# Why do these DSLR cameras not have wifi built in?



## USCRugbyNo1 (Mar 10, 2012)

It would seem so much easier to move pics from camera to computer.  Just seems logical to me. :meh:


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## jake337 (Mar 10, 2012)

Because then the wouldn't be able to sell the wireless transmitters they make.  All business.

Whats logical to us is not logical to the corporation making the product.


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## 480sparky (Mar 10, 2012)

Because of a thing called Market Research.


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## Destin (Mar 10, 2012)

USCRugbyNo1 said:


> It would seem so much easier to move pics from camera to computer.  Just seems logical to me. :meh:



They will eventually. The new Nikon D4 has majorly awesome tethering abilities. Just give it a few years.


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## USCRugbyNo1 (Mar 10, 2012)

I just want the ability to connect to my network and take photos off the card without pulling it out.  It will be a standard in a few years.


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## 480sparky (Mar 10, 2012)

USCRugbyNo1 said:


> I just want the ability to connect to my network and take photos off the card without pulling it out.  It will be a standard in a few years.



Eyefi.


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## analog.universe (Mar 10, 2012)

There's an accessory that does it now, eventually the technology will advance so it's small enough and cheap enough to put inside the cam without making a fuss...   just like light meters.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Mar 10, 2012)

Who has time to wait all for wifi. Just shoving the card in the 'puter is slow enough, and that 50,000 times faster than an airwave connection


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## chuasam (Mar 10, 2012)

kids these days...when I was young, you had to rewind your roll of film and drop it off at the lab.
You had to actually WANT your pictures.


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## dakkon76 (Mar 10, 2012)

2WheelPhoto said:


> Who has time to wait all for wifi. Just shoving the card in the 'puter is slow enough, and that 50,000 times faster than an airwave connection



I think this is something most people overlook when they think of wireless shooting, or even tethered with a cable... transmission speeds would be MUCH slower than the card write speed. You wouldn't be doing any continuous shooting over WiFi... you'd be doing a lot of waiting.


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## SCraig (Mar 10, 2012)

USCRugbyNo1 said:


> I just want the ability to connect to my network and take photos off the card without pulling it out.  It will be a standard in a few years.


All of my cameras came with this little thing that prevents me having to take the card out.  It's called a "USB Cable".  I plug it in the side of the camera, the software starts up automatically, I click one button, and unplug the camera.


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## Destin (Mar 10, 2012)

You can also shoot "tethered" to a computer using the right software (depends on what camera and OS you have). That way the images can be instantly reviewed on a larger screen to check focus, or lighting, or show to clients as you shoot, etc.


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## Garbz (Mar 10, 2012)

Who wants to wait for half a hour to load photos to the PC? 
Who wants to shoot at 0.25FPS while you wait for the buffer to read out over WiFi. 

Lets face it the process of getting data from the Camera to the PC is slow enough as it is. Give me USB3.0, and decent read bandwidth in the camera anyday. 

Also Wifi has been an optional extra for Nikon's high end cameras since the D2X.


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## Destin (Mar 10, 2012)

analog.universe said:


> There's an accessory that does it now, eventually the technology will advance so it's small enough and cheap enough to put inside the cam without making a fuss...   just like light meters.



The technology is there to get it in an SD card bro... I think if they wanted to integrate it into the camera, it could have EASILY been done by now, and fairly cheap too.


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## imagemaker46 (Mar 11, 2012)

Why not have wifi with phone capabilities, if you wanted to make a long distance call just put a 300mm on the body, for local calls, a 50mm. Also add internet capabilities so you can just watch shows on how to go out and learn to take pictures. Better yet just have someone else take the pictures, that way you don't have to worry about the War and Peace sized instruction manual that would come with the camera. I forgot the remote car starter and hair cutting abilities.

How difficult is it to just put a card in and take one out? Are the photos you shoot so important that spending an extra 30 seconds matters. Is the world waiting for the next photo you shoot?

Technology has highjacked the learning curve to really understand photography, It's not about speed, it's about spending the time and enjoying what can be produced with  the brain behind the the piece of hardware in your hands. Why does everyone keep pushing for faster cameras, when all it takes is a single frame to produce a great image?


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## gsgary (Mar 11, 2012)

chuasam said:


> kids these days...when I was young, you had to rewind your roll of film and drop it off at the lab.
> You had to actually WANT your pictures.



And you didn't having to sit infront of a computer for hours editing hundreds of photos


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## jonathon94 (Mar 12, 2012)

gsgary said:


> chuasam said:
> 
> 
> > kids these days...when I was young, you had to rewind your roll of film and drop it off at the lab.
> ...



Maybe not but some of these old-timers spent hours manually editing photos in a darkroom. I recently met a guy who has been doing film for years and is just now learning Digital (with a Nikon D200) and the stuff he was telling me I found amazing. I honestly don't think Digital has fully caught up with Film


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## SCraig (Mar 12, 2012)

jonathon94 said:


> Maybe not but some of these old-timers spent hours manually editing photos in a darkroom. I recently met a guy who has been doing film for years and is just now learning Digital (with a Nikon D200) and the stuff he was telling me I found amazing. I honestly don't think Digital has fully caught up with Film


Got news for you ... there are a LOT of people who did that and are still doing it.  I haven't done any darkroom work for a lot of years but when I did I loved it.  It's amazing what can be done in a darkroom and many, perhaps most, of the digital techniques used in software these days have their roots in darkroom techniques.


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## IByte (Mar 12, 2012)

Destin said:
			
		

> You can also shoot "tethered" to a computer using the right software (depends on what camera and OS you have). That way the images can be instantly reviewed on a larger screen to check focus, or lighting, or show to clients as you shoot, etc.



As far as Nikon family the d5000 body and up you can use this Dragon Motion software.  I use it when I'm shooting.


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## SteffJay (Mar 13, 2012)

please. even the eye-fi card is slow as crap. even if they do start doing that, it's going to be slow as hell for a really long time. too many kinks.

just get a fast card reader and be glad that developing film isn't the only way to see your photos.


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## IByte (Mar 13, 2012)

SteffJay said:
			
		

> please. even the eye-fi card is slow as crap. even if they do start doing that, it's going to be slow as hell for a really long time. too many kinks.
> 
> just get a fast card reader and be glad that developing film isn't the only way to see your photos.



It all depends how well your network is setup, how large are the files being transferred and are you(generaly speaking)  transferring RAW as well JPGs.  There're are too many variables at play to call the wifis card crap, it's not end all solutions but a good tool in your photog arsenal.


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## davisphotos (Mar 13, 2012)

I use the EyeFi sometimes on commercial shoots, and I have a router that sits in the room that I use for tethering. Anything farther than about 15 feet, and the transmission speed goes to hell. It's also a bit clunky to setup, but at under $100, it's way cheaper than the Canon wireless transmitter. Built in wifi would be incredibly useful to me in the studio, but I wouldn't use it to transfer images from the memory card, I have a Delkin imagerouter for that that can download 4 16GB cards in about 15 minutes.


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## pgriz (Mar 13, 2012)

The camera makers have not yet woken up to the avalance that Apple has unleashed upon the world.  The archaic methods of communicating between camera and flash are so 1950's compared with what's currently possible.  Why can't the flash unit have its own address (IP or otherwise), which is addressed by the camera?  And then, the communication between the two devices can be much more rich than what is being done currently.  Why can't the camera send its control information to a sensing device?  Why can't the camera be in turn controlled by an external device by radio instead of the the current method of wired tethers?  At this stage, there is no reason why the mike has to be physically connected to the camera - with a bluetooth connection, you could set up the mike wherever you wanted and have it feed the audio to the camera, without worrying about the sound quality of the camera...  The ability to communicate between devices changes everything.


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## Village Idiot (Mar 13, 2012)

IByte said:


> SteffJay said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's crap. Even transferring large amount of raw images from a notebook to a server via a wireless connection was a very slow and tedious process. A card reader is much, much faster.


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## IByte (Mar 13, 2012)

Well everyone knows (hopefully) unless you are connected via LAN. Wifi is just as slow as snail mail, but what do you expect from a quarter size wireless device.  The initial setup is like any other process is time comsuming for the first time.  I had less issues setting up my card than I did creating catalogs in Lightroom.  IMO, they were made for P&S.


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## imagemaker46 (Mar 14, 2012)

Why can't a camera just be a camera?


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## austinpcherry (Mar 15, 2012)

pgriz said:


> The camera makers have not yet woken up to the avalance that Apple has unleashed upon the world.  The archaic methods of communicating between camera and flash are so 1950's compared with what's currently possible.  Why can't the flash unit have its own address (IP or otherwise), which is addressed by the camera?  And then, the communication between the two devices can be much more rich than what is being done currently.  Why can't the camera send its control information to a sensing device?  Why can't the camera be in turn controlled by an external device by radio instead of the the current method of wired tethers?  At this stage, there is no reason why the mike has to be physically connected to the camera - with a bluetooth connection, you could set up the mike wherever you wanted and have it feed the audio to the camera, without worrying about the sound quality of the camera...  The ability to communicate between devices changes everything.



I was thinking this same thing earlier. It would be very possible to LAN all your components together and use a computer to control it all. The issue for me in this is that it takes the art out of it. For a generic photo studio, where they have a canned setup the above would work great.


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## Alex_B (Mar 15, 2012)

austinpcherry said:


> pgriz said:
> 
> 
> > The camera makers have not yet woken up to the avalance that Apple has unleashed upon the world.  The archaic methods of communicating between camera and flash are so 1950's compared with what's currently possible.  Why can't the flash unit have its own address (IP or otherwise), which is addressed by the camera?  And then, the communication between the two devices can be much more rich than what is being done currently.  Why can't the camera send its control information to a sensing device?  Why can't the camera be in turn controlled by an external device by radio instead of the the current method of wired tethers?  At this stage, there is no reason why the mike has to be physically connected to the camera - with a bluetooth connection, you could set up the mike wherever you wanted and have it feed the audio to the camera, without worrying about the sound quality of the camera...  The ability to communicate between devices changes everything.
> ...



And the next step would be that I need a virus scanner and a firewall for my camera (and probably for my coffee mug as well)

.. no thanks


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## IByte (Mar 15, 2012)

Alex_B said:
			
		

> And the next step would be that I need a virus scanner and a firewall for my camera (and probably for my coffee mug as well)
> 
> .. no thanks


If they could make an Ethernet port on the camera, it would probably a seperate accessory or on the d4 models.


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## matthewo (Mar 15, 2012)

The d4 does have an ethernet port and a wifi option via an accessory


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## pgriz (Mar 15, 2012)

For data transfer, the ethernet is a much better way than wifi due to bandwidth.  However...  If we separate the image upload issue from the device control issue, we need much less bandwidth for control and communication between devices.  So it makes more sense to me to put radio control in the camera to communicate the information to the flashes.  Canon is doing this with their new 5DIII, and their new flash.  What I think users would want (but obviously not the manufactureres) is to have an open standard for inter-device communication.   Then, you could have apps that are based on smartphones communicating with the camera...  Your smartphone could be the camera controller, where you indicate the DOF you want, and it would read the distance to the subject from the camera lens, determine the appropriate f/stop, and if working with ambient light, adjust the shutter speed to the minimum (handheld), and if that is still not sufficient, would boost the camera's ISO to an appropriate level.  If your flashes were part of the configuration, they would "announce" themselves to the camera and tell it their power and zoom setting.  All kinds of options and controls then become possible.  Eh, we can dream.  However, I think that the existing manufacturers will be too concerned about losing their market share and will try very hard to prevent this kind of open standards.  

On the other hand, I don't really see why Google won't enter this field with their smartphones, and get someone to make them a camera that would intergrate with their devices.  And the way Apple is going with their iPad's we may get to the point that "real" cameras are only for the fuddy-duddies.


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## IByte (Mar 15, 2012)

Probably your phone may be able to become a wireless controller now that would be usefully.


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## Destin (Mar 15, 2012)

IByte said:


> Probably your phone may be able to become a wireless controller now that would be usefully.



This has become a reality with the Nikon D4's built in ethernet ports. There are going to be some amazing remote setups possible with that camera.


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