In this blog post I
have chosen to talk about Wifi (wireless fidelity) enabled DSLR’s. I chose this subject because I
own a wifi enabled DSLR, so not only do I have a fair amount of knowledge about
it, but also it is something that I enjoy talking about.
Wifi for DSLR’s has
been available for quite some time now but a dongle was required in order to
achieve this. The dongle is an extra cost for users and is not very attractive
sticking out of the side of the camera.
Canon broke the
barrier by being the first big camera company to introduce built in WIFI
connectivity to a DSLR camera. The Canon EOS 6D was introduced in November 2012
and featured inbuilt Wifi technology, allowing the user to transmit photos
instantly through the Wifi network to a compatible device such as a cell phone
or computer/laptop. Nikon shortly followed the trend in October 2013
introducing the Nikon DX format D5300. The D5300 has the same Wifi technology
as the Canon 6D but on a smaller sensor camera instead of a Full Frame.
The Wifi feature added
to DSLR’s is useful for different users depending on their needs. A teenager
wanting to share their photo via a social platform such as ‘Instagram’, could
instantly send the photo to their cell phone, ready to upload on the photo
sharing application within a minutes. A photojournalist on the other hand may
have his Wifi setting set up to transmit photo’s instantly to his company or
newspaper firm, ready to be published within minutes of shooting.
This technology changed
the way photojournalists work and how much time they have to shoot an event or
subject. Having this Wifi technology could mean that instead of having to run
back to the office to upload the pictures to meet a deadline, they could use
this extra time shooting in order to have a better chance of getting the
perfect photo, or even move to a different location to get a different
perspective on the event. This was a huge advancement in technology for
photojournalists who travel internationally to shoot photographs. Images can
simply be uploaded from the camera onto the Internet for someone thousands of
miles away to view or use. This would cut down the transportation time of
images by hours, or even days, allowing the photojournalist to get their images
to whoever needed in the shortest time possible. As professor Nordell says in
his video ‘Working in the digital age – part 2’ – “He beat the other photographers – His news agency had those pictures must earlier”. This
technology gave one photographer the edge over another photographer without
this technology.
Photo By - Anthony Thurston
When comparing a Wifi
enabled DSLR such as the Nikon D5300 to the previously talked about 35mm SLR,
the difference is clear. The main issue being that the 35mm SLR was very many
years before the introduction of Wifi technology in cameras. This was not
possible due to the fact that the photographs on a 35mm SLR were shot on film -
not digital.
With the non-digital
SLR camera, these physical films were required to be run back to the office in
order to be edited, or transmitted by the lengthy process or wired
transmitting. “If you were lucky enough to get a perfect telephone line for sending the picture, one color photo took a minimum of 26 minutes to transmit. Sending internationally took twice as long,sometimes up to an hour per photo.” Says Chris Wilkins in an article on Dallas
News.
Photo By - Andy Scott
When talking about the
differences of non-digital and digital photography, something I found
interesting was an article about Time magazine choosing to gather photographs
from photo-sharing application ‘Instagram’ to post on their front page. Time’s director
of photography, Kira Pollack decided to use Instagram for choosing their cover
photo by saying, “We just thought this is going to be the fastest way we can cover this and it’s the most direct route”. As Hurricane Katrina was closing in quickly,
Pollack gave the photography team orders to use photographs from Instragram in
order to show people the effects of the storm before any other magazine was
able to.
I’m sure a lot of people disagreed with
this decision as it is taking work away from photojournalists, but also these
photographs, possibly taken on Iphones, would not be anywhere near as good
quality as from a professional DSLR. In this case, Time magazine chose the less
amount of time to publish, over the quality of the photograph, but like we learnt
before – “content can sometimes trump the technical features of an image”.
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