action, there will no doubt be much grousing among the slashdot community, but really, what right does a parasite have to complain when the host its bleeding dry seems to extingish it? Better to keep a low profile.

Re:More "rentable" than disposable

[Gumber]

should be "seeks to extinguish it"

shoulda used preview

Re:More "rentable" than disposable

[Anonymous Coward]

The rich can afford to dispose, the poor can only afford to rent. That's why disposable sounds better than rentable.

Re:More "rentable" than disposable

[Gumber]

I agree from a positioning/marketing point of view. But I think a front page post should make the distinction clear.

Cheap camera for hazardous events

[TEMM]

I would not be opposed to buying a 20$ digital camera to take with me on say a pub crawl, or to a paintball game or other sort of hazardous-to-technology event, rather than take a 100-500$ digital camera. If a 20$ camera gets broken its not a big deal all you are out is a few pictures and a couple bucks.

Stop the redundancy!

[-acksaw]

Please, it's just LCD. Liquid Crystal Display Display is redundant. It's like when gas stations advertise an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) Machine inside. One day people will decide to abbreviate it as ATMM, and the cycle will continue until ATM's are refered to as ATMMMMMMMMMMMMMM . . .

So, please stop the redundancy.

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[pclminion]

Help! I can't punch my PIN number into this ATM machine! The LCD display is broken.

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[smooth wombat]

While we're at it you might as well throw in NIC card.

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[stratjakt]

Will it be compatible with my BIOS system and VGA adapter? I use a DOS system, and the FAT table is corrupted. Hopefully it plugs into the PCI interface, because I have no free ISA adapters.

I also hate the GNAA association and the CLIT trolls.

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[kliment]

I always thought that was network interface controller... guess all my networking books are now outdated...ah well...

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[rixster]

I was going to write that...
mods - its funny write ?

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[mangu]

Can you use the LCD display to check the PAM modules?

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[bhtooefr]

ISA = Industry Standard ARCHITECTURE, not Adaptor. I don't even know HOW you could put adaptor in there...

Now, back onto the jokes...

All I know is that I ditched an OS built on NT Technology a LONG time ago, and that my CPU unit is too old. Oh, yeah, and I don't have enough RAM memory. I've got two HDD drives, though, and an FDD drive.

Oh, and I bought a PCI interface USB bus controller. My ROM memory* JumpDrive works on it.

* OK, so it's Flash, but...

This is getting OLD...

Re:Stop the redundancy!

[Anonymous Coward]

VGA Adapter isn't redundant - "VGA" is Video Graphics Array

Dumbest @#$%ing thing I've ever seen, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

it should sell well in the US. Anything to waste more resources and fill landfill sites.

Conspiracy Theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news Pure Digital Technologies announces they will offer access to the biggest image database to customers.

MOM?!?! NOOOO!

a LCD display?

[Dun Malg]

OK, time for me to be a pedantic jackass.

I'd be willing to overlook the common misuse of "LCD" with "display" if it's prefaced with "an", as in "an El See Dee display". But beginning it with "a" makes it a clear case of saying "a Liquid Crystal Display display", which is just plain wrong.

Re:a LCD display?

[Yardboy]

The Department of Redundancy Department has taken note of your complaint and is investigating the matter.

Re:a LCD display?

[atta1]

You're absolutely right. You're being a pedantic jackass.

Re:a LCD display?

[brer_rabbit]

At least it uses a LCD display and not an CRT tube.

<ducks for cover>

Re:a LCD display?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that goes along just fine with my job in the Department of Redunduncy Department

Re:a LCD display?

[phud]

but is there a NIC card?

this is great for the environment

[avandesande]

This will replace the disposable film camera, which does NOT get recycled, and ends up in the landfill.

Re:this is great for the environment

[jcostantino]

You are absolutely correct. Also, this is no different from buying a disposable film camera, using it, removing the 35mm canister and reloading it yourself.

I just patiently wait here, hoping eventually someone will "get it."

I may pick one of these up just to have around. I could have one in the car ready to go in case my expensive camera isn't with me. I also have a camera phone but it's crap (Motorola V400), this is crap too but it's quite a bit better than my phone. It's simply amazing that people bitch about how it's 2 megapixel interpolated and 1.3mpix native - who cares?!? 20 bucks! I'd have a shit hemorrhage if I found out that my Canon A40 was actually 1.3mpix and I paid $300 new for it 1.5 years ago.

Re:this is great for the environment

[kefkakiller]

Its better on an even larger scale than you imply. C41(color) film processing requires all kinds of chemicals, which have to be disposed/recovered.

Re:this is great for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Most components of most single-use cameras do get recycled. The camera is reduced to its components. The flash unit is tested and cleaned, the lens is repolished. Other components are either re-used or the plastic is recycled to make new components. The card case is lost at the processing station, and the battery is always replaced. The batteries themselves enter the market as used items.

I think you're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as "RECYCLABLE" not "DISPOSABLE".

I'm sure that the camera gets wiped down and re-used. And it's a cheaper process (and better for the environment) than cracking open the shell of a disposalble film camera, discarding it, and sending the guts back to Kodak for remanufacture.

With the digital, they just have to peel the sticker off the end, get the photos back, resticker it, replace batteries, and off it goes again.

3. Profit!!(?)

[bshroyer]

I'm having trouble seeing step 2. in the business plan.

Exactly how does one make money selling $20 digital cameras?
There's not a lot of profit in 20 cent digital prints.

The article states that they can be recycled 5 to 8 times - but each recycling costs them money, right?

Is this a low profit, high volume scheme? Can I short their stock?

Just fill it with resin (NS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuff Said.

Re:Just fill it with resin (NS)

[OneDeeTenTee]

Filling all of them with resin would be expensive.

If they were smart they would only fill the ones sold to hackers with resin.

I'm not going to reveal how they will tell which potential buyers are hackers.

Re:Not exactly

[kpogoda]

No, garbage bags are still made out of non-biodegradable plastic! I never understood that. I am sealing my garbage up so that it may be preserved for the next 400,000 years? Good for future archeologists I guess. I wonder what they would think of our society?

Won't work (probably)

[Roadkills-R-Us]

That would be ideal, but it's also illegal. Youc annot sell as new something that has been preowned. You'd have to sell it as refurbished.

Now at $20 a pop for new, what's the price point for a refurb? If it's too close to $20, you'll hardly sell any. If it's very much below that, new sales drop, and the camera mfrs are angry and raise prices on the imaging equipment.

You cad always call them ReFurbies and stick a cute sticker on them, but then you'd have to pay a royalty...

Re:Won't work (probably)

[stratjakt]

The article calls them "disposable" cameras, and says they'll go "on sale". Of course, in reality, all they have to do is put up a sign that says "digital camera rentals, $20"

The term of the "rental" can then be indefinite. The upside (for them) is that it would make it illegal to take the device apart to hack it, since it's not your property.

It's truly amazing...

[stubear]

"...which was hacked shortly afterwards..."

It's truly amazing that the editors can find stories months or even years old but often dup stories in the same day.

*Note: I'm not saying this story was a dupe.

Re:how about you give a reason why it's crappy the

[stratjakt]

It'll cost 20 bucks at the local Rite Aid, but I can guarantee you that once past the gates of Disney, it'll cost at least 40 or 50. Or any other amusement park, for that matter. Enough that it'd negate any economy. But, you forgot your own camera, so you pay.

Actually, I envision the park security no longer allowing you to bring your own camera. You know, to improve safety and give you a more enjoyable experience.

Hey, a bottle of water costs 3 bucks in there.

Rent a digital camera

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just like renting the "disposable" camera. I think that this was the first idea, to allow people to rent a sturdy, cheap and useful camera for their use on their holidays. But it seems that the marketing guys didn't like this and thought of adding 15$ extra to the price tag and trick you into thinking that this is a disposable camera. And copying the business models of disposable film cameras.

I would very much like to rent a good digital camera for several dollars a month. This would be very useful to me, and since megapixels increase year after year. I will not need to upgrade my camera every year or two.

Some new toys are coming out this year:

[junkymailbox]

the new megapixel war this year: 5mp a95,
canon 7.1mp g6,
canon s70 7.0 mp,
canon EOS-20D 8.2 MegaPixels
The new leaked cameras (shameless plug)

buy a bunch and make a composite screen

[exodist-Admin-Ra]

why not buy a bunch over time and combine the lcd's to make a composite lcd screen? or better yet how big are the lcds/what resolution? you can place them inside a set of glasses and make your own wearable display.

Re:cool....nah

[Mateito]

The LCD is detailed on the Maushammer pages. DataSheet for the LCD is here.

Re:cool....nah

[jpmkm]

It must suck to be blind. I feel sorry for you.

From the article:

Pure Digital is a $19.99 digital camera, with a color preview screen and the ability to delete pictures.

The slashdot writeup also mentions that it is a color lcd, though I know some people are too busy to be bothered with reading the writeup.

Another Option

[iamdrscience]

I know most of the people on here are looking at this as an opportunity to get a usable digital camera for cheap (with a little elbow grease), but even if the attempts to hack it aren't successeful, the camera is still worth more than they're selling it for. You see, for hobbiest electronics people, LCD screens are ridiculously expensive. In single quantities you'd be lucky to get a lower resolution, monochrome LCD display for twice the cost of this camera, more likely three times the cost. LCD screens, more than any other products are given great discounts in bulk and huge price inflations in small quantities.

Re:Another Option

[Halfbaked Plan]

Well, most low-cost LCD displays are very proprietary.

For instance, I have one of those Sega handheld games. It has a cheap color LCD on it.

You're not gonna just dig in there and wire in your circuitry and use it. There have been 'ask slashdot' articles here already about reusing the lcd from an old Laptop.

Generally it's not happening. I wish it were, but I've designed devices with custom LCD displays. Even a simple display with a few hundred elements is a bug-a-bear to interface.

Maybe this one will be hacked, though. Sure would be nice.

So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[gosand]

*sigh* I am sure others have a similar experience, but I bought a 2MP Kodak (DC280) back when they were $600. That was when I worked for a company that actually gave out bonuses. Don't get me wrong, I am really glad that I got it, but wow. I never would have guessed that 5 years later a $20 disposable camera would be of comparable quality. (I know mine probably takes better pictures, but it also weighs about 30 lbs and eats batteries like Cowboy Neal eats tacos).

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[Huogo]

I have a 2.1 MP Olympus C-2020z, bought it 4 years ago. It takes better pictures then most of my friends consumer level 3 or 4 mp pictures, just because of the superior optics in it. The other cameras have cruddy lenses, and can't get good shots at night, in fast motion, etc. For the record, I also paid $600 for that camera. Its still kicking after 4 years. I just replaced the rechargeable batteries for it yesterday too. The four year old ones weren't holding a charge for very long anymore...

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[toddestan]

Comparing digital cameras by megapixel ratings is like comparing computers by looking at how many Mhz the processor is. It may give you a vague idea how they compare, but that's about it. I'm sure your old Kodak will blow this crappy disposable away in terms of quality.

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[jcostantino]

This $20 camera is shit. You could compare it to a $70 camera. I believe Target sells a $70 camera w/ flash and LCD and it's probably the same guts with a USB interface.

My 2MP Canon Powershot A40 still produces amazing pictures in all lighting conditions. I am hard pressed to WANT to replace it because there just isn't any reason at the moment. I've been eyeing the Polaroid x530 but it won't be out for a couple months and even then it might suck.

By the way, the DC280 is 12.1 oz! Holy crap! I thought you were exaggerating but I guess not...

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use my Digital Mavica 1.3 megapixel camera on a daily basis. I paid around $800 for it about 5-6 years ago and it uses a floppy disk. I've probably taken over 5,000 pictures with it and still use the same rechargeable battery. So, I suppose I've gotten my money out of it. And I would have to say the quality is there considering it's life.

Personally I wouldn't want to use a disposable camera (yes I know it won't go to a landfill) because of how much I use mine. My wife still using a film camera, and I don't blame her the quality of the photos from the Mavica are really only good for viewing on a computer, but given the way society is moving will there really be any other way in 10 years?

I think photo albums are going to be a thing of the past, I maintain a website for my family to see our photos, given we all live in different parts of the country that works out rather well. Plus you don't have to bore people who really don't want to look at your 300 photos from your recent vacation to Florida.

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[javaxman]

5 *years*?!?

Why would you *not* think that 5 years later memory chips would have become much, much more cheap?

Other than the optics, which are much better in your camera than in this 'returnable', the cost pretty much comes down to flash memory cost, controller chip cost, and CCD cost and, well, that CCD is still a silicon-based chip, ain't it? What's happened to the price of flash memory in those 5 years?

Yea, the same thing happened to me, though I was even cheaper and only bought a $300 1.2MP Kodak DC210 ( it was a floor-model closeout special, like $100 off ). Crap camera, but OK for little snapshots here and there, just don't blow 'em up beyond 5"x7"

However, I *expected* to see 10x the camera at the same price in 5 years. I'm actually a bit disappointed. I keep expecting to find a 4+MP camera with decent optics for $200 these days... but I'm only finding 3.2MP camerasfor $250... which will look like bad deal in another 5 years when 8MP cameras are selling for slightly more than the price of the optics they carry...

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[merphle]

We're in the same boat, I see -- DC280 for $600 about 5 years ago. My dad recently bought a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X20, which is only 2MP, but at just over 4 ounces (115g) and no protruding lens, it's pretty slick.

My DC280 died about a year ago (refused to power up at all). I went so far as to take the thing apart and check all of the battery connections with a multimeter, but no luck. Put it back together, gave it to my 4 year-old daughter. She was kind enough to whack it on the ground a couple of times. Lo and behold, it now works perfectly. :)

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[gosand]

5 *years*?!? Why would you *not* think that 5 years later memory chips would have become much, much more cheap?

Uhhh, for the same reason that I don't know what will come in the next five years? Namely, I can't see into the FUTURE!

I know technology advances, but back then I never would have thought digital cameras would have come as far as they have in 5 years. Of course looking back on it is different. But in my mindset at the time, I had no idea. Just like I never thought I would have a DVD burner in my PC, because I couldn't even afford a CD burner then. I think a 4x burner was $300! Now you can get an 8x DVD burner for less than 1/3 of that.

So yes, I will continue to be amazed at the advances in technology.

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[Lovejoy]

I thought the same thing - when we bought our 4MP Canon G2, I thought we'd print very few photos. Lo and behold, my wife had a different idea. We print almost every good photo. Why?

Scrapbooking, of course!

But with a new baby and 0.19USD per photo, it's definitely worth it.

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[OneDeeTenTee]

My DC280 died about a year ago (refused to power up at all). I went so far as to take the thing apart and check all of the battery connections with a multimeter, but no luck. Put it back together, gave it to my 4 year-old daughter. She was kind enough to whack it on the ground a couple of times. Lo and behold, it now works perfectly. :)

A child *fixing* something by using violence? You should be receiving a visit from the entropy police soon.

Re:So my $600 2MP Kodak is all but dead?

[javaxman]

Sorry, I didn't mean to be harsh. You can't see into the future. But the previous 5 years might give you some clue as to the trends to expect. Hint: expect commodity technology hardware prices to drop as performance increases.

The computer you buy for $2000 today will be worth $300 in 5 years. Digital cameras ( optics excluded ) will perform in a similar manner.

Disposable but Recycable...

[Anonymous Coward]

and before anymore tree hughers decide to voice an opinion RTFA...

"Pure Digital's cameras are produced in China. After the consumer uses them, they are shipped by the retailer to a recycling facility in Chicago, where they're refurbished and repackaged. Kaplan won't say how many times the cameras are recycled, but the industry average is five to eight times."

On the other hand, doing business with a country with a terrible human-rights record, that is a completely different valid issue.

Easier?

[Aqua OS X]

These might be fun for vacation. I usually don't bring my computer with me when I travel, and I could get digital prints developed at a local drug store.

However I don't see why these would be beat the ease of my personal digital camera, iPhoto, and or Kodaks print service when I'm at home. A child could use that software; pictures can be printed, mailed to me in a day, or printed that day at a local photo lab; and I can be totally nude while sending my photos off to print :).

As cool as disposable cameras are, it's nice not to go down to the local drug store in order to turn in my film.

2MP + 16MB != 50-60 pictures

[sczimme]

My old 2.2MP gets 95-100 pictures per 64MB CF card*. Ballpark figure, the 16MB in the disposable would probably hold a maximum of 30 pictures (again, depending on composition).

* And that's the way I likes it!

Re:2MP + 16MB != 50-60 pictures

[Evangelion]

My 3MP gets 35 pictures per 16M card, so I could see a 2MP getting around 50 or 60 (depending on the agressiveness of the jpeg compression).

Re:2MP + 16MB != 50-60 pictures

[p3d0]

Are you shooting at the highest quality setting? My 2MP got 45 pictures per 16MB card, but that was at medium resolution, which isn't 2MP any more.

But you do have a point... If they compress like crazy they could get a large number of pics. That falls into the "you get what you pay for" category.

Re:2MP + 16MB != 50-60 pictures

[Evangelion]

Umm, no, highest quality 3MP is uncompressed TIFF files on this camera :)

I'm shooting at the highest compression for 3MP pictures on a Kodak DC4800 (there is a 2MP mode on it as well, which I'll investigate when I get home).

A lot of you are missing the point!

[Launch]

Okay okay, so for regular people we are talking about a nice, expensive, digital, disposible camera... But I'd expect so much more from slashdotters. A lot of you out there are saying that you rent the camera, they reuse it 8 times... blah blah blah.... The fact is that you can PURCHASE THE CAMERA. There is no rental agreement, you do not have to garuntee that you will return the camera to the company so they can recycle it.

This should be great news! On-board this baby has a 16MB memory of some type(probably great for a lot of projects) and even more importantly a COLOR LCD screen. All this for $20? 20megapixle digital camera parts a plus!

This is one of the best hardware parts purchase you could make ever. I for one am going to be running my AIM conversations on an array of digital LCDs taped to the side of my monitor about a year from now.

Re:A lot of you are missing the point!

[gerardrj]

Granted, if you are approaching this from a standpoint of parts to hack with, I don't think you can find a color LCD screen for $20, never mind a full CCD with digitizer and memory card.

Their business model depends on getting the camera back in usable form. It would certainly put a dent in profits if either the cameras didn't get returned, or were returned in a fashion in which they could no longer be used without significant refurbishment (new lens, LCD, etc).

Re:A lot of you are missing the point!

[Teancum]

While the business model may be to recycle the cameras and charge for printing, I think they got the costs down fairly well here, with the cost of goods being quite a bit less than $20. They will make a small profit just from selling many of these units in volume.

I would actually hope they embrace hackers... this is not the group that they are targeting anyway, but instead people like my mother that don't want to hassle with setting up a printer, loading paper, replacing/refilling ink cartrages, geting drivers installed for file transfer, trying to find a file manager that could read the data from the camera, etc. Instead, you can grab the camera, point, click, and return the camera for prints of your daughter's wedding while you buy groceries and have the prints waiting for you when you get to the checkout counter.

I think there is a market for this sort of thing, and the cameras are cheap enough to make it worthwhile to folks who don't want the up front cost of settting up a computer system. It is not like photo processing shops won't help you with more expensive cameras either, but the market for really cheap cameras otherwise just isn't there yet.

Disposable that's 1/4 the cost of the real deal?

[MooseByte]

"This is even a worse idea than the "2 day dvd lasting" media."

Hell, you can BUY a brand new namebrand 2mp digital camera for $80 US if you hunt the sales. So for the cost of 4 of these "disposable" cameras you can own one that can take all the pictures you want.

This would especially be great in bad conditions.

[Blimey85]

Last time I was @ WDW it rained a couple times (typical FL weather) and I was worried that my digital camera would get wet and quit working. It's not a really expensive camera... was only a couple hundred bucks, but I don't really want to replace it due to it getting wet and shorting out or getting broken on a ride. I also don't like having to worry about losing it or getting it stolen. If I had been able to rent a digital camera while I was there, I would have done that instead of using my own. The quality may have not been quite as good but @ 2 megapixel they would have been good enough. I wonder if they will offer versions with larger capacity. If you could rent extra memory cards, that would be a bonus. I don't want to have to carry around 10 cameras with me... with mine I had a nice large memory card so I didn't have to swap it the entire trip and the spare I brought was tiny and fit in my little camera bag easily. Fitting 10 cameras into a camera bag would be a bit more difficult, not to mention trying to take all of those on a ride with you. So maybe cameras with quite a bit more capacity for those of us who want to rent one and have it last several days worth of pictures.

Because!

[argent]

People still buy disposable film cameras that don't take very good pictures, and are bulkier and less convenient than these things. I've used them on vacation, where I didn't want to risk losing a camera that was worth anything.

This costs a bit more than those things, but it almost certainly takes better pictures (the snaps I took from disposables didn't even blow up to VGA very well) and it's clearly got more features.

And a lot of people go to the drugstore regularly, so it's not like it's really an extra trip.

People wouldn't be buying it as a digital camera, they'd be buying it as a high-end "disposable".

the environmental impacts of technology waste

[digitalgimpus]

this is ugly.

I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.

http://robert.accettura.com/archives/000380.shtml

for anyone interested.

It was an Environmental Bio paper, for my gen ed lab requirement. I'm a Business MIS/Comp Sci student, so like all students in the class, you orient the paper towards your field.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[Thrymm]

Very informative paper you wrote. I have read about how bad some places in China are where some "recycling" companies pay these people little cash to fish out the lead and other harmful products, while it still contaminates the rivers and such. Bottom line is still always cost though which people will take the easy way out (trash) over paying to recycle. I myself have done what you have, kept older comps for file storage or even running Seti@home.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[the pickle]

A better question is what grade you got on that paper...

And whether the mod who called this "interesting" actually read it.

p

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[Performer Guy]

The camera is actually recycled. They'd lose a fortune if it were genuinely disposable, however you return the camera to get the processing done. It's really a rented digital camera.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, hippy.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[theLOUDroom]

this is ugly.

I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.

Argh! Talk about naive!

THEY DO NOT THROW THESE CAMERAS AWAY!

You buy them. You use them. You give it back to the store. They give you picetures. They sell someone else the camera.

I'm a Business MIS/Comp Sci student, so like all students in the class, you orient the paper towards your field.

Then you should know better than to think they actually throw these things out.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[Kombat]

I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.

Really? How does it compare to the really nasty chemicals that are involved in developing a film-based photographic process?

How do the results change when you take into account that the technology is re-used over and over and over, whereas film can only be used once?

So which is harder on the environment? Film or digital?

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[digitalgimpus]

Not quite

Do you know how bad people treat disposable cameras?

It's 1-2 uses, then trash.

Most people have no problem treating it like crap... no big deal, your not fined. Just don't go so far that your pics get destroyed.

So 1-2 uses, and LCD in the trash is very bad, since the LCD would likely break first.

The battery they'd most likely reuse.

Re:the environmental impacts of technology waste

[theLOUDroom]

Do you know how bad people treat disposable cameras?
It's 1-2 uses, then trash.

Can you back that up? I'm guessing no.

Most people have no problem treating it like crap... no big deal, your not fined. Just don't go so far that your pics get destroyed.

You but you kinda missed the point there. Most people don't want their pics destroyed. Most people also don't know that destroying the LCD does not destroy their pictures.

These people have a $20 investment, plus the value of the pictures themselves that they would like some return on.

I sure "disposable" cameras DO get treated fairly harshly, but 1-2 uses is ridiculously low.

You press the button and we do the rest

[Animats]

That was Kodak's original concept. It's over.

This whole thing depends on "taking the camera back to the store". What's wrong with this picture?

There's a desperate, last-ditch attempt by the camera industry to re-introduce consumables into a product that no longer needs them. Expensive incompatible flash memory cards, expensive special paper for inkjet printers, and, of course, the "printer ink" industry all fit this model. They're just delaying the inevitable.

Incidentally, the inkjet situation should open up in a few years. Key patents are approaching expiration. The basic bubblejet patent expired this year.

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[daviddennis]

At least last time I looked, the expensive special paper for inkjet printers really makes the photos look a lot better than if you tried printing them on plain paper.

I had a Canon S900 photo printer until a friend borrowed it and never gave it back :-(. It printed stunning photographs on expensive inkjet paper and lousy photographs on plain paper. And of course the ink was most of the cost, so using plain paper is, simply, dumb.

Even my HP Color Laserjet prints much better photos on special paper than on cheap paper. Fortunately, HP's fancy deluxe laser printer paper only costs about $15 a ream (about 4c a sheet), which is miles cheaper than $0.50 a sheet inkjet paper.

So no, expensive paper is not a scam. Pity considering its cost, but there you are.

Concerning the patents, refilled inkjets are of variable quality, and Chinese-made ones are muddy. I work for a company that remanufacturers toner cartridges, and based on my discusssions with them, original manufacturer inkjet cartridges are still the right way to go if you need the best print quality. It's very difficult to successfully clean out an inkjet cartridge, and it requires amazingly expensive equipment to even try.

D

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[jcostantino]

I don't understand.

What's wrong with taking the camera back to the store for high quality prints? I don't own a printer capable of printing pictures at home. I don't want to buy a photo printer either.

Expensive and incompatible flash cards? Umm... I'll give you incompatible, CF and SD are major players but there's four others out there. The price has gone down to almost nothing compared to what it was before. I bought a 128mb CF card for $90 1.5 years ago, I can get a 512 for that now. A few years before that, getting an 8 meg SmartMedia card for $60 was a steal!

Expensive inkjet consumables? Inkjet paper has come down from over a dollar a sheet (clay coated "special" paper) to generic photo paper which is pennies a sheet. I suppose you could buck the system and print on 99 cent copier paper but it will look like hell. While printer ink certainly hasn't gotten cheaper, it has gotten better for about the same price. Remember buying a $50 DeskJet 500 black cartridge? Not too much different today but the resolution and color output is through the roof.

I'm not sure what your trying to prove here. Is it about expensive consumables for home printing? Expensive services for printing at a photomat? Expensive flash memory? What? It's free to display them on a monitor or TV. With film cameras, you STILL have to develop the film and get prints so it's not like the cost of developing and service is something that came about with digital cameras and surprised everyone.

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[yuri benjamin]

What's wrong with taking the camera back to the store for high quality prints? I don't own a printer capable of printing pictures at home. I don't want to buy a photo printer either.

How about owning your own kickass camera (optical zoom, very high res,etc) and just bringing the memory card in for processing.
I've seen photo processing shops here in New Zealand that have DIY terminals where you stick your memory card in the slot (it has 3 or 4 slots for different types of cards, and a CD drive for your photo CD), then select your pics from a touch screen and it spits out some glossy prints, which look identical to normal photos.

Some even have a usb port so you don't even have to remove the card from the camera. I guess for people who don't want a glossy print for every photo they take, this works out cheaper than owning and running a commercial quality photo printer.

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[bhtooefr]

~$7/ream for 28lb 108br color laser paper at Staples... I've also heard that there's a 31lb Great White color laser paper that works nicely.

We've been FRAMING stuff off of our Minolta magicolor 2300DL on that Staples paper, and it gets decent prints on plain paper.

BTW, that's a company that remanufactures TONER carts. That's another story from ink carts.

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[jcostantino]

Sure, there are a lot of kiosks in drug stores around here - you can put in a floppy, flash media, cd or scan directly from the flat bed scanner. The same places usually offer a service to rip the pictures out of your memory card and you come back later for the prints.

A lot of people just don't want to think about that; I suspect it has to do with the fact that you have so much more control over the image capture process with digital. It's probably easier for them to shoot film and blame bad shots on the processing.

I'm hoping that getting digital prints back ends up costing the same or less than traditional film. I'd have to guess that developing film is HORRIBLE for the environment and dye-sub has to be at least margionally better.

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[daviddennis]

Correct. We expanded into ink and pretty much gave up on it for the reasons I mention in my message.

I like the 32lb 98br color laser paper HP makes. For some reason I really enjoy the thick, creamy feel even though it's pretty expensive.

But I've never seen 108br color laser paper - who makes it? I thought the highest possible paper brightness would be 100.

D

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[bhtooefr]

http://staples.com/Catalog/Browse/skuset.asp?PageT ype=2&SkuSetID=1003127&bcFlag=True&bcSCatId=1&bcSC atName=Office+Supplies&bcCatId=10&bcCatName=Paper& bcClassId=140783&bcClassName=Laser+Paper

(Yes, I know that's a LONG address)

It's $8 a ream ($32.99/case), not $7. They don't say what the finish is on it, but on your HP laser paper they say it has an "ultra smooth" finish. I can tell at a touch OR glance the difference between this 28/108 stuff and the $2.47 Georgia Pacific 20/84 WalMart special.

I looked at the package to see if it's made for Staples by anyone, but it just says Staples...

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[bhtooefr]

BTW, looking at your site, and seeing as you prefer Safari, it might not play nice. You might need to use IE or Netscape/Moz. I use Opera on Linux, and it insisted on telling me that I had cookies disabled, even though they (and JavaScript) were enabled, and I even enabled all popups and spoofed as IE - no change. I got that link with an old copy of Netscape 4.8 that I put on to play around with it...

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[daviddennis]

Actually, other than the obnoxious request for my zip code it worked fine. I'll have to try some of that next time I visit Staples, which is where I get my HP paper.

It will be a while before I need new paper. My premium choice laserjet paper was on sale at Staples last time I was there for $9.99 a ream, and I snagged four of them. That will keep me happy for a few months - when it comes to paper use, I'm all about quality, not quantity :-).

D

Re:You press the button and we do the rest

[bhtooefr]

See, we burn through paper. We're just smart to avoid the "it'll use less toner" advice, and stuff the printer with that WalMart crap when printing text. ;-)

My old PagePro 1250W exclusively gets that stuff, and it doesn't seem to hurt quality (it's the Linux driver that does that).

"insightful"?????

[Russ Nelson]

"Insightful"???? You thought that was "Insightful"?!? You moron, that was FUNNY! Sheesh, don't you recognize good mockery when you see it???
-russ

Re:"insightful"?????

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Well, at least I got 2 flamebaits.... which is even dumber, considering even the parent poster got some kind of kick out of it.

Let's not forget though, that something is truly screwed up here, if marketers are allowed to redefine a word like "disposable".

Whitesheet on LCD

[Launch]

Whitesheet on LCD:

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/%7Edisplaze/PDF/L CD /AU%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf

looks like it should be very easy to use for other projects.

nonsense

[rebelcool]

how do you think film "disposable" cameras work? If you RTFA, it already says the industry average of reuse for disposable cameras is 5-8 times. They dont just throw them away!

"illegal" indeed.

Re:cexx.org: the last link in the article, pre-/.i

[Peter Simpson]

Best guess for SW1 and SW4 is ""

SW1 beeps because you can't go back to before photo 1 (you said you hadn't taken any photos yet) and SW4 dowesn't do anything because you're already at the last (first) photo.

Add two buttons and sell it as a cheap reusable camera with a USB interface.

"Equivalent of 2 MP sensor" ???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pure Digital's San Francisco offices are typical pod-style workstations, with computers and posters everywhere. Large images of waterfalls, mountains and beaches adorn the walls -- all snapped by a Pure Digital camera, which has the equivalent of a 2-megapixel sensor. A megapixel is a measurement of a camera's resolution."

What does "the equivalent of a 2-megapixel sensor" mean? Is it not 2 MP?

Re:"Equivalent of 2 MP sensor" ???

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess? It probably means it interpolates from a lower "real" resolution up to 2MP, similar to digital zoom vs actual optical zoom.

Re:Not exactly

[EvanED]

Stuff doesn't decompose in landfills anyway. You can dig through landfills and find perfectly readable newspapers from the 60s.

Recycle

[mashmorgan]

More sisposable stuff pollutiong the planet ;-(

Whats next...

[DarkLox]

I wonder when they will release the disposable underwater digital camera...now THAT would be fun.

Re:This would especially be great in bad condition

[ejort79]

WDW did rent cameras at one time. I went there with my parents when I was 9, I'd recently bought myself a 110 film camera at a garage sale but I dropped and broke it. My parents rented me another camera to use. (Incidentally I remember it used an odd daisy wheel film- a disk with the film around the edge. Haven't seen that in a long time.) I'm surprised they don't still do that with digitals- for an exorbitant price of course.

Not the first $20 camera

[jsrjsr]

I've a DIGITREX DSC3000 (a 3.2 megapixel camera with LCD) that I bought at OfficeMax. It cost $20 after rebate. (I had to buy an Epson printer -- but I'd already decided to buy the printer before I found out about the camera deal.)

It's not disposable

[qray]

"Disposable" makes me think you use it and throw it in the trash. I don't think of those Blue Rhino propane tanks as disposable. It's more like "returnable". Hopefully the cameras you get will be in better shape than some of those Blue Rhino tanks I've seen.

Old news

[OptimoosePrime]

These have been out since about Spring. I've had one sitting on my desk and I'm waiting for someone to write up another interface for it. I use the old style one with no lcd screen sometimes. I added a USB port to the side of it and it works great under Windows and Linux.

Why do you all think "disposable" = bad?

[Enigma_Man]

First off... All of these "disposable" cameras aren't thrown out. When you return them from whence they came to get your piccies off of them, they refurb them, and resell them, exactly the same way as is done with analog "disposable" cameras nowadays. They rip the worn thin plastic shell off of them, develop your pictures inside, sell you the pictures, and re-sell the camera with a new shell.

Also, what's the big deal with having a disposable mindset? It's extremely good for the economy, and no worse for the environment providing you recycle. You _do_ recycle, don't you? Anyway, if you bought say... a window fan back in the 1930s, you'd still have it today. It's ruggedly made out of steel and brass, and other nice metals. Look at the brand name on the bottom of them. Doesn't look familiar, right? That's because they sold 10,000 fans to everybody who wanted one, and then everybody who wanted one had one, so the company closed. All of those people in the company are now out of work, and can't buy any more window fans. Stagnation due to selling overly durable items is far worse than a disposable culture. Disposable things keep the money flowing, which is important for a healthy capitalistic nation.

Most of all, relax.

-Jesse

Re:Why do you all think "disposable" = bad?

[Creepy Crawler]

I use this as one example why Companies have no ethics or morality.

It's also why I purchase durable products, and ones I cannot, I do the following...

Had to buy CRAP item X. When (not if) it breaks, I buy a new one, swap contents, and return the old one in new packaging. It was "defective".

If a company can play the "I can make shit merchandise, and provide no better items" game, I can play switcheroo.

Re:Why do you all think "disposable" = bad?

[Kombat]

Had to buy CRAP item X. When (not if) it breaks, I buy a new one, swap contents, and return the old one in new packaging. It was "defective".

Uhm, wouldn't it be more ethical to simply patronize companies who produce more durable goods, rather than ripping off the cheaper ones? I mean, if you're trying to make it look like you take the high road, you might actually try taking it.

Re:Why do you all think "disposable" = bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

you cant base an economy on making the same old crap to replace the last lot of crap that fell to bits. If this was the case we would all still be employed making spears to hunt wooly mammoths to replace last weeks spears which fell to bits. Only when someone makes a spear that lasts can you free up the labour for someone to invent the shotgun, or eventally, the laser guided mammoth cannon.

Re:Why do you all think "disposable" = bad?

[cosmicpossum]

Actually Emerson Electric http://www.emersonelectric.com/(not the crap electronics Emerson) made those window fans and is one of the largest electric motor suppliers to this day!

Hmm.

[SphericalCrusher]

I don't think this is going to last very long. I'm sure most other people think that also. The production cost is just too high and the only way they are going to keep this going is to sell a large mass of them... or raise the prices, of course. Hopefully it'll work though, because it is a really good idea. I just know those little LCD screens aren't that cheap...

This is in NO WAY new news...

[Vthornheart]

The PV2 has been out in stores for the past year and a half... with an LCD screen, and 1.2 MP quality (though it advertises as 2.0MP, hence the confusion in the posting).

I don't know why USA Today posted a story about a year and a half old product...possibly because they repackaged it (it has a new front end appearance, but same camera underneath it sounds like). Either way, this is an incredibly old story.

I would think that "processing" is included...

[PaulBu]

Then it becomes interesting to know how many frames are available, if ~50 it becomes a great deal compared to paying like $0.50/print otherwise + extra for the CD.

Paul B.

Re:I would think that "processing" is included...

[bhtooefr]

25 pictures. It's been that way for every model, the "classic" blue, the PV2 blue, and the PV2 red (with LCD).

What a waste....

[dentar]

disposable this... disposable that...

I'm no environmentalist whacko, but THAT goes a little too far down the path of waste, even for me...

What about batteries??

[BlueOtto]

The article didn't mention anything about batteries; usually a big concern with digital cameras. Does the end user have to supply them? Are they built into the camera? What happens if they run out before your one-time use is done?

Re:What about batteries??

[argent]

It takes regular alkalines.

Disposable digital cameras are a joke

[misleb]

The ONLY thing these things are good for is being hacked and used as a cheap non-disposable camera with a USB port (I've done the hack on the non-LCD ones). The pictures that come out of these things are crap compared to common disposable 35mm cameras. Besides the novelty of "digital" and an LCD, I can't for the life of me imagine why your average consumer would chose these things over a standard 35mm disposable. Aren't the disposable 35mm's cheaper than $19?

-matthew

Re:Disposable digital cameras are a joke

[pclminion]

As a hundred people have already mentioned, with a digital camera you can erase pictures that you don't like or came out badly and take better ones. Since most people can't take a decent photograph, this preview feature is easily worth the extra money because it virtually guarantees you'll have good pictures.

Unless you're a person who is literally incapable of taking good photographs, even on accident...

Re:Disposable digital cameras are a joke

[misleb]

Still, I don't think the terrible quality is worth it. I haven't seen the pictures of the current model (a whole .7 more megapixles) but the previous took pictures that were was full of compression artifacts and terrible color.

-matthew

Re:Disposable digital cameras are a joke

[bhtooefr]

One flaw with (at least the unmodified) PV2 is that you can't take a photo, decide you'll take another one and see, and decide that the second was better without having both photos.

Re:3. Profit!!(?)

[HeyLaughingBoy]

There's not a lot of profit in 20 cent digital prints.

I don't know how much profit there actually is, but remember that "not a lot of" does not necessarily equal zero. In this particular case, if there is 1 cent profit, that's 5%, 2 cents, that's 10%. In both cases, greater profit than a lot of consumer businesses enjoy. IOW, it looks doable.

This whole idea is crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it.

More of a reason not to hack it.

[Pascho]

I would think that amusement parks would be all over this, however why would they not add to the price? Use the camera for $40 or $60 and get a CD plus cash back when you turn it in. This would seem a better way to prevent losses.

Not to mention that there were, uh, problems...

[crovira]

Quite apart from the quality of the images. 3.2MPxl is a minimum.

Okay the web can get away with 640x480 or less, but for prints? C'mon...

There is also the issues of privacy when the pictures are of any, uh, salacious nature. How do you know your pictures won't end up where you don't intend?

People got into digital photography and web pron got a lot better. But they knew what they were doing, with signed releases and everything. :-)

Re:Not to mention that there were, uh, problems...

[Idarubicin]

Quite apart from the quality of the images. 3.2MPxl is a minimum. Okay the web can get away with 640x480 or less, but for prints? C'mon...

I agree with you, to a point...I would never be happy with a 1.2 megapixel camera. I like to be able to crop after I shoot pictures, and I like to blow up the occasional good one. On the other hand, for people who are just going to be printing snapshots to stuff in a shoebox or tack up on a bulletin board or something, high resolution just isn't all that important. For that matter, some people may only want to put the pictures on the web--in which case they'll probably downsample them further anyway.

There is also the issues of privacy when the pictures are of any, uh, salacious nature. How do you know your pictures won't end up where you don't intend?

This is an issue? People will drop off 35mm film at Wal-Mart that has their homemade porn on it. There always was the analog hole (*ahem*). Very few people bother to develop their own colour film, now or ever. Those same people will not worry about using their disposable digital to share their intimate moments with the clerks at the grocery store. Everybody else who wants to take their own naughty pictures will use Polaroid or buy their own digital camera. Home porn is probably not the target market for this technology....

Only 20 dollars?!

[trendescape]

Ya, this sounds pretty disposible to me. I wish I had 20 dollars to throw away.

Re:This would especially be great in bad condition

[jcostantino]

ugh... The Kodak "Disc" system. I don't think you could find a smaller sized negative :)

It looks like it was maid till '98, I would have thought it was discontinued much earlier than that.

http://www.toptown.com/nowhere/kypfer/disctimeline .htm/

Where spelling and capitalization count

[freeweed]

eats batteries like Cowboy Neal eats tacos

Re:Disposable = Unusable as murder weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave Barry used to say this about phones. I bought a zoom modem that worked at 12kbps (the fallback speed for 14.4 kbps). This was one of the last modems before the Rockwell chipset came along and made modems into something that would keep falling off your desk when you shifted a pile of papers.

I tell my friends I could cosh a burglar over the head with my 12k Zoom. I suppose I could also have plugged it in right afterwards to email them about it :-)

Disposable

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the entire "disposable" concept. Fuck knows how we're going to work out the landfills. There's so many different substances in there, it's not like you can just strip mine them for all the carbon, or just the polymers.

I'm no tree-hugger, but there's a point at where you stop making things "disposable" just to get them into the marketplace.

Try this link

[jaaron]

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~displaze/PDF/LCD/A U%20Optronics/A015AN02V1.pdf

(to parent: you have a space after LCD in your original link)

Re:Try this link

[Launch]

I'm about as useless as a lightswitch in a cave right about now... but how about that second link about the beer drinking bear.

Re:Try this link

[Launch]

I'm about as useless as a broken lightbulb today... thanks for the help

how about that second link though, the beer drinking bear... too funny...

cheers, thanks.

I highly recommend Kodak's disposables

[davidwr]

The Kodak disposables with the Max800 film are fantastic for daylight shots and flash at reasonable distances.

The prints are almost always as sharp as my 20-year-old professional gear with the same film.

Now, if you need a zoom, slow film, or exposure control, or don't like spending the extra $$$ on a throwaway, spend some bucks on a real camera.

Bear Drinking Bear Link

[jaaron]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/08/18/bear.beer.re ut/index.html.

Try that.

see SneezingDragon for how to properly create links.

Silver prints: the reason I go back to the store

[davidwr]

For 4"x6" prints with archival properties, it's still cheaper to go to the store and get your digital images printed on a mini-lab than to use an inkjet with archival paper and inks.

Even if it weren't cheaper, it's more certain:
Color silver halide prints have decades of history and you can "believe" it when the printer says "will last 80 years under proper storage conditions."

With ink-jet archival materials, the manufacturers have to use accellerated aging to test their materials with. That's good, but not as good as real-life data.

Now, when they get something with the archival properties of silver-halide prints affordable for home or photo-intensive small business users, that will be a Very Good Thing.

Oh, and with many ink-jet glossy prints, you dare not get them wet.

Where are they finding LCDs screens under $20?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any uses for the LCD screen?

How to hack-proof your camera

[davidwr]

Posted here before anyone else patents the idea:

1) Have the hardware or firmware encrypt the images
2) Have the hardware authenticate the firmware
3) Create a custom, patented or trade-secret authentication algorithm
4) use as many non-standard parts as possible so modding and buying-for-parts isn't worth people's time
5) sell at a loss because no hobbyist will pay real money for your camera when they can get a moddable/hackable one from someone else at a decent price.

My Business Plan

[955301]

In light of the business plan you just described, here is mine:

1. Hack a cable to download images from these.
2. Mass produce the cables with a detachable component inside the camera.
3. ...
4. Profit!!!

You figure if I sell the cable for $10, it's less than buying the next camera.

Film is much worse!

[Kombat]

LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.

These cameras are reusable. Sure, there may be some waste during manufacturing, but the fact that the exact same materials can be used for hundreds of photos makes up for it.

Film, on the other hand, uses equally nasty chemicals and byproducts, if not worse, and is a 1-shot deal. You can't "delete" a film photo and take it again - its commited to the silver halide crystals, like it or not. And the stuff they use to turn that film into prints is much, much worse than the ink in a digital printer.

Get your priorities straight, bud. This is good for the environment.

Why, what were your plans?

[Trigun]

You pretty much summed up mine.

"Build yourself a 100" projector for only $9.99...

[Anonymous Coward]

...using only your 14" TV and a Fresnel lens" is a common spam/scam. Google for 100" fresnel. Grandparent was making a joke.

Re:Silver prints: the reason I go back to the stor

[TheAwfulTruth]

Is this some NEW kind of photographic process?

Because most of my current 30+ YO color prints have faded badly. They have not been exposed to the light or any sort of extreme "weather". I live in a very dry state. The blue, and green is just gone. Left with red/yellow prints.

B&W prints do seem to last 80+ years, but color? Not that I've seen. Unless by "last" you mean "Can see any image at all". But the color fastness of the color process (at least 30-40 years ago) is (was) pretty bad!

I've also found that the optical printing process from digital source has a bit of blur introduced into the picture. It's slight, but visible to the naked eye, and very obvious when using a loupe.

Tests I've done with a profesional lab (No not the drug store, a real photographers lab) vs my own priting on a canon i9900 show that the printer produces a MUCH sharper and more color accurate print. The canon prints are razor sharp, people I've shown them too have been in awe, they had never seen such a sharp print before and they didn't even guess it was printed by a printer, it looks too good.

Comparing the optical print from digital source to optical prints from negative sources shows that there was nothing spefic about the digital source that was causing the blur, it's just part of the enlargement process.

We'll see about the longevity of printed images, but color film has so far had a pretty poor track record itself.

Direct Display Mode? & Other Questions.

[Jtheletter]

Anyone in the camera hacker community know if it might be possible to set this thing into a direct display mode? (i.e. realtime display of the camera image)? Obviously it would require a bigger power supply than the batteries for any sort of extended use, but I'm thinking this could make a nice head mounted display for cheap. :)

Also, what about swapping the 2 megapixel camera for a CCD board camera that can pickup infrared? Now we're talking a DIY nightvision headset for under $100!!

Also, I know most (all?) LCDs require a controller to use with any sort of viedo signal - to control the H and V and refresh rate etc. Does this LCD have the controller built in? Is it on the camera board and easily removed? Or is it built into the camera processor and intimately linked with that hardware? I've got a bunch of little mobile robots that could sure use these displays for full color state feedback and mapping displays!

Any help, hints, or links appreciated!

Grammar Gestapo

[Lorenzo de Medici]

As long as LCD is taken to mean Liquid Crystal Diode in the phrase "an LCD display" . . . which is, I am sure, what you meant.

Or a fan of "The Shining"

[CSG_SurferDude]

The Shining had this first... (NOT work safe, and watch out for the stupid pop-ups.)

Re:Disposable = Cheaper for Consumers

[networkBoy]

Besides, how do you convice someone to buy a new camera every year or two, when you built them to last for life? :)

Obviously you do not enjoy photography. This is an addiction to guys like me. I'll buy as many as I can afford.
-nB

Re:I'm not using the preview button!

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm not using the preview button!)

You mean again.

Hackable? BFD.

[supabeast!]

I'm sorry, but even at $19.99, the quality of images shot on a 2 megapixel camera cannot justify the effort it would take to hack the damned thing. It would be better to just buy a decent camera and devote the time to a more productive hack.

Re:Hackable? BFD.

[Ed Avis]

The quality of the picture is mostly determined by the lens and by the quality of the individual RGB cells on the sensor - not by whether there are 2 million or 4 million of them or whatever. A 2 megapixel image is still higher resolution than you can view on anything but an expensive display (at 3:2 aspect ratio it would be roughly 1731x1154 pixels).

Some people do try to attach decent lenses to disposable camera bodies; I am tempted to troll by saying that you would get better images by spending $20 on the body and $230 on the lens than by spending $250 on a 'decent camera', but I suspect that's not really true except for specialized applications. Still, it is worth emphasizing that the number of megapixels doesn't mean much if your images will be mostly viewed on screen. Even for making prints it doesn't matter if they are small ones.

Re:Hackable? BFD.

[Registered Coward v2]

I'm sorry, but even at $19.99, the quality of images shot on a 2 megapixel camera cannot justify the effort it would take to hack the damned thing. It would be better to just buy a decent camera and devote the time to a more productive hack.

Well, $20 means I can stick it on the nose of a model rocket or put it in a baggy to take underwater photos and if it gets busted, who cares? It's not my $1000 digital SLR, but I'll trae photo quality for risk in situations where the extra quallity makes very little diference. If i can get the pix from the camera, that means I can md the body w/o worrying taht he droid at Ritz refuses to develop teh pix.

Re:Middle Class...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, tell me about it. Im lower slum class and I don't throw away anything unless it cost under $1.

SLR

[Anonymous Coward]

can you take the guts out and mount them in an old SLR camera?

Resolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about the resolution but from the image it looks like a 1:1.33 ratio (1200x1600).

Now given that these cameras are actually intended for printing your shots and that most stores will print 4x6 (1:1.5), you once again end up having to trust the lab tech for cropping.

I guess those CCDs are much cheaper than the ones used in DSLR...

film disposable cameras arnt actually disposable

[axelbaker]

Actually most labs don't throw away disposable film cameras either. They are designed to be easily opened with out damage and get sold back to remanufacturers for about $0.25 each. Same thing on the waste from most of the photo processing. The developer and rise chemicals are degradable organic chemicals, and the fix, which has all the heavy metals in it cannot be dumped legally and is full of silver so it is processed and the metals are extracted.

In the end conventional film cameras and processing are friendly on the environment than electronics manufacturing for a digital camera. Admitted there are processes out there that aren't, but not too many people out there shoot Kodachome or use pyro developer any more.

Old news in Japan

[schouwl]

We had disposable digital cameras here for one year or so. Lars

Re:cool....nah

[Anonymous Coward]

>>It must suck to be blind. I feel sorry for you.

I'm visually impaired you insensitive clod!!!

Run C code on it! I'm surprised no-one mentioned..

[BillX]

Granted, this is a discussion of the *new* Dakota cam with LCD, but I'm surprised the newest hacks of the old one haven't been mentioned:

(All of these can be found on Rodrigo Balerdi's page)

1) Run your own code on the camera
A code loader has been written that allows you to nondestructively load your own executable code into the camera's 8MB (slightly less of it usable by you) DRAM. A small demo program from his site demonstrates the concept by blinking out a pattern on the 'Ready' LED, but programs of arbitrary complexity could be written...subject to the limitation that you can't access/execute any of the onboard firmware in this mode. (Bracing for the inevitable Beowulf-cluster comments...)

2) Bye-bye 25-picture limitation
Another clever hack lets you reset the 25-picture limit to an arbitrarily high number. This allows you to take pictures until the camera's FLASH memory actually fills up completely (under "real-world" outdoor picture-taking conditions, I've found this to be about 50 shots, but it will vary with how compressible your images are).

3) Firmware updater and miscellaneous updates/bugfixes
Balerdi's patchfile for an existing Dakota firmware corrects several nits/bugs with the original. It makes the number-of-pictures display count upward from 0 instead of downward from 25 (very useful in conjunction with the previous hack), ensures picture numbering starts from 1 everytime the camera is cleared and always remains consistent (even if you delete shots), and fixes a bug in the original firmware that could result in 2 pictures having an identical number/filename (making one impossible to download).

Recycle, Reuse

[otisg]

Here I am refusing plastic bags in stores, refusing to buy milk in plastic bottles, minimizing air conditioner use, hating myself for using a gas-powered outboard motor, trying to be nice to the environment in every way I can, and here we have businesses mass-producing disposable digital cameras.

I thought everyone already knew that disposable stuff is baaaaad.

"Disposable" Video Camera?

[mrgreen4242]

Well, I actaully RTFA for once, and it mentions "Later this year, the company says it will introduce a video camera with 20 minutes of TV-quality footage that will be processed in the store onto a DVD."

Now THAT is something that I want to see hacked. Presumably the price point for such a "disposable" camera can't be much more than $30-35, and if these wodnerfully brilliant hackers can figure out how to
1) Connect it to your PC for repeated use, and
2) Swap out the onboard memory for a card slot of some sort (not too far fetched - the WalGreen disposable digital cam has such a mod) so that you can store an hour or more (limited by batteries?) of 'TV quality video'...
I would rush out to the store that very day.

waterproof ...

[aggiefalcon01]

This's nice, but what I'd like to see is something corresponding to waterproof disposable cameras. Many times I've been in wet environments and while I refused to bring my $300 Sony, I'd gladly put a few tens of dollars toward a waterproof disposable digital camera.

Re:Not exactly

[Halfbaked Plan]

The 'trash' being stored in landfills won't last long enough for archaeologists to find.

It'll all be recycled within the next few centuries.

You want to make your descendents wealthy? Somehow secure the long term 'mineral rights' for some good deep landfill property now.

Biodegradable plastics have their place, but the people really excited about them are the people who love planned obsolescence. Cars that have components made of 'biodegradable plastic' will need constant replenishing.

IOW, the same bloodsuckers who are always doing and advocating things 'for the good of us all.'

Re:Not exactly

[Keith McClary]

If you're a greenie you don't put biodegradable stuff in garbage bags.

Re:cool....nah

[jpmkm]

Sorry, I didn't mean to discriminate. Let me rephrase that:

It must suck to be visually impaired. I feel sorry for you.

Dude, wow. No.

[StarKruzr]

Try getting your prints done on a REAL digital minilab - Noritsu QSS-3213, Fujifilm Frontier 3xx-series, etc. - and tell me your inkjet prints still look better. No way in hell, my man.

In addition, the emulsions major photo companies use today ARE in fact guaranteed to stay colorfast under proper storage conditions in excess of 30 years.

Good luck

[StarKruzr]

getting the CMOS aligned properly with your camera's focal plane and keeping it there. Also, good luck somehow getting the shutter release wired to the board's shutter release switch.

Re:how about you give a reason why it's crappy the

[commodoresloat]

Hey, a bottle of water costs 3 bucks in there.

Yeah but it's good water. Plus it has Mickey's picture!!

I am expecting the disposable LCD

[afa]

One, another, and another device became disposable, the what is not disposable at last? Data, perphaps, perphaps not. Maybe we can use a google-like something to dig out the data when we want someday. What a crazy world!

Just another reason...

[OhHellWithIt]

...that I try to convince my daughter that Mickey Mouse is EVIL.

1.2MP Kodak

[TubeSteak]

The DC120 weighs in at a hefty 18.4 oz

It's like carrying around a black plastic brick. The DC240/280 is a featherweight by comparison. The DC120 is still fairly slim when you compare it to its older brother the DC50

The only decent thing about the 50 & 120 is that they have threads for filters, zoom lenses or whatever else you want to attach to your camera.

Re:1.2MP Kodak

[jcostantino]

I have a DC50 sitting in my desk drawer at work, a holdout from quite a few years ago. I should throw some batteries in it and see if it still works.

It's amazing how we've come from $900 gigantic low-res cameras to $20 disposable (semi) high-res cameras!

No, it's not included.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who modded this person up? Sheesh.

er..

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean... datasheet? Or whitepaper?

... now updated

[morcheeba]

I've got an analysis of the flash memory posted -- interesting stuff.