Camera That Share Like an iPhone

One of the charms of having a camera on your mobile phone is its ability to instantly share pictures, which may be the chief reason for the predicted demise of the point-and-shoot camera.

But Samsung has taken a step to reverse that trend by adding Wi-Fi to a broad range of cameras unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January. The Wi-Fi feature lets people send pictures directly from the camera, similar to the way they do from a phone.

The WB850F is the flagship of Samsung’s Wi-Fi camera line.

Samsung has put Wi-Fi into a camera before, but never so many at once. This time, the company is adding it to four cameras and one camcorder.

To use the Wi-Fi feature, you first have to set the camera to be recognized on your network – that may mean entering a password. Then you can decide what you want to share from the camera.

It can be set to load all of your photos to your computer automatically when on a shared network. It also can be set to share only selected photos. You can e-mail photos directly from the camera, or upload automatically to sites like Facebook and Picasa.

The cameras also have Wi-Fi Direct, a new standard that lets Wi-Fi devices connect to one another without a router in between, similar to the way Bluetooth does. That means if you have a phone with Wi-Fi Direct, you can send an instant photo from your camera from anywhere your phone can, but instead of a noisy five-megapixel image, you can send a full 16-megapixel masterpiece.

The cameras, some of which will become available in February, others not until April, share the Wi-Fi feature Samsung calls SMART. (Don’t ask me why it’s all in uppercase.)

The flagship is the WB850F ($380), which also features a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor, 21X optical zoom, f2.8 lens and three-inch AMOLED screen, and can take 1080p video at 30 frames per second.

Next comes the WB150F ($230), with a 14-megapixel CCD sensor, 18X optical zoom, f3.2 lens and three-inch AMOLED screen, and can take 720p videos.

The DV300F ($200) has a 16-megapixel CCD sensor, 5X optical zoom, f2.5 lens and three-inch TFT LCD screen, and can take HD video in 720p. It also has a 1.5-inch screen on the front of the camera, making it easier to compose self-portraits.

The ST200F ($200) has a 16-megapixel CCD sensor, 10X optical zoom, f3.1 lens and three-inch TFT LCD screen, and can take HD video in 720p. It is available in black, silver, red and purple.

Then there is the video camera in the line, the QF20 ($350), which is also available in a $300 non-Wi-Fi version, the Q20. Both have a five-megapixel CMOS sensor and 20X optical zoom, and can shoot 1080i at 60 frames per second.

via gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com

http://www.cameralensforiphone.com/