Cameramakers missed the Wi-Fi bandwagon on the road to obsolescence

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CHamilton

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Cameramakers missed the Wi-Fi bandwagon on the road to obsolescence



The day of the standalone digital camera has passed for all but professional photographers and those who aren’t paid for their work but have particular needs a phone’s built-in camera can’t meet. Smartphones won by making photos easy to share online.

This isn’t discounting the fact that a smartphone became the camera you always had with you, requiring one fewer gadget and its accompanying batteries and cables when traveling. Early smartphone cameras were of often terrible quality but convenient—now they’re both terrific and convenient. And I’ve talked to many professional photographers for whom a smartphone isn’t a replacement for their DSLRs or mirrorless cameras, lenses, and flashes, but a supplement—a choice that they can reach for, and sometimes reach for first.

Cameramakers had a window of time that stretched over 10 years during which they could have proven their relevance to casual and somewhat more serious photographers. They had a chance to carve out a niche that smartphones would have been contending against, and fight to be the second device someone opted by choice to carry along.

Instead they blew it by insisting on walled gardens or deals with a handful of photo services. They almost entirely missed social sharing, and they continue to misfire today.
 
"The best camera you own is the one in your hand."

There are some cameras with Wifi Capabilities, but not in the way your talking about. My Canon 70D for instance can be controlled remotely on my Cell Phone or Tablet or I can download pictures from it via wifi; however it makes it's own wifi rather then use an existing hot spot.

It's interesting the Sony, one of the big names in both Cell Phones & Cameras hasn't put their two divisions together. There has been a few attempts at making good point & shoots crossed with Cell Phones. Nokia has (had?) a phone out that reportedly had a more "proper" camera attached to it, and I believe Kodak made a P&S Camera with limited cell-phone capabilities.

Canon hasn't been that up-to-date on smart phone stuff. Their two apps I use for my devices are woefully out of date, even just visually. I haven't the foggiest idea what Nikon is doing these days.

peter

peter
 
Granted, I come at this from the perspective of someone who does not have a smartphone (I'm about to have one forced on me by a new job, but that's neither here nor there), but I've tended towards a philosophy of "I want a device to do what it does and do it well, not do 18 other things alongside it that are all sort of lumped in". In this vein, I've stuck to having a normal camera...

...but I do wish I could connect my camera to my computer without a dedicated cable (Canon still uses a different USB connection than my phone charger does, so I end up with different plugs for each...which gets old real fast). Not necessarily so I can load everything onto social media (I remain intentionally aloof from social media to a great extent), but just so I can dump my photos in a timely manner.
 
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