[thibs]

The sad part may be that there is little to nothing between those two company's.

In 2012 I was at Photokina at the stand from Samsung. In my hands the NX210. It had a social media sharing option. So I made a selfie on the stand and put it with help from the Samsung rep and some patients on my Facebookpagina. Directly from the camera to my Facebookpagina. This should be a standard today, without using a smartphone, but in reality it's not possible. Yes Samsung isn't on the page anymore, but that is not a good excuses to ignore the digital age we all live in now.

Whatever I think about auto upload to facebook, I completely agree with you.
Should be standard. At least if they want to compete at least a little with phone companies...

[monochrome]

Whatever I think about auto upload to facebook, I completely agree with you.
Should be standard. At least if they want to compete at least a little with phone companies...

They'd need to add a cellular antenna and sim card (EMEI #, etc.) to each camera for that to work. Or have a browser in the ROM to link to the net through the WiFi-connected phone.

[RonHendriks1966]

They'd need to add a cellular antenna and sim card (EMEI #, etc.) to each camera for that to work. Or have a browser in the ROM to link to the net through the WiFi-connected phone.

I looked into that today. You can buy today a samsung tablet for 278 euro that has the option of 4G Internet connection with adding a sim card and a subscription to a phone company. You cannot buy any camera from any Brand to match that! Not even the big sportscamera's that need connection to their agencies like D5 or 1Dx ii.

[thibs]

They'd need to add a cellular antenna and sim card (EMEI #, etc.) to each camera for that to work. Or have a browser in the ROM to link to the net through the WiFi-connected phone.

Nope. They juste need a wifi (wifi already in) link to whatever device providing internet connectivity.

[monochrome]

Nope. They juste need a wifi (wifi already in) link to whatever device providing internet connectivity.

But they have a device link and an app already. How would you get the camera to automatically control the phone's browser? It could be an EyeFi sort of deal that uploads to private cloud storage, sure, but how to direct to social media? You still have to control the social media site from the camera.

Of course you can move photos right now with ImageSync, then upload them to social media using the phone.

[RonHendriks1966]

They'd need to add a cellular antenna and sim card (EMEI #, etc.) to each camera for that to work. Or have a browser in the ROM to link to the net through the WiFi-connected phone.

With my own phone company subscription I can add a second number for 10 euro a month (so for a second (or 3th or 4th) smartphone or tablet or any device) and they can share the maximum transferbundle I have or when you pay more, you can use endlesly Internet traffic true 4G. When are camera's going to give that option. Not in 2016, but maybe in 2020?

[mecrox]

They'd need to add a cellular antenna and sim card (EMEI #, etc.) to each camera for that to work. Or have a browser in the ROM to link to the net through the WiFi-connected phone.

Tom Hogan speculates that this will be there but only for top of the range bodies in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. No holding my breath for more. I am beginnng to think rather gloomily that the main camera companies are all slipping into managing decline mode. Serious innovation rather than tinkering and mucho marketing may be thin on the ground ...

[RonHendriks1966]

Nope. They juste need a wifi (wifi already in) link to whatever device providing internet connectivity.

Connecting the things on internet is something that is growing big. Just having wifi is not of the future, but something that is almost from the past.

[monochrome]

The massive DDoS attacks that shutdown part of the US Internet backbone Friday was launched from a global network of IoT devices like DVR's, home security cameras and insecure WiFi routers. IoT is not a good idea.

[Kunzite]

I'm scared of this IoT mania; and the worst thing is, we don't even need all those devices connected. WiFi routers, obviously, but I'm even reading about toilets?
People are crazy about this, and jumping heads-on without caring for the consequences.

Do we need to have our DSLR cameras made into IoTs? I know I don't need (nor want) mine.

[monochrome]

I don't need to turn on my lights from my phone if I get home a bit late from work, and I sure don't need my fridge to tell me to stop on the way to get milk and eggs because my son just had a massive after-school omelette.

And I don't need to upload straight to FB from my dSLR. I have a phone with a decent camera for that.

[murrayp]

Ricoh has a long history of buying office equipment companies whose technology has been superseded. An example is GESTETNER, manufacturer of mimeograph machines and mechanical drafting tools (and some more modern stuff). Such companies own valuable patents and distribution networks that can serve as a source of base corporate knowledge, manufacturing processes that have value and marketing / distribution infrastructure. I wouldn't be surprised if Ricoh bought something like Tiffen (a private company) just for the distribution and access to Dealers - not that the related products would hurt anything.

You have to look beneath the obvious surface reasons for an acquisition to understand the benefit. I'd bet EyeFi's hosting service came with many many underlying valuable components.

i don't know monochrome, as a professional programmer of many years and having worked on a lot of net based systems, i find it hard to figure out what it is that Eye-Fi actually has that might be of true value to Ricoh. It seems to me that they are very agressively trying to claw back lost ground on the Pentax name - and it was (and still is to my mind) a very prestigious name indeed - so very many famous journalistic pics were taken with Pentax.

as an aside, i started my SLR life on Olympus - the OM1 was the sweetest sweetest film camera i ever owned - what i could capture with that camera was just awesome. However, i also owned Ricoh student cameras for teaching, Pentax cameras for the huge number of lenses to be had for specialist work and a whole Minolta set for weddings etc. The Minolta set went in 2004. The Olympus went a year or two earlier and saw out the rest of its life being used by one of my sons at uni to master the old ways. The Ricohs i gave away here and there. The Pentax i've always kept. I bought one of the first #istD and then a string of other Pentax cameras and more lenses until i've ended up with my lovely K5 while i wait to justify spending more on a full frame Pentax

In other words I'm a Pentax person and have been for like 50 years - with a lots of lenses going back to early Asahi ones - some of which are beautiful and take awesome pics.

I love Pentax - i snicker when i see tourists with their Canons and their Nikons that they hardly know how to use with their big phallic lenses - knowing that to get the same power as i have they have paid many times over what i have paid. I also feel a little safer traveling the world with a Pentax - who's going to steal it - most people have never heard of it - they steal Nikons and Canons. Once i left my K5 with a very expensive lense on a side table in a cheap hotel used by backpackers from all over - with a constant flow of people - but an hour later when i got back breathlessly certain it would be long gone. No - it was still there.

I love Pentax - and i'm happy they are part of Ricoh - very prestigious company

Pentax good. Eye-Fi back end, not so much so.

Unless Eye-Fi has solid hold on some wickedly solid patents i very much doubt they are worth anything. Building a cloud based, scalable, back end for picture management is not rocket science these days though there's a lot to be done still in image compression, transfer and especially cloud based post processing. What Eye-Fi had - was clunky to say the least. Think of it as a very poor version of something like Flickr that was hard wired as an address in their cards and phone apps.

Pentax wants to win back ground - and it produces absolutely excellent cameras and lenses (though not enough) to do so. It will invest in any other tech that helps it become again the name it used to be. But some investments will be bad. I think Eye-Fi was a bad investment unless they got it very cheap (eg they paid nothing for it but guaranteed the staff some years tenure).

Let's hope they do not make a hash of it.

[stevebrot]

no i'm not - i'm assuming they bought the cloud services so that they could get some value from pentax customers sending their pictures to their cloud storage system

You are most likely wrong.

As noted elsewhere on this thread (you did read the thread, right?), the purchasing entity was Ricoh's research arm and is not related directly to any of its product entities.

BTW: Welcome to the Pentax Forums!


Steve

[monochrome]

@murrayp Don't forget a unit of the office equipment company, not Ricoh Imaging, bought EyeFi Cloud services. Ricoh is morphing into document management company just as the rest of the equipment companies are. It's about software and services; the machines are leased. My company (Fortune 50) images as many documents as possible. We're physically removing file cabinets to force people to stop using paper. Who knows what the plan is for EyeFi? - except it probably isn't image hosting or cloud image storage.

FWIW I started in 1969 on a Spotmatic, then a KX, MESuper (then a bunch of PnS). Olympus E20-n was my first dSLR, then K10D, K-01, K-3 and K-1, with a foray into Q. I'm a true believer in Pentax, but a realist about the company itself. Until Ricoh it was a horrible company and even worse as a Distributor in the USA. They'll probably never recover here - it would cost too much money to rebuild the infrastructure.

They know, and we should accept, Pentax will never be CaNikon. It would cost $1.4 Billion to build up to their business model, according to a top tier global investment bank. Ricoh won't do that for an 8% ROE. I think of Pentax as Leica lite . . . . With multiple platforms.

[thibs]

But they have a device link and an app already. How would you get the camera to automatically control the phone's browser? It could be an EyeFi sort of deal that uploads to private cloud storage, sure, but how to direct to social media? You still have to control the social media site from the camera.
.

You don't need to.
Once configured (with help of smartphone app or PC) you only need an api inside the camera.
A button and uploaded to your default feed. Its rather easy.