Wi-Fi in a pocket-size digital camera

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 03/27/2006 8:58 AM | Life

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

When Datascrip announced the new credit card-sized Canon Ixus Wireless, the first question that popped up in my mind was ""What's the big deal?""

Connecting any digital camera to a PC or a Mac machine has become so easy with the help of the USB standard. It usually works perfectly the first time, even when we have not installed the software on the host machine.

Wireless technology in photography is by no means a new development. Many of us may have used it at a self-service printing kiosk to print the images we have taken with our cellphones. The most common wireless technology used is naturally the Bluetooth. Bluetooth is not really fast enough to quickly upload dozens of pictures from the cellphone's memory to the PC inside the kiosk, but it is a very convenient alternative to plugging the flash memory card to the card reader.

However, Bluetooth does not have the reach and the high data transfer rate for connecting a camera to a Wireless LAN (WLAN) access point. So, when Canon announced this new product recently, I wanted to find out whether its Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b feature could also connect it via a network access point such as the Linksys WCG200 that I am using at home.

Courtesy of Datascrip, I got an opportunity to play around with the Ixus Wireless, the first Ixus with the 802.11b capability from Canon. They also sent me a lunchbox-sized SELPHY CP710 direct photo printer.

With 3x optical zoom and 5.0 MP (megapixel) capability, the Ixus Wireless is a great compact camera overall. It is very easy to use. I should admit that perhaps I am a bit biased here, as I have tried out quite a few Canon digital cameras and I have become familiar with the interface needed. Still, I was able to use it largely without reading the manual. Of course, the more complex operations would require a lot of page turning. As I had only four days to use it, I just used the general functions.

The camera also has a 2.0-inch LCD screen. There is a dedicated button for turning on the Wi-Fi function. The box also includes a Wi-Fi print adapter for the printer. It has to be plugged into the USB port of the printer. If you have the new SELPHY CP710 or CP510, you will not need an external adaptor to power the module, as it will draw the power from the printer. In case your printer does not support it, the box also has a tiny power adaptor. So, keep in mind that these accessories belong to the camera, not to the printer.

The printer, CP710, came with the USB ports, a retractable USB cable and a tray for the print paper. By the way, to ensure that no one else with a Wi-Fi device can download your images to the printer via the Wi-Fi print adapter, users have to register the adapter with the camera. The camera can register up to eight target devices, including a printer, an access point or a laptop computer. Out of the box, the printer Wi-Fi module is already registered with the camera, so I did not have to do anything.

The data transmission is secured using various standards including encryption so it is next to impossible for others to steal the images as they are being downloaded to the printer.

I had no problem connecting the camera to the direct printer once the Wi-Fi module was plugged into the printer. Printing can also be controlled from the camera. We can use any other printer as long as it is PictBridge-compliant. PictBridge, as you may recall, is an industry standard that enables images captured by a camera from one vendor to be directly printed on a photo printer from a different vendor without going through a computer.

Once the Ixus Wireless camera is connected to a PC with the wireless link, we can set it to immediately transfer each of the images it captures to the computer to be displayed on the screen using the supplied software. The connection also enables remote shooting, so the wireless camera can actually be used for candid photography. This can be bad news, unfortunately, especially if this device falls into the hands of tech-savvy perverts.

At any rate, the Wi-Fi feature should be a welcome addition. It can enrich the way we use our cameras. It can be a great solution for those who like to take pictures of birds as well as other wildlife in their habitat. Wi-Fi must certainly be on the list of ""specs"" for my next camera upgrade.

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