10-27-2005, 09:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 2,968
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Canon PowerShot SD430 Wireless
"Canon, a leader in photographic and imaging technology, today releases the Digital IXUS WIRELESS – Canon's first wireless digital compact camera. Bringing IXUS style and performance to the wireless age, the camera's Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b) support offers users a new level of flexibility and convenience in digital photography. The Digital IXUS WIRELESS supports several innovative features, including automatic wireless image transfer and wireless control of camera shooting functions from a PC. It comes supplied with the Wireless Printer Adapter (WA-1E) for out-of-the-box wireless direct printing to any Canon PictBridge compatible printer."
This camera becomes the first Canon model to feature build-in WiFi (802.11b). It looks like it is essentially identical as the SD450 but with the WiFi added (5 mp, 3x zoom). Phil from dpreview.com claims that this camera is more of "a solution looking for a problem". Interesting point actually. When some digital-SLRs first introduced wireless in cameras, I was very excited about then. I can see how you can transfer images directly to a storage device or even a printer. However, there are going to be two concerns - 1) Wireless chips suck battery power like no other; and 2) Will people really find using wireless easier than plugging the camera into a USB dock? These days printer manufacturers are working harder at creating one-touch solutions so I don't know if going wireless is going to solve anything. I do however think that a wireless solution is cool, but I believe it makes more sense in mid to higher end DSLRs where many photos are usually being taken in rapid succession and going wireless could not only increase the storage capacity but also maybe even the write speed (bus 1 writes to the CF card, bus 2 writes via wireless?  ).
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