Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A place to beam your photo!

Here is confirmation that perhaps infrared capability is not as rare as we think, especially if a vendor (this one seems to be Italian) is prepared to incorporate it into a photo kiosk in a public place. I recently received a picture of a photo kiosk at Geneva Airport that has IR capability (including other normal slots for various memory cards). I guess it makes sense if you just wanted a photo from your vacation to give to your friend as you depart at the airport - for keepsakes, and to remember the good times by!
In case you haven't noticed, most digital cameras have their memory slots together with the battery slot - so if you want to just pull out a quick photo to print, you have to shut down the camera completely! That makes no sense. Beaming the photo to the kiosk seems a cleaner approach. Besides it is less likely you will pick up any viruses if you did not plug your memory card into some strange slot.....(especially on holiday ;-)
Anyway, if anyone has pictures of other IR examples, do send me a photo and I will report it here.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Beaming 10 megapixel photos work!

Here is something you don't see everyday - beaming photos from one camera to another.
I came across these Fujifilm FinepixZ cameras at London Heathrow's Terminal camera shop and decided to check it out. (notice the security attachments still on the cameras as I played with them at the counter!)
I took a random picture at the shop with the black camera and beamed it to the pink camera at the counter (see video).



10 megapixel photo beamed in about 6 seconds - not bad! This uses infrared. Definitely faster than Bluetooth.
There was no indication if the Finepix camera implemented IrSimple. The button I pressed was simply labelled "IR". The sales assistant did not know that the camera had this capability until I showed it. I sure hope Fujifilm would promote this capability more visibly! A quick check on Google showed that these cameras are already available in UK, Europe, USA and also parts of Asia.
So why would anyone want to take a picture and beam it to another camera? I can see the instances when you and your friends on holiday have just taken a group picture and everyone also wants the one. All the cameras pop up and the group hangs around for the next 15 min while one camera after another is used to take 'just another photo'. If the cameras had infrared, the group photo could be beamed to each other at the bar!
Is that all? I suppose if a handphone has the same infrared standard, the camera can beam the photo to the phone too. Now, that will be an interesting situation. I can then imagine camera-to-cameras be primarily beaming photos. But if a handphone had infrared too, the camera can beam photos to it and vice-versa. But the handphone can also beam to each other - other file types can be beamed too. How about music and music videos? Wouldn't it be great if iPhone had infrared?