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Nikon Releases WiFi Digital Camera

LegendOfLink writes "Nikon just revealed the world's first WiFi-enabled camera! It runs 802.11b/g and allows users to send files over a network. From the blurb: "Wireless shooting automatically transfers each picture to a selected computer as soon as it is shot. Pictures can then be viewed with Nikon's powerful yet fun-to-use and easy PictureProject software. And wireless printing delivers the convenience of cable-free direct printing to PictBridge-compatible printers. All these functions are easy to implement, too. Just set them up with the Wizard utility to enjoy easy wireless capabilities that add outstanding flexibility to the digital photography experience. "

19 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Straight from the Camera to 0dayporn.com! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anything that makes porn easier to make is alright in my book.

  2. Um... by PunkOfLinux · · Score: 4, Funny

    This sounds more like an advertisement than anything actually useful... generally, if it includes the words 'powerful' 'fun-to-use' and 'easy' it's an advertisement. Might also be in an ad for a hooker >.>

  3. World's First? by cmoney · · Score: 4, Informative
  4. Battery life? by winkydink · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can't help but think that adding wifi will seriously hurt battery life.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  5. Forget the download hacks... by jarich · · Score: 4, Funny
    What happens when someone figures out to upload pictures to it?

    Honest honey! I don't know where ~those~ pictures came from!!! Honey?? Let me back in the house....

    ;)

    1. Re:Forget the download hacks... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, my digital camera just maps in as a R/W USB drive. I took pictures at my company picnic a couple years ago, edited them all in Photoshop to give some of my coworkers glowing red/orange Terminator-style eyes, and then copied them back to the camera. When I showed off the pictures on the built-in display, I feigned ignorance (of course) and let everyone try to figure out how it could have happened. Some of the explanations were pretty funny ... the Sun coming in at a funny angle, a problem with the compression algorithm in the camera, gee, maybe so-and-so really is some kind of creature. Finally I owned up to it and explained that my camera was the new model with an on-board demon detector mode. Got a few laughs.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  6. Not quite the first ever.. by lcampagn · · Score: 5, Informative

    We've seen plenty of wifi-enabled cameras before (such as the Canon EOS-1Ds), but this appears to be the first _consumer_ camera with wifi.

    1. Re:Not quite the first ever.. by Andy+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Canon 1Ds isn't wifi-enabled. You might be thinking of the Nikon D2h which has a wifi add-on and is approximately the same generation, although a little more recent. The newer generation of Canon DSLRs also have wifi add-ons available.

  7. Marketing by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will they market it like those Centrino laptops that magically allow you to share your photos and do full screen, perfect quality video messaging over the internet while you're in the middle of nowhere with nary a cellphone tower, wireless access point or sign of civilization to be seen anywhere?

  8. Useful for demonstration pictures, etc. by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The gendarmes can confiscate the camera, but the photos are already on a server outside the country's jurisdiction. This should be handy for journalists, demonstrators, etc.

    --
    I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
  9. Whoopti Do. by L0C0loco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    News will be made when they nolonger encrypt the white balance information in their RAW format. Wake me up then.

    --
    -- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
  10. But the real question is by hakr89 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does it run Linux?

  11. It: plays: Doom: by Wilson_6500 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Man, I just realized that there are _way_ too many colons in that post. It's a veritable colorama, a procto-party if you will.

  12. Allow me to translate by Tim+Browse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This...

    Pictures can then be viewed with Nikon's powerful yet fun-to-use and easy PictureProject software.

    ...actually means:

    The camera comes with some POS software that installs a load of annoying icons all over the place that you can't get rid of, has the look and feel of an explosion in a Winamp skin factory, and will crash and burn more often than Windows Movie Maker. Oh, and if you don't install this piece of crap, you can't use the camera.

    I can see it now...

    "Check out my cool wifi camera!"
    "Cool, let's download some pictures onto my PC!"
    "Ok, first you have to install this piece of shit called PictureProject on your system."
    "Dude! Totally fuck off! Give me your SD card, and I'll put it in my $8 card reader that makes the card look like a standard drive, so you can use any software you like."
    "Good point. Well made."
    "Plus, we won't have to type in any WEP keys."
    "Excellent! I don't have the PictureProject CD with me anyway."

    Honestly, I could write a book.

    1. Re:Allow me to translate by fuzheado · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Exactly, we should tell Canon and Nikon to use real open standards for this stuff or take a hike. From dpreview, the king of dig camera info:
      The only limitation at the moment appears to be that the P1 and P2 will only send to PictureProject and not to standard FTP servers or across the Internet.
      Only limitation? Sounds pretty craptacular to me.
  13. Kodak not first... Nikon D2h and WT-1 by i22y · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nikon was the first to come out with a camera that was WiFi-capable. Nikon's D2H, which came out in Q3 2003, was also introduced with the Nikon WT-1 (and WT-1A in America), which attached to the camera and provided 802.11b transmission right from the camera. Nikon's latest offerings, the D2Hs and the D2x, are compatible with the new WT-2 and WT-2A, which support 802.11g and some new features. While the camera itself does not have internal WiFi support, it was designed with that function in mind and the optional accessory enabled that. Canon also offers the WFT-E1 transmitter for the EOS-1Dmk2 cameras as well as the EOS-20D. This was introduced after Nikon, however it supports WiFi as well as Ethernet. Mike Isler

    --
    Mike
  14. Huh? by dennism · · Score: 3, Informative

    First WiFi digital camera? Then what is this supposed to be?

    --
    dennis
  15. Wonderful Idea... by LEX+LETHAL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was just recently wondering if there were wi-fi digital cameras available. I was shopping at Target when I saw one of those Kodak 'do-it-yourself' digital photocenters with half a dozen slots for almost every type of portable storage media. Mounted on the side was a design afterthought - a bubble of plastic that housed an infared sensor. I would never use the Kodak photocenter simply because bored checkstand onlookers would be able to view my my most private pictures while I crop and edit them. However, the wi-fi add-on seemed like a natural feature.

    Then I had another thought: with the advent of protable digtal cams being used to feed a modern culture of voyeurs, it's just a matter of time before there are voyeurs with protable wi-fi cam sniffers, lingering nearby to leech onto an unsuspecting data transfer. I read a few months ago about how some guys had built a bluetooth sniper rifle; unnoticed, they would stand atop tall downtown buildings and digitally eavesdrop on nearby blackberries and other pdas.

    It seems the more freedom we embrace, the more we surrender.

  16. '68 Democrat Convention reports in people's hands by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In 1968 Mayor Daily tried to suppress a crowd protesting the war and what they perceived as the theft of the primary elections and Democratic presidential nomination by the party elite.

    He did this by ordering his police to smash the newsies' cameras.

    This had always worked before.

    He also has his pet union bosses block the stringing of much of the TV cabling into the convention center, hotels, and surrounds that would have carried the pictures. That was expected to work, too.

    But the newsies were trying out a new technology: The "minicam". This was enormous. A "miniatureized" TV camera about as big as your torso, shoulder mounted. Hooked to a backpack full of electronics and batteries, with a big antenna sticking out. About all a strong man could carry. But just barely enough to get the signal to the next stage: A semitruck full of electronics, located within a block, terminating in a microwave dish to pipe the signal to a nearby studio.

    And this was Chicago. Where all three major networks had a studio there, along with the major facilities for their cross-country video landline.

    What was brand new about it the "mini"cam: It was real-time. By the time the billyclub smashed the lens the image of the billyclub had come zooming at the faces of a country full of TV watchers.

    Oops!

    For the next three days the crowd chants "The Whole World Is Watching" as the process repeats. The country is treated to video of the National Guard and the 101st Airborne shoving crowds around with assault rifles, jeeps mounting machine guns and others mounting barbed-wire barriers, and enough teargas to fog the center of a city, plus enough repeats of police people bashing that instant replay is redundant.

    And a once-well-liked Democratic party functionary's nomination is totally discredited. And the Republican wins the race.

    Fast forward to near the end of the century. Video cameras that record on tape are now a consumer item. And a citizen tapes the interaction between the LA Police and Rodney King. Regardless of whether the cops were acting rightly or out of control, the scene makes for riots once it hits the news - and again when the cops are acquitted.

    So is the reaction of the California governments to clean up the LA cops? Of course not! (Their gang task forces are left to run wild until their pattern of evidence-faking and perjury leads to legal challenges of their previous cases and the release nearly everybody they ever busted.) Instead they pass a law to BAN recording government functionaries (such as police) performing their functions. And the police use this to sieze any videotape made of their actions.

    Videocams are in the same position that film cameras were BEFORE the Democratic Convention of '68.

    Until now.

    Cellphone cameras were a start. But this looks like a system that will put publication-quality radio-linked realtime news photography in the hands of the general population.

    Granted it's just stills so far. But it looks to me like John Q Public just got his hands on the class of technological tool that only the network newsies have had for the last 35 years.

    Just in time for the next step in the replacement of the the news establishment with the Internet-based open media. B-)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way