[Anvh]

I could see maybe adding GPS to the K30 since it's weather sealed and probably more likely to be taken deep outdoors,

The Pentax GPS module is actually WR if that's your concern.

[dmytty]

The DSLR market is growing. It's probably the only camera market that is. The camera phone is killing off P&S market. Most phones have some sort of GPS built in these days. It's handy if you need a map. It also makes it possible for you to be tracked 24/7. Let's get to the real issue here. Add GPS to cameras and it will be possible to know where every camera is at all times.

Not with open source firmware. If geeks had access to the code, they could ensure that the user truly was controlling communication and location services. Even without open source, it's still very easy to determine what data a wireless device is sending. A camera that sent information against the user's wishes would not be tolerated (as it has not been tolerated in smartphones).

No, we don't need built in GPS. The add on modules are already there for those who want it. Let them have theirs if they want it. I don't. I put the photos I want to share online to the sites I choose. MY camera. MY pictures.

Of course. I'm not advocating making the DSLR an automated life blogging tool. Adding wireless communications to a DSLR simply makes that process more straightforward, as well as bringing other advanced functionalities.

I don't need my camera doing auto anything every I pass a tower and the day that happens, I will retire from photography. You people who advocate all this stuff you think is cool don't know the freedom you are giving up in doing so. The best thing that can happen to this world will be if a solar storm fries every satellite out there.

Have you seen the recent images of oppressive governments being overthrown, cop beatdowns filmed, ballot boxes stuffed, and other government malfeasance generally exposed?

I suggest that you have it backwards. Images have the capacity to be powerful, and what unleashes that power is when they are shared. Sharing images has done more for justice than oppressed it. More are free, rather than less.

Also, beyond politics, sharing images publicly or privately is only an additional feature. If I could see images immediately after they are shot on my tablet (10"), laptop (15.6") or desktop device (30") it would be a powerful tool - especially the portable tablet.

I want to be free of cords. Just as a child is not free to develop to their own potential until the umbilical cord is cut, so too will our DSLR's be constrained by little 3" viewing screens.

[dmytty]

I would consider high-end mirrorless with interchangeable lenses and DSLRs to be part of the same market really and to have all the same basic features (other than the mirror and optical viewfinder), but anyway numbers show that for Q1 2012, production and shipments of DSLRs beat mirrorless by a 5 to 1 ratio globally. Mirrorless (MILC) has not really caught on yet. And the P&S compact market has been shrinking, as stated, being replaced by iphones.

And as far as Pentax, you've shown they've got a small market share (we know that already), but not a *shrinking* market share...

Here's the market share numbers. See the trends?

[dmytty]

It does, the Pentax GPS also record the direction not just the location also it can be used for star-tracing so it is more advance then a standard GPS.

Well technically that's a compass function. Most gps chips have this integrated as well, or it's part of a multi-axis accelerometer. Hardly unique to the Pentax.

I do but i don't see the point on recording the location where i've been, i've the photos right and the memories what more do i need?

It's helpful to find them. It's a location cue.

i can see it having it uses on compacts and entry level DSLR so you can send you JPEG photos to your friends, television or phone but more Advance shooters are past that point i hope.

Past the point of sharing their photos? Guess I don't understand that part.

Sure sounds nice but nothing of that is out so no use of having it at this point.
Besides remote viewfinder... you can stream HD video over BT???

Wifi doesn't just mean connecting to the internets.

BT 4.0 can be used to create a wifi 'ad-hoc' connection, or device to device connection with no wireless lan base station. So wifi-bluetooth would be perfect for many new functions. Over wifi, it is certainly possible to transmit the video codec (the HD video stream), which would allow the 'remote viewfinder' function. Imagine a shutter release that didn't require line-of-sight IR. That's useful for everything from studio shots to bird feeder shots to closeup wildlife - and the 'remote' setup perfectly complements Weather Resistance.

Yeah ethernet but i thought we are talking about LTE here so the mobile network, besides since i shoot RAW i need to edit my photo so what use is it to me i asked?

We are talking LTE vs. ethernet. I imagine a lot of pro photographers would like to be untethered at events too.

Yes they do, taking a photo is only 1 step in the process it's as much a science as an art.
Also non of your solution take away the need for cables also you still need to organize your photos or do you just send them to your friends to show off and then delete them???

No need to organize if there's enough metadata and analysis. For example, 'Show me pictures of the flowers I took in Grand Canyon.'

Also, I hardly recognize setting up cables as part of the scientific process. It's mundane and there's hardly any experimentation involved in swapping an SD card.

besides all this does not help me make a better photo not at all actually since it makes it all more complex.
Have i turned the GPS on, the WIFI, the atomic clock, the heat ray, ect.
I just want to turn on my camera and take a photo without worrying or connecting all the crap.

Me too. I would only require a simple configuration, like setting the date/time (oops...even that would be correct with GPS, unlike geologgers).

[Mattco26]

I want to be free of cords. Just as a child is not free to develop to their own potential until the umbilical cord is cut, so too will our DSLR's be constrained by little 3" viewing screens.

Probably the worst example of anything I've ever seen.

Look. You want a lifestyle device. Not a DSLR and probably not a Pentax. Not everyone wants all of these things anywhere near their DSLR, why can't you understand that?

[elliott]

Do you keep the pictures in your camera? Do you like fiddling with SD cards? As the answer is likely 'no', then the only question is what price tag do you attach to getting your pictures onto your other devices with minimum fuss. The less fussing you do, the more PICTURES YOU CAN TAKE!

Quality is more important to me than quantity, I'd rather take better pictures than more pictures. Right now, my old K100D offers me everything I need to take good pictures, no feature that you list would improve them in any way. I use manual lenses and typically manual exposure, I'm not a spray and pray kind of shooter, I slow down and think about every shot, if that means I only take 10 shots in an hour, then so be it.

[RobA_Oz]

Personally, I can't see any sustainable logic in any of the resistance to this. If you don't want it, you can turn it off, just like AF, AE or almost everything automated in a DSLR. I would have liked to have had the option in my K20D and my K-5 on my last two trips abroad. I found it quite a time impost just running through each day's photos tagging them with location, features etc. A GPS function to automate some of that would have been helpful. If I'd had the time to spend making notes while I was walking around and photographing the things that took my interest, then that would have been fun for the first couple of days, I guess, but I'm not in that happy position.

I think the OP's cost estimate for the development of a built-in GPS using a standard chipset was somewhat high. If a good electronics engineer couldn't complete the design in two solid weeks of work, I'd be very surprised. Add to that prototyping in an existing development body, and re-engineering to suit, say another two months full-time equivalent, and you've got 400 hours at (say) $200 per hour. That's $80,000, including overheads. Call it $100,000 to round it up and your $10 per camera becomes $2. Why would you quibble about that?

[dmytty]

Probably the worst example of anything I've ever seen.

I figured you would like it...so I took extra care to make sure my hyperbole would match the hair pulling of the Luddites here.

Look. You want a lifestyle device. Not a DSLR and probably not a Pentax. Not everyone wants all of these things anywhere near their DSLR, why can't you understand that?

Not everyone...but most people. I'd say about 90+% of the photography market would pay $100 more for a DSLR with these features. They would buy these features because it would help them take better pictures...and share those better pictures. Pros would love it!

You can resist but it will come.

I'm sure that when 'smartphones' first started becoming 'smart', it was people like you that insisted that you just wanted to make calls.

[selar]

I'm throwing my hat in the ring in favour of the OP's request for features that I have already been using on smartphones for the last 3 years! I would use my K5 a lot more and my smartphone a lot less if the dSLR had the same features! Ok may be not in dSLR format, but as a mirrorless with pancakes, definitely, yes. I'm partly there anyway. My NEX5n with a flucard, is already capable of uploading either directly to my home ftp server. Extraordinarily convenient! I could do the same with the K5, but the NEX is a lot easier to carry around. The downside is that I must manually focus my Pentax primes, with the excellent manual focus capability of the NEX, its not much of a downside at all!

[vonBaloney]

Here's the market share numbers. See the trends?

Don't see any particular trend for Pentax, and the mirrorless numbers are only like that in Japan. DSLRs still dominate in Europe and elsewhere. No doubt mirrorless is on the rise, though. Not that it matters -- I'm not sure what this mirrorless tangent has to do with anything as I would put all systems with interchangeable lenses in the same general category.

[elliott]

They would buy these features because it would help them take better pictures.

I'd like to see some reasoning for this one.

[dmytty]

Personally, I can't see any sustainable logic in any of the resistance to this.

It's been very informative to hear people try though. Really...I'm learning.

I found it quite a time impost just running through each day's photos tagging them with location, features etc. A GPS function to automate some of that would have been helpful.

I think the OP's cost estimate for the development of a built-in GPS using a standard chipset was somewhat high. If a good electronics engineer couldn't complete the design in two solid weeks of work, I'd be very surprised. Add to that prototyping in an existing development body, and re-engineering to suit, say another two months full-time equivalent, and you've got 400 hours at (say) $200 per hour. That's $80,000, including overheads. Call it $100,000 to round it up and your $10 per camera becomes $2. Why would you quibble about that?

I'm in total agreement with your estimates...if only Pentax was a well managed company. Unfortunately, this is a big enough corporation to have lower efficiencies. For development costs, I've learned to take my small team estimates and multiply by a factor of 2 - 3 x if it's in a company with 100+ people ... there's just too many 'design reviews', 'specification docs', and 'marketing guidance' meetings.

If Pentax were to modernize their SOC design, and take advantage of the integration offered by something like Qualcomm Snapdragon (ARM CPU + LTE + Wifi + GPS + Bluetooth)...I'm sure they'd be able to hold the line on product cost and also increase their profitability. Unfortunately, these DSLR companies creak and groan along.

As to the geologger, they really suck when going through time zones. I went through 4 time zone changes on our road trip...takes more time to correct the data then it does to manually tag. Lame!

[dmytty]

I'm throwing my hat in the ring in favour of the OP's request for features that I have already been using on smartphones for the last 3 years! I would use my K5 a lot more and my smartphone a lot less if the dSLR had the same features! Ok may be not in dSLR format, but as a mirrorless with pancakes, definitely, yes. I'm partly there anyway. My NEX5n with a flucard, is already capable of uploading either directly to my home ftp server. Extraordinarily convenient! I could do the same with the K5, but the NEX is a lot easier to carry around. The downside is that I must manually focus my Pentax primes, with the excellent manual focus capability of the NEX, its not much of a downside at all!

Ditto. I really dislike the cellphone but it is way easier to send pictures quickly. I also find myself using the wife's iphone for 'instant gratification' panoramas in the field. Would avoid both scenarios if Pentax came out with something better.

As to the mirrorless integration of wireless and gps features, it does seem even more obvious. However, I do like the pentaprism viewfinder on my K30 and would like to see this platform become even more capable.

[selar]

I tried the clip on evf on the NEX5n, didnt really do it for me! Agree, pentaprism viewfinder any day!

[dmytty]

I'd like to see some reasoning for this one.

Wifi and Bluetooth doesn't just mean connecting to the internets.

Bluetooth 4.0 can be used to create a wifi 'ad-hoc' connection, or device to device connection with no wireless lan base station. Over wifi, it is certainly possible to transmit the Liveview feed - and even the 1080p HD video stream. This would allow a 'remote viewfinder' function.

Imagine going up to Alaska during the salmon run and setting up a camera on a concealed tripod mount. Now you move a safe distance away and open up your tablet. Viola, you're getting a Liveview from 200 yards away. A bear approaches the camera...you wait a second more, and then trigger the shutter. On the off chance that you're within range of a celltower, your camera could start backing up the pictures to your Fort Knox-like private server (with tinfoil shroud to keep the CIA away). Then, when the bear mauls your camera (because the iK30 shutter is loud), and you drop the tablet in despair (losing that copy), you can still sell the stunning backed up picture for enough money to replace your equipment and buy some yummy bear-captured Pacific Salmon steaks (that's what Wild Caught means right?).

Remember, this remote viewfinder scenario could easily be accomplished with an $810 K30 body and a $500 Ipad.

Instead of a story about another photographer being eaten, you have a great picture.

So remember photographers, wireless could save your life!