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Wi-Fi do you need it?

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Joo

well sports and event photographers can use it.

Especially in sports if you have to send images back asap. Currently they have to run up to the media office and hook up their laptops and email images to their editor.

With WIFI they can have a laptop sitting connected to the internet and automatically transmit images without having to leave the side lines.

There are still some hurdles to overcome though

Event photographers that currently often have helpers running with cards between the sales booth and the photographer.

Things like that

I could also think of a camera set up for remote photography out in a blind. you wouldnt have to be there but still be able to see the photographs immediately.

There are uses for it

--
Michael Salzlechner
http://www.PalmsWestPhoto.com
 
Don't the sports photographers usually pick which shots they're going to send? Don't many of them caption them, too? (I know at least one who does both).

Do you think an editor really wants to get EVERY shot taken at the event, real time?
PalmsWestPhoto said:
Especially in sports if you have to send images back asap.
Currently they have to run up to the media office and hook up their
laptops and email images to their editor.

With WIFI they can have a laptop sitting connected to the internet
and automatically transmit images without having to leave the side
lines.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.outboundmusic.com
Your link to independent music!
 
DavidP said:
A friend of mine says differently, though.
Click to expand...
All 802.11g equipment is backwards compatible with 802.11b. 802.11a is the "incompatible" one, but there are a fair number of dual-band 802.11a/802.11b products too.

--
Steve
 
Donald

actually not that bad. If you think that the internet even if you have a good T1 connection is only about 1.5MBits/s and you can get wireless networks that are much faster than that if you dont have a problem with transmitting them on a fast internet connection then you will not have problems with wireless either.

--
Michael Salzlechner
http://www.PalmsWestPhoto.com
 
Tell that to my buddy who could never get his wireless-G stuff to play well his his wireless-B stuff. Regardless of what Linksys claims.
kanefsky said:
DavidP said:
A friend of mine says differently, though.
Click to expand...
All 802.11g equipment is backwards compatible with 802.11b.
802.11a is the "incompatible" one, but there are a fair number of
dual-band 802.11a/802.11b products too.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.outboundmusic.com
Your link to independent music!
 
DavidP said:
Tell that to my buddy who could never get his wireless-G stuff to
play well his his wireless-B stuff. Regardless of what Linksys
claims.
Click to expand...
Well in that case, you could say that 802.11b is only "theoretically" compatible with 802.11b :-) I'm sure there are examples of equipment that didn't work well together, especially when it was new.

--
Steve
 
In my studio the computer is in another room. You shoot, once the session is over, you get the customer/model at the computer and have him/her place an order right there and for the shots they like. Fast and efficient, and its proven the customer will order more shots if you show them right away!

--
Joel
http://www.pbase.com/joels

'A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.'
 
and in practice , that there is compatibility.

Depends on the vendors. For some unknown reason, I use apple gear on my PC network for wireless and it works great.

any 802.11b device will switch the whole network back to the slower speed. One way is to have two wireless hubs one of each, then each standard hooks into your network through it's inteneded standard. This too, in practice works well.

--
-------------------------------------
Off Topic ? ? ? Tell someone who cares.
Get a life!
 
Ken Phillips said:
... and is dying before it really gets started.
Click to expand...
Well, I can't speak for the US, but here in Europe (or at least The Netherlands), Bluetooth really takes off...

It's very popular and used in many applications. There are a huge number of Bluetooth wireless handsfree sets for mobile phones. Everybody seems to have one nowadays.

There are also Bluetooth GPS modules which are very popular with PDA owners for car navigation.

There are also several Bluetooth carkits available (from various brands) that allow you to use your mbile phone in the car for handsfree calls without taking it out of your jacket or pocket. Saab even has a car coming up (or it's already on the market) with Bluetooth fully integrated in the car itself.

About the speed, Bluetooth 2.0 promises speeds of 4, 8, and 12 Mbit/s.

Grtz...
 
I get by without it now, but only because I have no choice. WiFi would definitely enhance my business, and you can be sure that as soon as a good, reasonably-priced solution is available, I'll get it.

I shoot events where having the photos available immediately would be a great benefit. I could shoot a category of participants, or a class of competitors, or a breed of dog, and have those photos sent back to a folder on the host machine. When that particular sub-event was over, I could simply radio back to the assistant to move the new files (that were just sent) to a new directory named for the sub-event that had just finished. No more sorting, no more trips from our trailer or booth to the shooting location, no more time spent changing cards or waiting for a card dump to complete so I could get back to shoot the next category. No more having to keep an eye on the space remaining on your CF card, either.

For photogs who don't need the files to be instantly available, or who don't fill up a CF card in a short time, or who don't need to sort by category/sub-event, then WiFi won't be a necessity. Those guys should be glad that Canon didn't include WiFi as a feature that was built-in (like Nikon did, for example) - otherwise, the MkII's price would have been even more dear.
 
TAZorich said:
  • otherwise, the
MkII's price would have been even more dear.
Click to expand...
If I were a working pro, I could basically care less about the price so much as I'd care about performance and convenience.

I'm not a working pro and it seems Canon doesn't want non-pros to have anything affordable that's better then a 10D. I just want nine megapixels and I'll be happy with D30 like features, but with the newer technology of course. I'd want it to have 1D MkII like dynamic range and clean ISO's up to 800. I'll even be happy with the same AF that's in the D30. Don't need anything else. MP's, clean 800 ISO and a decent seven stop dynamic range.

I'd be happy to spend twenty-five hundred (US) for a basic model of this nature. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to whip up something as basic as this.
 
Paul Pope said:
Lecter said:
I'd love it on the 1D-MkII

802.11g however, not like the USB 1.1 fiasco.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Perhaps I can shed a little light on this.

First of all, in general terms, wi-fi is simply a wireless connection to a computer network. You can have a wireless access point connected to your own local area network, in which case any device fitted with a wirelsss card is connected to that network as if it were connected with a wire. At that point the issues become range and transmission speed.

A decent wireless access point will permit a reliable connection within a couple of hundred feet if there are no obstructions, and somewhat less indoors depending on walls, etc. You can have multiple access points on the same network, so you can extend the range by placing them at various spots within your environment.

802.11g is currently the fastest of the variants, and is backwards compatible with 802.11b, which was the most common previous protocol. You can mix b and g devices on the same network with no performance penalty.

If the network you are connected to has internet access, your wireless device has the same access to the internet as any other device on the network. Increasingly, public places are providing wi-fi access. Most US Starbucks locations have public access, as do a number of public places, including many airports, stadiiums and arenas.

So what is the significance for a photographer? And what are the issues making a wi-fi device useful with your camera?

In the studio a wireless device connected to your camera would theoretically allow you to download pictures to a computer during a shoot. Depending on how the device worked (more in a minute) this could facilitate a situation where someone could be reviewing and processing pictures while the photographer was shooting, and could reduce the number of images to be downloaded by the photographer when the shoot is finished.

On location there are even more interesting possibilities. Since a wi-fi device is itself a device on a network, one possibility would be to transmit images to an internet address without ever downloading them to a local computer.

But how useful such a device is in the real world depends on how much control the photographer has over how it operates. As capable as 801.11g is, it is no match for 8mb/8fps. It would quickly back up with any normal shooting volume with a camera like the 1DMKII or the ID or Nikon D2H for that matter. So the ability to control (a) which images are transmitted (e.g. distinguishing between jpg and raw, or designated selected images), and (b) when they are transmitted (e.g. real time, when the camera is idle, when a function button is pressed, etc.) are critical in designing these devices so they are really useful rather than wiz-bang techno-toys.

Again, since a wi-fi device is just another node on the network, two-way communication is entirely reasonable, and there is no reason why someone could not communicate with or even control the camera from another computer, while the photographer is at work or even with an unmanned camera. Imagine someone being able to review and select images for download while the photographer is still shooting....

Since any of these cameras can communicate with a computer, including remote control, via a firewire port, there is no reason why any vendor with access to appropriate Canon SDKs could not produce a very functional wireless device. The way the 1D is desgined it would be an external device, but the hardware could be very small, use little power, and the software potential is pretty much limitless.

Within a relatively short period of time these devices will abound, with functionality ranging from transmitting to your own computer or storage device, to full-blown two-way communication for immediate transmission of images to remote locations.

We are really entering a whole new age in the way images are handled, and I would be surprised if these wireless devices will not shortly become as much a part of a professional photographer's kit as lenses and memory cards.

Kenny Frank
 
Chaos Angel said:
I'm not a working pro and it seems Canon doesn't want non-pros to
have anything affordable that's better then a 10D. I just want
nine megapixels and I'll be happy with D30 like features, but with
the newer technology of course. I'd want it to have 1D MkII like
dynamic range and clean ISO's up to 800. I'll even be happy with
the same AF that's in the D30. Don't need anything else. MP's,
clean 800 ISO and a decent seven stop dynamic range.
Click to expand...
I'd like a brand new house that's 1250 sq. ft. for half the price of the 2500 sq. ft. houses but they just won't build them that way.

--
Steve
 
Lecter said:
I'd love it on the 1D-MkII

802.11g however, not like the USB 1.1 fiasco.

--
-------------------------------------
Off Topic ? ? ? Tell someone who cares.
Get a life!
Click to expand...
I share the same fantasies as every one else about this new product. The idea of 3 or 4 photographers covering an event with their images going to a PC for an assistant to cull, edit, print, or forward to an editor is appealing. Not to mention with camera/computer communication the assistant could dial in WB, contrast or saturation of individual cameras to simplify post processing, but has any one noticed that the price for this 40GB device is $1800 while a 4GB Lexar card is $1199.95 (B&H)? IF it works, sounds like a bargain to me…

BCC
 
kanefsky said:
Chaos Angel said:
I'm not a working pro and it seems Canon doesn't want non-pros to
have anything affordable that's better then a 10D. I just want
nine megapixels and I'll be happy with D30 like features, but with
the newer technology of course. I'd want it to have 1D MkII like
dynamic range and clean ISO's up to 800. I'll even be happy with
the same AF that's in the D30. Don't need anything else. MP's,
clean 800 ISO and a decent seven stop dynamic range.
Click to expand...
I'd like a brand new house that's 1250 sq. ft. for half the price
of the 2500 sq. ft. houses but they just won't build them that way.
Click to expand...
Sure they do. Housing, land aside, is basically a per sq ft building cost. Check with your insurance person and you'll see that home replacement is figured on sqft.

In the meantime there's not a good reason why Canon can't put out a midpriced sensor body to fill the pricing gap between a 10D and a 1D MkII.

I can't believe you're being so happy with Canon over creating this hole in product and pricing. You the consumer is the one being screwed, not Canon.
 
A friend designs projects based on embedded Linux and WIFI (barcode scanning etc). He cobbled together a system that uses the Canon 'tethered' shooting system to download onto a device similar to a Flashtrax and then transmit by WIFI.

A great toy that I personally couldn't think of a use for.

--
Kenny

If you really want to know what I shoot with - look under my profile.
 
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