social camera

The Fuji X-Pro 1 sounds fantastic. Big sensor. Some great looking prime lenses and a great EVF. The rumoured $1700 for the body plus $600 for lenses sounds a bit too rich for me so if an Olympus or Panasonic with a great built-in EVF and updated sensor becomes available I still might end up with Micro Four Thirds. Now if only there was a built-in GPS and WiFi option in a MFT 4/3 or Fuji camera then I would have the perfect social camera. Much as I love the current crop of cameras and the cameras I have, it's very annoying that none of them has built-in Internet sharing and integration and an app platform (except the iPhone but except for Slow Shutter I quickly tire of its limited camera; when compared to the N8 and my Fuji X-10 the iPhone 4 camera still seems like a toy)

So I am looking for a camera w/built-in Fuji X100-like hybrid viewfinder + interchangeable lenses. Anybody know of one :-) ? Perhaps Fuji will make one such camera in 2012? Pretty please? Oh and it would be so awesome if it had a GPS and WiFi connectivity built-in too so we can finally have a social camera that's not also a phone !

Cisco Flip débacle lessons:

• Social Cameras must have wireless connectivity (I like Dave Winer's crazy good Social Camera idea but there's lots of room for innovation here that Cisco, Nokia and many others have missed and that companies like Color, Eye-fi et al are trying)  &
• Magic fairy dust won't turn Enterprise companies like Cisco (or the late lamented mismanaged Nortel) into consumer companies :-)

The N8 camera software is awkward and it pains me that the iPhone has become the social camera instead of the N8 or other much better cameraphones but I still am in love with the photos it takes like this macro photo of a flower in Cedar Cottage.

Inspired by Jen's 2,045 Days with a Camera Phone:

1. I have over 35000 (35823 as of this writing) public photos tagged "cameraphone" on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roland/tags/cameraphone since I bought my Nokia 7610 1 megapixel cameraphone back in June 2004
2. Over 90% of those were with Nokia Cameraphones
3. most of them were with the N95 (7643) and N82 (20, 554 as of this writing)
4. Combine the 35000 public plus over 10000 on my private kid flickr account plus the ones that I didn't download and I have over 50000
5. Needless to say I love my N82 :-) and its "triumph of the lofi" sensor
6. I also love the non blurriness of my digital SLR and Lightroom but hate the fact that WiFi and GPS are not built into DSLRs (they both should be! All cameras including cameraphones and SLRs and point and shoots will be social cameras in 10 years or less!!!!)
7. And like Jen I have tried the N8 under NDA and it's fantastic
8. Therefore even though (like Jen), Symbian is not my fav operating system anymore:
9. N8 + ShoZu + gravity = a winner so I am getting one (and an iPhone 4 as previously blogged; it would be silly for me not to use the awesome cameraphone power of the iPhone 4)
10. And Jen, I assume when you write:
    1. " I will be purchasing a Nokia N8 and then tracking down a QT developer to help me flesh out the code of my mobile app idea. Here's to 2,045 more days of camera phone photography. ;o)"
    2. that python is ok? Right Jen :-) ? If so I'll help you write a prototype. I don't do C++ :-)

Dave Winer has been writing for many years about a social camera. I have been writing for years about how ShoZu + Nokia Cameraphones are killer apps and built-in ShoZu would be a killer app (e.g. Nokia should buy ShoZu).

My current thinking is:

Canon or Nikon's sensors and lens +  Nokia phone with "comes with world wide connectivity and built-in easy to use app for uploading photos and HD video to all popular social sites e.g. flickr, facebook, picasa" + sideload to your Computer and OVI files (i.e. Eye-fi done right, not as an aftermarket kludge - don't get me wrong, unlike Dave I love my Eye-Fi card; it's done well but at the end of the day it's a hack!) for backup in real time using ShoZu-like technology to do it in the background and auto-resume if connectivity lost  =

an awesome social camera that would sell well

The current Nokia solution is Share Online which is:

• a) hard to use 
• b) hard to configure 
• c) doesn't work in the  background and auto-resume like ShoZu  
• d) requires folks to figure out the whole "3G/WiFi don't automatically switch to 3G when I am roaming" dance

As Dave points out if Nokia doesn't do it (and Nokia is the only company with all the pieces including camera hardware and software, ShoZu-like tech, etc) and the biz dev clout to do something like a "Comes with bandwidth" partnership like Amazon did for the Kindle), somebody else will do it e.g. Apple or Google or some social camera upstart.