The Problems With Point-and-Shoot Cameras
By Harry McCracken | Monday, November 22, 2010 at 6:38 am
Odd coincidence: TechCrunch’s MG Siegler and I both bought Canon’s PowerShot S95 digital camera last week. He makes a good point about the S95: For all the quality of its results, it feels fundamentally crippled by the fact it doesn’t run apps and isn’t directly connected to the Internet, as smartphone cameras are. All other traditional cameras have the same problem.
So what’s to be done? I’m not sure, especially since I don’t want to buy a point-and-shoot camera that comes with its own pricey 3G data plan. Maybe the best solution would be if it were easy to transfer photos off of an SD card directly onto a smartphone. Anyone know of any way to do that?
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November 22nd, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Ever look in to the EyeFi sd card with wireless built in to auto upload possibly through a smartphone but not sure.
November 22nd, 2010 at 1:09 pm
The fact that a lot more photos are being taken with the iPhone does not mean that the traditional cameras are somehow a failure, or has a "problem" that needs fixing. In fact, those stats say merely that the iPhone is a pretty popular camera. It DOESN'T tell me that the other cameras are getting used significantly less, or that people are replacing their traditional digicams with their iPhone. They have very different uses, and one is not really a great substitute for the other.
That said, yeah, it'd be pretty cool if there were digicams with a better WiFi interface, or some kind of BlueTooth transfer to a phone for uploading.
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I happen to really like a certain P&S phone I purchased recently. What I like even more is that I can download the SD card into my iPad in a matter of moments. Safer than transmitting all those images over 3G or some Wi-Fi hotspot.
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:15 pm
If you have one of the newer smartphones like the Nokia N8 with USB On the Go, you can transfer them directly to the pone by pluging it in via USB. But having tried an N8 myself, I doubt I would need a cheap point-and-shoot which most likely won't be a big improvement over that phone's built-in camera.
November 23rd, 2010 at 2:35 am
Agreed. It can't be any more direct than that. USB On The Go is the most viable solution, since S95 doesn't have wireless connectivity of any sort. And it should work too, assuming the camera doesn't require special driver for mass storage access.
November 22nd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
All you need is simple Bluetooth communication between the camera and the connected phone you're already carrying around.
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:02 pm
It's pretty straightforward, just use a microSD card in an adapter in your digital camera, then put the same card in your smartphone (assuming of course that it has a microSD slot).
November 30th, 2010 at 9:54 am
There is a similar app for Android called EyeFi Server.